Creating Your Best Summer Ever
Do you have a love-hate relationship with summer when it comes to your kids?
Especially your teens?
If you answered yes, you are not alone! I get this a lot from the parents I work with.
Summer used to be the ice cream truck, spending hours in the pool, and riding our bikes around the neighborhood.
Now it’s feeling torn between work and being there for our kids, logistical nightmares of getting kids to a different camp every week and spending the whole summer feeling guilty that our kids are spending too much time on their screens.
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t hear
“Mom! I’m bored,”
“Why do we have to...?”
I don’t wanna...”
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to
Nag the kids to get off their electronics.
Be your kids’ personal cruise director.
Play referee 24/7.
Great, that’s why I can’t wait to share my
“4 Steps to the Best Summer Ever”
Step 1: Creating the Vision
Before each person can look back and say, “That was the best summer ever!”, you have to figure out what is quintessential summer for each person. For me it has to do with water—the pool, the beach, even the sprinklers on the back lawn. It has to do with the food—roadside corn, watermelon, hot cherry tomatoes picked right from the vine, and ice cream (lots and lots of ice cream!).
Ask your kids the question: What would your Best Summer Ever include? If we could do anything and go anywhere what would it be?
This is your time to BRAINSTORM, so accept all answers. And you should get in the game, too. Maybe your dream is walking down the Champs-Élysées and stopping for a café au lait and a fresh croissant. It doesn’t matter if Paris is out of the question this summer. If it is a dream of yours, write it down.
Once the brainstorming is done, start circling the things that are possible. Of the possible, start prioritizing what is most important, and begin to think of how to work it into the plan.
Finally, do some out-of-the-box problem-solving. Sure, maybe Paris is off the table this summer. But a good café au lait and a fresh croissant is probably doable. Maybe you designate one day as “French Day” (Bastille Day is July 14th!). You can start the day with that croissant and serve the kids pommes frites for dinner.
Giving each family member a little of what they most wish for will go a long way to their getting excited about summer. If nothing else, you can post the wish list for future summer planning.
Step 2: Creating the Structure
Kids—and even adults—long for summer as a time when we can laze away the days without the constant pressure of school. But the reality soon pales because at the end of the day, most kids really benefit from structure and knowing what is the plan.
For most families, summer means a lot of moving pieces—which means a lot of logistics. Before you can even talk about how to fulfill kids’ visions of summer, it helps to work out the nuts and bolts of who is going to be where when, and how they are going to get there.
Start by collecting all the data.
Every family member can help collect the schedules and requirements for their own activities. Believe me, even an 8 or 9-year-old can be taught to look up information for his camp online to answer questions like Will you need a packed lunch, or is lunch provided? Do they require you to bring a swimsuit and change of clothes every day or just for the Water Carnival days?
A calendar can be created online, but I strongly recommend either printing it out in large format (your local Kinko’s can do that for you) or getting a desktop calendar that can fit each family member’s activities. Which of your children might have writing neat enough to be responsible for writing everything down—or tech-savvy enough to get it all down on an electric calendar. I strongly recommend having a color to represent each individual in the family and one color for whole family activities.
Once you have the calendar, take a detailed look at each week to discuss who is going to have free time and who is not. How able is each child able to handle free time? How is the dynamic in the house when one kid is at camp and the other is at home? Where are there possibilities to spend some one-on-one time with each child this summer? Which weeks might be especially challenging? What can you do to make them easier?
Like adults, kids like to be in the know. It helps them feel in control. They are going to handle transitions better if you have talked through in advance what each week will bring.
Step 3: Creating the Plan
The NUMBER ONE STEP that is going to keep you from nagging and making threats—and keep your kids from whining and complaining this summer-- is coming to some agreements about expectations.
Your kids are thinking, “It’s summer. I’ve worked hard all year. I shouldn’t have to do anything!”
You’re probably thinking, “No way! You’re not going to spend all summer sitting around all day doing nothing!”
So, for the kids, summer is about freedom and a lack of demands.
For parents, we don’t want our kids doing nothing, we fear the lack of a schedule, and maybe we even feel a little resentment that our kids have off and we don’t—especially as their being home makes extra work for us.
This is why it is so critical to have a plan.
But just like Creating the Vision, I highly recommend that you start with the fun of what is possible. Have each family member set some goals for themselves. Whether it is learning to master a blues riff on the bass guitar, riding a bike without training wheels or winning the library’s summer reading prize, kids will feel really good about having bragging rights at the end of the summer if they have accomplished a goal. During the school year, we are very goal-oriented, but most of those goals are external—set by teachers, coaches, and parents. Summer provides some space for children to set goals around something that is really important to them. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT because it gets the kids’ buy-in for taking action and moves them away from “I don’t want to do ANYTHING.”
Before you go into the nitty gritty of what you expect this summer, build up a lot of what is possible. Baking the perfect chocolate cookie? Making a $100 bucks off the lemonade stand? Rereading all of Harry Potter?
Once you have set some goals, it is time to set some limits!
The conversations about limits are much harder.
First, before you even talk to your kids, figure out what are your non-negotiables. Walking the dog? Looking after a younger sibling? And where can you flex?
Unless you already have clear limits and great cooperation from your kids, even as you set limits for kids, it needs to be a conversation and a negotiation. You will do a lot less nagging and have to make less use of consequences if you get buy-in from your kids. Try to do some outside-of-the-box thinking about what meets your underlying value. Be willing to play around with things somewhat.
For example, you want your kids to get enough sleep but you don’t want them sleeping until noon, so obviously you don’t want them up half the night. They, of course, want to sleep in. Could you shift bedtime and rise-time by an hour? Could you have one day a week where there are no restrictions? When I was a child, my mother wanted the terrace swept and the outside cushions put out first thing in the morning. We compromised by getting up at 7:00, doing that one chore (in our pajamas) and then going back to bed until nine or so. She got what she really wanted (a salubrious breakfast outside) and we got at least the illusion of having a slow start.
The more explicit you are about areas you are likely to nag kids (sleep? diet? screen time?), the happier the summer will be for everyone.
And what about chores? Personally, I am a big believer in them. If having your kids contribute to the well-being of your home has not been part of your parenting, summer can be an excellent time to train kids on the skills they need to do them successfully. If your kids are already doing chores, summer can be an excellent time to up their skill level and increase their responsibility. Certainly with a later start time for most camps compared to school, summer is a good time for them to get in the habit of making their own breakfasts and lunch.
What can school-aged kids be doing? Depending on their maturity and with training they can be
•making a shopping list
•helping with food prep
•cooking
•baking •cleaning •doing laundry •cleaning the car •weeding •unclogging the toilet •paying the bills
•taking clothes out of the dryer
•washing dishes
•dusting or vacuuming
If you have not been requiring your kids’ help with keeping home life running smoothly, one approach is to sit down with the complete list of what you do every day/week/month and have your kids mark which tasks they could do or learn to do. From that subset, have them pick 2-3 things from the list that they will take responsibility for this summer.
There is no doubt that in today’s society, getting your kids’ cooperation is a negotiation process. Making deals successfully takes SKILL and patience. Gone are the days when we can just announce to our kids how things are going to be and expect their obliging obedience. Do NOT expect to get everything you want. DO hold firm about the things you really care about but be prepared to really explain to your kids why something is so important (even if, as in my mother’s case with eating breakfast outside, it is about your own pleasure). Just be prepared to offer your kids something they really want in return. Most importantly, keep your kids on your team. Throughout the negotiation process, stay focused on creating a happy summer for EVERYONE. Help your kids understand that if you are having a good summer, they will have a good summer, too. And if things get heated, remember that your child is not a problem. You are having a disagreement and THAT is the problem that needs to be solved. Your kid is not a problem. Even if you want different specific things, you and your child are on the same team: You ALL want the Best Summer Ever.
Step 4: Putting the Plan into Action
Formalizing the agreement you and your kids come up with is absolutely critical. It is what makes the plan feel official to your kids. Believe it or not, just as you might not trust that your kids will follow through with your end of the bargain, there’s a good chance your kids don’t trust you to hold your end up. By writing everything down explicitly, it is what will keep your children from crying, “BUT YOU SAID….” and you from wondering if you really did say that. Lots of bickering and backtalk can be avoided by writing everything down. When your child is arguing for ten more minutes of screen time, all you have to do is point to the agreement.
There will also definitely be a need for Plan B’s. (Stuff comes up!) You might consider, for example, will you allow your child to not walk the dog if she has a friend over? Can the walk be shorter? What if her friend is afraid of dogs? Or if you say yes to a sleepover, does that change bedtime? Will it be okay to stay in pajamas until later? Will you allow more screen time because what your son and his buddy really like doing is playing Mario Cart?
The more you can think through hypothetically, the better your in-the-moment decision-making will be.
And, finally, keep your summer plan on track by having regular family meetings. If kids know that there will be opportunities to revise the plan, they will be more willing to try your way of doing things. If family meetings are not currently part of your parenting tools, I highly recommend them. Feel free to download my free ebook on Family Meetings here.
That’s it! Follow these steps, and I promise you that the series of conversations it takes to get a good plan together will be worth every minute in time saved from not nagging and arguing with your kids. Now I am ready for my first chocolate-dipped soft-serve cone of the season!