Summer means fun in the sun, long days and … a whole lot of stress for parents, huh? If you’re already feeling the pressure of what summer needs to be and how you can get through it with your sanity and positive memories, we feel you. But maybe it’s not as impossible as it seems.

Before you dive in, remember that our professionals are always here to help

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The ingredients your kids need for a perfect summer

After a highly structured school year, your kids could use a little wiggle room in their lives with a few key ingredients for a positive summer for everyone:

Connection at home
Opportunities with peers
Time to be bored
A chance to learn something new

What your children actually need to have a great summer may be a long way off from what they (or you!) think it’s going to take. Planning big trips, constant enrichment, and learning activities is a great way to add excitement and make memories but it’s not the only way.

Your children do not require you to spread yourself so thin you can barely keep up in order to enjoy themselves.

Our top 5 tips for a successful summer

1.) Get comfortable with their boredom

Despite their very real opinion to the contrary, boredom is not the end of the world. It’s often the origin story of imagination and innovation!

When your children come to you and tell you they’re bored, it’s not a problem to solve! So they’re bored- let them be. Instead of feeling crushingly guilty or like there’s an action you must take otherwise, just let that feeling exist.

Try the following responses:
“That’s great, I can’t wait to see what you come up with!”
“How exciting! I love to be bored.”
“That sounds boring (haha), how will you solve it?”

If you want to help your child come up with some boredom solutions, you could try creating a bored jar they can use to spark inspiration.

2.) Schedule togetherness

Scheduling your time together can help you to alleviate the guilt you feel when you’re spending time doing other things, and to make meaningful purpose of the time you have together. Kids don’t need all of your time- even 15 minutes of dedicated connection can make a huge difference in their day.

The best part of this is that it’s actually a 3-in-1 tip, and we all know how good it feels to get a bargain! Schedule togetherness with other family members, friends, activities, and siblings so that there’s a concrete time to look forward to those connections- or, in the case of siblings, to make intentional space together. Scheduling times of togetherness can help the summer solitude feel a bit more interspersed with connection.

3.) Accept help

Help can be difficult to come by and even more difficult to actually take someone up on. So whether it’s your kids offering a hand at something you’re trying to accomplish or a family member, partner, or co-worker offering to lighten the load, let them!

Through the acceptance of help, you are giving purpose to the people around you. Each time you accept offers of help, you tell your children in particular that you value their ability and trust them to get the job done. Maybe the tasks they’re offering aren’t something they can help with- that’s okay! Use the opportunity to find a space they can help you, and then hold them to it! Chores, responsibility, and accountability are great ways to increase both competence and confidence all while lightening your load.

4.) Finding the structure sweet spot

And we promise, there is one! Not every day or task should be structured. In fact, research shows that lazy days and boredom are beneficial to everyone so let the structure go in the spaces you can afford to. Things like meals, chores, and obligation tasks that must happen should be structured to ensure you and your kids have the information and time you need to get them accomplished.

Balancing these two elements of daily life in a new way during the summer can help things feel fresh and exciting while leaving room for spontaneity. Strive to find a structure sweet spot that works for you, whether that’s making a schedule framework for nonnegotiable activities and then filling the gaps, or working from a list or chart. You know your family best, so use that knowledge to help everyone meet their summer needs.

5.) Let things slide

Summer doesn’t have to look like the school year. You don’t need vacations, classes, play dates or daily structure that keeps you on your toes and waking up with the birds each day. Let the things that you don’t need, don’t want, or don’t serve you slide. Use summer to stick to the requirements and engage in the optional. Do more of what you want to do by doing only what you have to do. Let the rest go.

This summer is yours to create from the space available to you. We hope these tips help you to feel empowered to create a summer of possibility, messy magic, and memories to carry with you for years to come.

For more summer tips, inspiration and encouragement, meet us on our socials!

Make it to the End of Summer with Positive Memories for You AND Your Kids