By: Amy Cantilina
As my kids’ school year comes hurtling to a close in about a week, I am looking ahead at summer vacation with my usual sense of excitement and eagerness to do fun things together, let go of routines, and savor down time. The end-of-school-year frenzy of field trips, class parties, authors’ teas, concerts, banquets, sports day, and awards ceremonies has my head spinning and longing for a blank calendar.
Mixed in with this eagerness for summer vacation to arrive, however, is my standard dose of trepidation over “how will we survive without some structure?” and “what can I do to make sure this time is not wasted?” It seems logical that summer should be fun, and relaxing. It seems logical that getting to sleep late and not having homework or other responsibilities weighing kids down would make for happy kids and fun days at home together.
Experience has shown that’s not always the case, however. After about, oh, 24-48 hours of no structure, it’s not pretty around here. The kids get irritable and argumentative, I feel blah and purposeless, and my hopes for lovely, blissful “down time” fade. My kids thrive—subconsciously, for the most part—on routines and boundaries. And even more so do I. Without the structure that is embedded in school-year schedules, I can feel a little lost. When mama is off kilter, everyone suffers.
Over the years, I have wavered between completely over programming my kids’ summer and planning far too little. Eventually, I was able to discern that happy place where we have just enough on the calendar to keep us somewhat grounded, but not so much that we are exhausted from running.
One thing I have found that helps both my kids and me through the easy weeks of summer is our “summer policies.” These policies include things like how much screen time is allowed and how to earn it, what daily chores are expected from each child, other daily/weekly expectations (reading time, musical instrument practice time, physical exercise, household chores, etc.) Each year, I reevaluate last year’s policies for age appropriateness and draft new policies for that summer.
We have found that having the policies in writing, and setting a time in the beginning of the summer to go over them together, helps to keep everyone on the same page and allows the kids not only to understand the reason for the policies, but to voice their thoughts before we begin implementation.
Drafting this year’s summer policies will be a little more challenging, with my oldest soon to be driving and hoping to find a part-time job, and the youngest two needing quite a bit of intensive summer homeschooling to retain what they’ve learned in public school this year. I am praying now for wisdom and discernment to know what to include in our policies and what, for my oldest, NOT to include as he begins to take on more responsibility for his own choices and time management.
Above all, however, summer is still summer, and it’s called “vacation” for a reason. So to a certain extent I will be letting go of expectations that the kitchen will ever truly be “cleaned up” (with 4 kids home, there is bound to be constant grazing), the laundry will ever really be “done,” and anything about our days will truly feel routine. While our summer policies help to normalize things to an extent, flexibility and a willingness to let go of routine now and then is key to “easy living” in the summertime.
Happy Summer to You!
AMY CANTILINA is an Air Force wife and mom to 4 precious kiddos — two conceived in her womb and two conceived in her heart, coming home to their forever family from China. She is a Jesus-lover, wannabe writer, endurance athlete, Bible study leader, and wears whatever other hats her family’s military lifestyle might bring along. She is being stretched by mothering through a wide range of ages and needs — high school through kindergarten, some with special medical needs or developmental delays.