June 2025
Even for those who got hammered with snow this winter and whose schools extended days at the end of the year, early June is a safe bet for most that
summer break is here!
Kids (many adults too for that matter) look forward to it longing all year long. Even for those who attend year round schools or summer school, the pace is usually slowed and the workload lightened to some extent, making summer a unique time of the year.
I am very fortunate that I get to take a summer break right along with my children (one of the many perks of being an educator.) Yes, there is some planning to be done, and I write a lot more during the summer than during the school year, but still, I am on break, and I can feel the difference.
Yet, despite all the good things that come with the change of pace in the summertime, the welcome change is still an adjustment. Maybe you’ve felt it too. Kids with extra free time blissfully revel in the independence one moment and wander around bored the next. Perhaps you, like me, struggle with the sudden change of having a very prescribed schedule to one with much more margin, should we allow it to remain so. Ranging from details like how much to modify bedtimes and wake times to decisions about how much screen time is reasonable during the summer (and whether that differs from school year allotments), there is plenty to consider.
I am always walking the fence regarding how much to fill up our calendar vs how much to leave it open. In my book The Working Homemaker, I wrote about the need for margin in our schedules, and I absolutely believe this is the case. “I value creativity and contentment, and overscheduled kids usually struggle to entertain themselves because they are so used to being told what to do. Our kids need to find ways to entertain themselves and to undertake projects and activities they don’t have time to do if their schedules are too full.”
During the school year, we are pretty minimalistic in what we let the kids participate in because school takes up so much of their time and energy. In the summer, because we get plenty of family time, we let them do more, but because I like a schedule, I still have to navigate how to fill our days without overfilling them.
My ideal is typically leaving the house once per day. I’m not too picky. It can be to go on an adventure, a walk, the library, a dance lesson, a shopping errand, or a health appointment. This gives us something to look forward to or keep us on task without bogging us down. But choosing that daily outing requires some selectivity. There are SO many options in the summer.
Let’s talk about camps: sports camp, art camp, day camp, summer camp, dance camp, piano camp, drama camp. Need I go on? There are also SO many community events: summer movies, concerts, festivals, library programs, VBS, and it just keeps going. Personally, I ‘love me’ some enrichment, and when there are enrichment opportunities for my kids, I’m all about it. But too much of a good thing stops being a good thing.
So, I try to stick to my rule: aim for one thing a day. (A caveat – this mostly applies to family busyness. So, I may commit to something for myself in the evening even if the kids had something going on already that day.) Of course, there are some days where I bend this rule, and we have more than one place to go in a day. And occasionally there just isn’t anything to do, and we stay home. But overall, this rule of thumb helps me to not become my own worst enemy.
The slowness of summer can evaporate as quickly as the puddle on a hot sidewalk if I don’t work to protect it.
Some of the sweetest summer moments happen spontaneously with a last minute decision to play in the sprinkler with the neighbors or to have a family picnic lunch outside in the front lawn. Yes, this also means dealing with moments of boredom where no one can find anything to do or where bickering occurs from everyone sharing the same space for long periods of time. But it also affords time for reading, games, and imaginative self- directed activities.
Even with the time we designate to spend at home, I try to be purposeful with giving our day a framework. Of course, unstructured time is important, but for me, there is still such a thing as too laissez-faire an approach. We still do things like regularly practice the piano and have a weekly math review. We still have daily and weekly chores. I schedule reading in because it’s too important to just hope it happens. Reading is also something that has highlighted the passage of time and my need for flexibility.
Since my oldest was very little, afternoon reading has been formative for us in the summertime and on weekends. It usually happened shortly after naptime, and this ritual was passed down to younger siblings who joined in. Even after we had moved past naptime, we still did afternoon reading. But this year, the girls have kind of outgrown this. They read a lot on their own and also do reading time with me (where they practice reading to me.) My little boy still wants and needs reading time, but it was just starting to fall through the cracks since the others were less willing to stop their afternoon doings to sit and be read to.
So, this summer, I purposed to try something new. I moved Bible reading to breakfast instead of lunch, and I moved afternoon reading time to after lunch while we are still all at the table together. This way, it still happens daily. We have also moved from picture books to chapter books. We still do a picture book before bed for everyone, but this feels like a rather significant change in our reading ritual. This has reminded me that in every family, the age gaps and levels of children will influence habits and will grow along with the family.
It can be a little bittersweet when a family liturgy changes or maybe even dissipates, but as long as we have other meaningful things to add in, purposeful practices and discipleship will continue, and memories will continue to be formed.
If you work during the summer, you probably don’t have lots of flexibility. Maybe you’re feeling the summer blues from not getting as much of a change of pace as you’d like. Maybe your kids are feeling it too if they’re mostly camping out at home while you’re away or if they’re heading off to daily summer care. Maybe there has been a big life change and you’re not quite sure you’re even up to summer at all.
Whatever your particulars, there are still little ways to create some unique summer rhythms. Taking advantage of the extra sunlight at the end of the day, choosing some specific books and movies to enjoy together, and even matching your menu to the weather (corn on the cob and watermelon, anyone?) all add some zest to even ordinary routines.
Summer buckets lists can be a fun one, and they can be worked into weekends or whenever you get time off. Personally, summer bucket lists don’t work great for me because I find them too constricting (I feel like I have failed if we don’t complete the list.) But I have an ‘unofficial’ list that I create simply by putting ideas on the calendar. If something falls through, it was only written in pencil, and I often don’t tell my kids about it in advance so they aren’t disappointed if we can’t do it.
Whatever your summer schedule looks like, whether it’s quite modified from the school year or whether it holds more similarities than you wish, I hope you feel the freedom to remember that it’s never just about “one” event. Most people don’t reflect on their childhood and specifically recall everything that happened their 11th year. They remember a collage of images over the breadth of their youth, probably not even in perfect chronological order, that may highlight what they did or didn’t do but more likely highlights how it made them feel.
We don’t need to feel the pressure to make our children’s summer perfect. The repetition of good moments and habits over the years will add up, and there’s always next summer.
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22).
I am more comforted by the reminder of the cyclical nature of life than the “blink or you’ll miss it” philosophy. Even as the teen years dwindle away, we don’t have to lose our children to adulthood; we can just grow into a new phase right along with them.
When my kids someday reflect on their cornucopia of summers past, I hope they remember feeling relaxed and grounded. I also hope they remember the nostalgia of doing the same things as well as the excitement of occasionally trying out new (though probably not exotic) things. They folded the laundry, but they also went berry picking on a Tuesday morning beneath a light grey sky.
Basically, I hope they remember we had some purposeful parameters, and we had some wiggle room to be a little lazy and impromptu. If you have a tidbit for me and other readers on how you create and adjust to a summer rhythm or how you interweave structure and freedom into a family schedule, please leave a comment below!
Photo credits:
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/colorful-puddle-art_1006059_880184″>Stockcake</a>
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/sunlit-weekend-plans_1953472_1268684″>Stockcake</a>