Moms, Give Yourself Permission to Relax This Summer

The kids have already been out for summer more than a MONTH!  It is hard to believe and I find myself tempted to feel guilty about the whole lotta nothing we have been doing… just me?! I sure hope not, and assuming you too *might* be wondering if it’s okay to stay up late, sleep in late, have more than one jammie day in a row, I am here to give you permission to relax.  Let’s talk this through…

Moms, Give Yourself Permission to Relax This Summer | Houston Moms Blog

But they’re having too much screen time.

Most of us have some rules around screen time.  In my house, the kids {not me!} have to do some chores, read and play in other ways before they can have screens but it still ends up more than I would like.  However, when I think back on my summer holidays, I watched daytime TV for hours!  I did other things too, like my brief hobby of chicken embroidery, but still :: hours.  It was the same for all my friends, and guess what?  That’s what we loved about summer.  The relaxation of the rules!  So set up some guidelines and then stop worrying about it.  Heck, join them if you can!

I should have booked more camps.

There are plenty of affordable VBS options – some families spend the summer doing the VBS tour – and there are many excellent camp options but most camps come with a price tag that adds up after one week or with multiple children.  Only one of my three kids is doing a week-long away camp {it was his birthday gift months ago} and it was expensive.  My other kids were not keen on going to camp this year which turned out to be a good thing because we simply could not afford it.  Luckily I am able to be home with them during the day, though I recognize some working parents have no choice but to fill the summer with camps. Whether a need or a want, camps can offer different experiences and opportunities for our kids to learn and grow but they are not a requirement for raising healthy humans!  So if you booked one, none or few, relax! It’s enough!

They’re going to forget everything they learned in school.

We have zero choice in the length of the summer break and I’m going to go ahead and assume that the school powers-that-be are aware of the potential for the “summer slide” and have a plan to ameliorate that in the fall.  Here’s the thing :: we are all in the same boat so relax and focus on a few things you can do to beat the summer learning loss::

  • Read read read!  Go the library, thrift some books, download Audible or get audiobooks from the library – my kids LOVE signing out books with Hoopla and love the option of listening to books.  It all counts and reading for fun instead of as a school requirement is something everyone should experience.
  • Practice math in practical ways.  Get them to help with the shopping, get them involved in baking, talk about temperature and distance and speed limits {!} while traveling, download math game apps, play with puzzles, blocks and tangrams.  Or give them five bucks and let them budget their way through the dollar store!  It doesn’t have to be summer school to be beneficial.
  • Take advantage of local learning opportunities.  Go to the museums, parks, historical sites and talk about them!  Encourage your kids to explore some of their interests over the summer and see where it leads!  School is important and necessary but cultivating a lifelong interest in learning happens outside the classroom too.

I should have a schedule of enriching activities prepared.

Mommas, we spend our school year scheduled to the hilt!  We manage school schedules, work schedules, activity schedules, shopping schedules, laundry schedules – the list goes on!  We need a rest from schedules. Instead, let the enriching activities happen in an organic way.  For example, my daughter brought me her iPad one morning and showed me a DIY video for unicorn slime, so we went and got the ingredients, made unicorn slime and had a blast, no scheduling required. Most years my family makes a “summer fun” bucket list with things like “pirate day” or “try growing crystals” but if we make that into a to-do list, some of the fun gets lost.  Just relax and have big and little adventures as they come.

I hope you read this and feel a little less guilty about summer down-time. We exist in a world where busy is glorified but it simply can’t be sustained over the long term.  So just in case you don’t already give it to yourself, take my permission to relax and have a wonderful summer!

 

Moms, Give Yourself Permission to Relax This Summer | Houston Moms Blog

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