Planning a Great Summer!
School is almost out and the warm summer season is already upon us, causing children across the country to prepare for their last day of school and the beginning of their endless vacation. Growing up, we could hardly pay attention those last few days of May, counting down until we could spend our days at the pool, with our families, or playing outside with our friends. The summer season is a great way to allow kids to be kids while growing up, as their lives are so structured while they are in school and they are taxed with more responsibility and pressure than they maybe should be.
For parents, summer involves probably a bit less productivity at work, as they have to find caregivers and activities for their children or provide it themselves. Some parents enroll their children in summer school activities, other enroll them in summer camp, and some send them to relatives. What does the ideal summer look like for a child that combines freedom and structure, fun and learning, and activity time and work time? This blog will talk about how to give your child a balanced summer they will love.
First and foremost, an empty summer provides families with far more opportunity to spend time together than they may find during the school year. Kids don’t have sports and school schedules to adhere to, so most families choose to vacation over the summer months. Vacationing gives children so many wonderful opportunities to explore and provides them with knowledge of new places and ideas that they will remember and tell their friends all about in the fall. Family vacations bring kids closer to each other and to their parents, and no matter how extravagant, long, or distant the trip, any “summer vacation” can provide positive benefits all around.
Second, the summer season is known to cause a regression in the learning of children, as they go three months without any form of structured education and they often must relearn the last few weeks of school at the beginning of the following school year. All teachers could tell you that summer has a habit of wiping the minds of children so that they go back to school far less prepared than they were at the end of the previous school year. Teachers then must either spend time reteaching old materials to catch them up, or they forge ahead leaving some students in the dust. Formalized summer school was created to help children who were behind in school during the school year be able to spend more time with their educational materials and give them an equal start into the next school year. Parents of all kids can give their children a small amount of educational materials to complete over their summer just to stop them from forgetting what they have learned and how to learn in general. There are fun educational workbooks for each age that children can complete while in the car or at breakfast or just for a couple of hours each week, helping their brains continue to be stimulated and helping prevent them from falling behind if structured summer school is not an option or desire.
Third, summer is a great time to teach children new responsibilities that they may not have the time to learn or perform during the busy school year. Summers were created so that children could help their parents on the farm, and nowadays summer days can be used getting children to help with housecleaning, organization, yard work, and the learning of new skillsets to be able to help with more complex chores in the future. When kids have eight hours of school per day, followed by two hours of sports and three hours of homework, they may not feel up to learning how to do the dishes, as they are already overstimulated and stressed. In the summer, they may find themselves eager to “do” things besides watching TV, and may bore themselves into an interest in chores. Take advantage of this!
Finally, summer offers kids great opportunities for socialization with new kids. They can go to summer camp and meet dozens of other kids while engaging in fun activities. They can go spend time at a distant relatives house with their extended cousins and neighborhood kids. They can go to the park and meet new kids in their own neighborhood. Making sure your child is given the opportunity to do more than spend their whole day indoors and isolated will really benefit their ability to make friends and develop good memories.
Parents may dread their children being out of school for obvious reasons, but if we develop a plan beforehand for the summer we can enter into it prepared and able to make it a positive experience for all. Perhaps get a calendar and mark down all plans, see which days are empty, and structure them with a wide variety of both fun activities and development opportunities. Be sure to take care of yourself as well! Spend less time at work if possible to redirect that time towards your kids, request time off from work if not to be able to get away with the family for the week, and know that soon enough you’ll be walking through the grocery store and see the endless aisles of scissors, crayons, and glue sticks and know your time is almost up before your schedule returns to “normal”.
Kyndal Sims
Birch Psychology
Resources
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-plan-your-childs-s_b_7614512
