Right before summer break begins each year, I have the same conversation with fellow mothers.
We’re eager for the break – the slower pace, being more relaxed and having more time with our kids. And then, at the end of summer, we talk about how quickly it flew by – how busy it was – and how, in some ways, starting school again will feel lighter and easier than the summer felt.
It makes perfect sense. Having kids at home – without the consistent routines of the school year – adds complexity for parents.
Unstructured days aren’t always pleasant, and getting back into a schedule can be a relief. Still, so often, we build summers for our family that are so packed with activities that we miss out on what we were most looking forward to – a slower and less stressful pace that allows us to be more present to one another and the world around us.
So here’s a question to consider since we are still on the front end of the summer: How do you want to remember this summer feeling as a family?
*Editors Note: If you want to jump straight to the practical ideas for making the most of your summer, jump to the “Take steps to create space in your summer” section below! If you want to get the full picture of why this is important and the research behind it, please read on.
Relentlessly busy lives can leave us overburdened.
We all want to fill our summer with good things. It’s easy to imagine, as one activity is added after another, that each of these good opportunities piles more good into our summer.
Yet, the reality is that so often as we do this, our lives become unintentionally overscheduled, leaving our days crammed and our spirits exhausted. We find ourselves cranky, irritable and unable to see and enjoy each other. On top of that – and partly as a response to our exhaustion – we let screens fill in the nooks and crannies of free time.
Relentless busyness is not just driven by our choices as individual families; it seeps in from our culture.
We may feel that the best parents involve their kids in many enrichment activities, that all of a child’s time should be structured and overseen, and that we must continually help our kids get ahead.
We start to see summer as a series of days and weeks filled with purchased activities like camps, tutoring and lessons – where accomplishment is prized, and busyness becomes a mark of worth.
Don’t get me wrong – meaningful activities and opportunities for growth can be of significant value. However, it’s all too easy to build schedules for our family while perpetually leaving members overburdened.
Parents are best suited to discern their child’s needs.
Many individuals likely participate in supporting your child or family – teachers, coaches, professional services, church members or extended family, for example. These people play critical roles, and their input may supply invaluable insight and guidance into your child or family life.
But none of them can take into account the many pieces of your lives as a family or assess how your child’s needs – in mind, body, and spirit – intersect with the flow of all these parts.
Parents, with the help of the Holy Spirit, are best equipped to discern these things.
Enabling meaningful activities is part of bringing good to our children, and, of course, some of these pursuits take place outside of the home. However, in the best-case scenario, positive growth can only partly be fueled by tutoring, therapies or enrichment activities.
Sometimes, in our efforts to provide ample opportunities for healing or growth for our children, we may inadvertently displace or weaken some of the most central sources of good in their lives.
All too easily, vital – but much more ordinary – growing experiences are overlooked and displaced when we think primarily in terms of structured activities.
Make room for a flourishing home life.
Another critical part of bringing good involves determining how much is best for the person or group of people we care for.
How much activity is enough for the stream of benefits without the depletion of core sources of good? The kinds of things that are easily shoved out of the way by many bustling involvements – like sleep, meals together, free play and a peaceful atmosphere? These foundational aspects of a healthy life involve times of togetherness and times alone.
How we organize our time – for ourselves and our children — will play an indispensable role in the process of healing. Especially as foster and adoptive families, our children need our time, our loving presence and our guidance.
Slow down and be present at home.
Dr. Karyn Purvis, co-creator of the Trust-Based Relational Intervention, offered insightful guidance for many foster and adoptive families. She stressed the vital role of slowing down as a critical aspect of cultivating healing and health in our children. Dr. Purvis emphasized: “Our kids need us to stop life for a little while and be with them. They need a slow pace of life.”
Being always on the go or in a hurry actually hinders the growth we long for in our children.
It is our day-to-day presence and participation together in the life of the home that especially enable human flourishing. Research confirms that vital sources of good for a child’s growth and well-being include seeming ordinary or “background” elements of life together:
- Experiencing parents who have a healthy marriage
- Being given loving and firm parental authority
- Developing basic physical habits of health – sleep, physical activity, and diet.
- And practicing the Christian life with each other within the home
Each of these four streams is a source of enduring mental and relational health. Each requires ample time to cultivate well. (If you are interested in these themes, consider joining us this fall at CAFO2024!)
Cultivate wonder and curiosity through unstructured free time.
Another indispensable area of human growth that is displaced when schedules are overfull is opportunities that nurture reflection, wonder and exploration.
These are the kinds of experiences that happen as a youngster sits by the edge of a creek watching the water flow over the mud and stones, climbs a tree, or has time to sit on the back patio with a sketchbook and colored pencils. It’s the sort of thing that happens best when there are regular times set aside that are intentionally unallocated.
Highly scheduled lives usually don’t have the stretches of stillness needed for wonder and curiosity to develop well. Yet many core human capacities that enable children to become effective students – and, later, competent adults – require experiences that stimulate qualities like relaxing, reflecting, observing and sensing. (To dig a bit deeper, read What Makes Me? Core Capacities for Living and Learning.)
Being outdoors is the best place for this kind of learning to happen. Spending time alone in nature gives people of all ages room to reflect and helps us to feel more connected with God.
When we are bustling from one activity to the next and spending significant time on screens, there’s not much time left to spend outside. Sadly, even in the summer, many children (and adults) don’t have time to simply be outdoors regularly. Yet so much good comes to us through even brief times in nature.
Research shows that spending time outdoors can produce profound physical, mental, emotional, relational and spiritual gifts. Being out in nature increases creativity, calmness, gratitude, feelings of goodwill toward others, and clarity of meaning and purpose.
Of course, most of us don’t require research to be convinced of this—we already know it to be true through experience.
Envision a different way for your family.
Take time to think through the question, “How much is enough?” … for the season ahead, for each member, and for the family as a whole.
Remember, not only “bad things” get in the way of positive growth. Too many neutral or lesser things weaken the opportunities or potency for the best experiences that contribute most to human flourishing.
Technology is a big culprit here. Consider for a moment that one of the best gifts of summertime is a feeling of spaciousness – experiencing time unallocated to anything but open to innumerable possibilities.
Remember how this felt as a child.
Today, our impulse is to grab our devices the moment a bit of time opens up … but that is likely not the childhood memory that came to mind. It was probably instead a memory of exploring outside, doing something creative or bold, becoming absorbed in a good book, or gazing up at the sky while sprawled out on the grass.
To offer our children the gift of spaciousness, we will almost certainly need to limit the amount of time spent on screens, ideally for children and parents alike.
What do you especially want to grow in your home?
You may have already made numerous summer commitments. But perhaps you haven’t yet paused to consider the many pieces of your lives and how they fit together.
Summer is a great time to make some cuts and focus on strengthening some of the core habits you want for your lives together as a family.
If you’d like, try this mental exercise:
- Contemplate your deepest longings for your family.
- Envision what it looks and feels like to live the summer in a way that aligns with your yearnings for your family and child. Picture a less hurried cadence. Imagine the feeling of your hearts and lives opening to each other, to God and to God’s world.
- What small steps can you take to help make those longings a reality?
Take steps to create space in your summer.
If you are ready to consider creating more space in your schedule and home this summer, take one or two of these next steps.
Plan space for rest.
- As though building a schedule from scratch, draft in time for rest as a commitment.
- First, block off time for ample sleep. The CDC recommends that infants get 12-16 hours, toddlers 11-14, preschoolers 10-13, school-age children 9-12, teens 8-10, and adults 7-9. Sleep is critical for human well-being. So often, we make our lives much more difficult just by not giving sleep sufficient place in our lives. Yet, our attitudes, relationships and behavior are heavily influenced by this basic habit of health.
- Second, seriously consider blocking off a Sabbath day of rest for the whole family each week during the summer. Instead of letting errands, chores, and work creep into each day, cluster these things so that one whole day is devoted to pure relaxation, doing nothing that is focused on productivity or accomplishment.
Block space for time together.
- Again, as a way of putting in the things that are most important to you, block off time for being together as a family.
- Schedule time to gather together daily, especially around meals.
- Envision times to pray together, whether one-on-one with a child or all together.
Create space for time alone.
- As foster and adoptive parents, we often focus on being with our children. We want to connect with them and help them form a healthy attachment. We have learned about co-regulation and are even discouraged from using “time outs,” which involve being alone as a consequence of poor behavior.
- But every human benefits from learning to receive the gifts of time alone. Depending on each child’s developmental readiness, it may be twenty minutes, two hours or more. Just like being with others, learning to enjoy being alone in meaningful ways is part of healthy growth.
- Write into the calendar times for members of the family to be alone.
- Importantly, seriously consider making time alone device-free. Guard time each day for your child to have time alone that allows them to not be on a screen. Instead, let this time be for focusing on activities like reading, music, art, time outdoors or spending time with God.
Make space for being useful.
- Summer is a wonderful time for children to practice bringing good to others in tangible ways through chores and acts of service.
- Prioritize allocating time for each child to contribute meaningfully to work around the house. The summer presents an opportunity for each child to develop a new skill in caring for a home. As they grow in that skill, they may be able to be in charge of that area of home management, whether it be emptying the silverware from the dishwasher, keeping the bathrooms clean, or overseeing the laundry.
- Learning to do a chore well is a high-value activity, with benefits ranging from practicing hard work to becoming competent in producing high-quality work to experiencing the satisfaction of working with your hands. It provides training for all of life, including academics and future employment. Even a very young child experiences the distinctive joy of being a genuine help to others. This can set a pattern for a life of bringing good to others.
- Similarly, brainstorm with your child ways that they can serve others, whether a grandparent, a younger sibling or a neighbor. Block off time on the calendar to make this a regular part of life.
Commit to cultivating small practices for health and growth.
It is simple enough to build summer plans by adding one activity and then another. However, it takes more deliberation – and often much more effort – to commit to cultivating some of these rudimentary but incredibly valuable practices.
By the way, it is very understandable if the whole prospect of scheduling these core commitments feels overwhelming. Change is awfully hard – and it may feel unnatural – but take courage! Pray and have a conversation with someone about these ideas.
And think about doing this… pick only one thing to cut as a family and just do it. You won’t regret it.
A few final tips for families who seek to make space this summer…
- Include your spouse (if married) and the Holy Spirit as you build out your summer plans.
- Be lovingly in charge as parents. God has authorized you to do this kind of planning and leading on behalf of your family.
- Humbly share with your children your heart and vision for whatever new patterns you want to set.
- Express enthusiasm and confidence for all you can gain by these changes.
- Be brief – and just do it.
- You may need to do more than one round of cutting and saying ” no” to new activities to get into the rhythm that is best for your family.
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– Rachel Medefind is the Director of the Institute for Family-Centered Healing and Health. If you’d like to share some of the practices you’ve established as a family this summer – and perhaps something you cut to make it possible – she’d love to hear from you! Email her at rachel.medefind@cafo.org.
