Sorry, But Summer Break Is Too Long
Give me structure or I'll die.
Today I write from my living room couch, after sending my youngest child to kindergarten for the first time. It's been a long journey getting to the point where all three of my kids hop on a bus and go to school all day, but it's somehow been an even longer journey living through this summer break.
I was a teacher before I had kids, so I always loved a long summer break. But for the past five years, ever since I first got a taste of the sweet sweet freedom of having a kid at school for the full day, summer break has been agony.
I place some of the blame on global warming. I've lived in Massachusetts my whole life, and when I was growing up, our winters were full of nor'easters. At least once a week between January and March, my brother and I would wake up in the morning and turn on the news to see if our town was listed on the School Closing ticker. These snow days were tacked on to the end of the school year, which sometimes kept us in school until the very last day of June. But now? We've hardly seen a single blizzard in the entire time my kids have been school aged, so instead of getting little surprise breaks in the middle of March when we need them, the school year is over and done with as early as the second week of June.
Thus, the parents have nearly three months of summer in which to occupy our kids. I know parents in other situations might not mind this so much, but as a stay-at-home mom whose kids aren't quite old enough to figure out their own schedules and entertainment, it's absolutely killing me.
Our summer survival technique for the last five years has been summer swim team, and for the entire month of July our summer at least has structure: wake up early, pack the cooler for the day, get to the pool for swim practice, stay until dinnertime or later. When we get home, I have no problem with the kids flopping in front of a screen for a couple hours after spending the entire day playing in the pool and the sunshine.
It's great. The structure is great! But… at some point in the summer I start to feel a little crazy. It's like in Midsommar where the sun is always bright and every waking moment starts to feel like a bad dream, or in that movie Insomnia with Al Pacino where the perpetual daylight keeps him awake until he starts to absolutely lose it. Every day, starting at 8:00 a.m., I'm standing in the unceasing sunlight, trying to have a conversation with another adult, only to be interrupted by our children over and over again every 45 seconds.
"I need a snack. I need a bandaid. I need a snack. I need to know what you're talking about even though it has nothing to do with me. I need lunch. Swim with me. I need an ice pack. Watch my dive. Watch my dive. WATCH MY DIVE."
I have been Al Pacino in Insomnia for the past month or so. We didn't have a single cloud this summer so it was just daylight all day every day, plus the constant stimulation of the kids being nearby, so I stopped sleeping. Sometime around the end of July I started staying up for hours after everyone else went to bed, just because my brain was so desperate for a moment of wakeful silence.
Last August, after swim team ended and we were left with four weeks of unstructured summer, I fell into a tiny mental breakdown. It was just too much time together. It's unnatural for five people to spend that much time together. It's unnatural for one woman to have four people depending on her at every moment to make a decision and tell them what to do and entertain them. This year, in anticipation of the inevitable menty b, I did something I never expected to do and signed my two older kids up for sleepaway camp.
The main reason I never expected to do this is because it's not in the budget, but for my survival, I threw money at it and I'll worry about it later. Maybe one of the kids just dodged braces, who knows! I was also worried they might be too young—the first day of camp was just shy of their 10th and 8th birthdays—but as soon as they heard about tubing on the lake, zip-lining, and horseback riding, they were totally game. When we dropped them off at the camp, two hours away from home, they didn't look back, and neither did I.
About a week into camp, some friends asked if I'd heard from the kids. I hadn't. The kids didn't have access to any technology, so I would only hear from them through written letters, and I hadn't received any yet. "Aww, do you miss them?" one friend asked.
There's an expected answer to this kind of question, a song and dance to this entire genre of conversation, but I went off script. My response was one word: "No."
They may have been slightly taken aback by the answer, although one of them called my honesty "refreshing." My cortisol levels still hadn't regulated from the previous seven weeks of stimulation (they really never did over the entire two weeks). Personally, I don't love the expectation that I'm supposed to miss my kids every moment they're not clinging to me or trying to crawl back inside me. We spend plenty of time together. Plenty.
The Pomegranate's Sarah Radz shared a philosophy on motherhood that her own mom passed down to her: the role of the mother isn't to swim for, or even with, her children—it's to be a rock that they can swim away from, and swim back to for a break if they're tired, and then swim out again.
I like to think that the way my kids peaced out of my life for two weeks without a second thought indicates I've done a good job as a rock. But they need more room to swim! For me, summer break is three months of feeling like I'm the rock, but I'm surrounded by lava so there's nowhere for the kids to swim to. And that's even with the safeguards of an entire July's worth of pool and swim team plus two weeks at sleepaway camp.
But today, today the children are in school and I won't see them until they swim back to me at 3 p.m., after spending the day with friends, education, lunchtime, recess, structure!, and plenty of time to be independent from me. We'll be happy to see each other at the end of the day.
I am, however, pre-anxious about the upcoming four-day Labor Day weekend that starts Friday, because how am I going to kill all that time??
I'm dying to know how other parents fill the long summer break hours/days/weeks/months. How did you survive? Please tell me your secrets, because the second week of June is only ten short months away.
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It was the first sunny Friday of the springtime, and the playground was full of children. Preschool had just let out, and twenty tiny bodies descended on the play structure like ants on a picnic. Most of the parents naturally started milling around the perimeter, chit-chatting about weekend plans, keeping a watchful eye. The little bodies scampered and played freely all over the playground, unimpeded by anything, except one large man.
I really needed this today. Three months trying to work (a bit!) from home with a toddler and a 5-year-old with huge separation anxiety issues. Still 10 days until school starts here, but my mental health is nowhere to be found. And my son will start crying at school drop-off again. After two years at the same school, with the same classmates and the same teacher. This too shall pass, but I wonder when. Thanks for your honesty! :)
I resonate so much with this. I’m tired of being a beleaguered activities director. We live in Arizona where summer is the ever living worst. It’s too hot for outdoor parks, and all the indoor stuff for kids costs money and/or is a church. Sure, we can swim but monsoon season (also during summer) complicates that. My daughter is also neurodivergent, which precludes a lot of summer camps. My kid blessedly had year-round preschool with only two-week winter and summer breaks. But now she’s older, we’re facing down months to fill. And I can’t complain about it without getting some dumb little guilt trip.