The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world it was possible to balance work and parenting over a 10-week summer.
Not only do working parents have to scramble through the spring to sign their kids up for appropriate camp or childcare before all the slots are filled, but the cost of just one week of camp can be exorbitant. (And it’s not like you get a partial refund if your kid gets sick and misses a day.)
But that’s just the first half of the problem. Even if camp worked out beautifully, there’s still not enough coverage for the entire summer. Camp pickup is typically around 3 p.m., well before the end of the business day. Sometimes your kid will refuse to go to camp because everyone there is mean to them. It’s nigh impossible to find childcare options for the lost weeks between the end of camp and the return of the school year.
As tempting as it may be to go to bed and set your alarm for autumn, there are better ways of getting through the rest of this blighted season.
Let your kids go feral
Some parents are pushing back against the tendency to overschedule children in the summer by giving them a “feral” or “’90s-style” summer. This parenting challenge is all about encouraging children to engage in unstructured play like riding bikes and exploring their neighborhood without constant adult supervision. Parents also want their kids to have the freedom to feel bored.
Here’s the thing about feral summers: They work great for stay-at-home parents. Because kids running wild through the neighborhood (which, to be clear, I’m a big fan of) probably still need a responsible adult in the area, and you also need to prepare your kids for a bit of additional freedom. But, there are ways you can embrace the “wild child” thing even while you’re working.
Decide what behavior you want to encourage
If given a choice, my youngest (who is 12) would spend all of his time on screens. I’d like him to spend more time outside. So I made him this deal: Anytime he wants, he can ask me for $10 to go down to the Dairy Queen that’s about three blocks from our house, and he’ll ride his bike to get himself a treat.
My spouse would prefer that our kid use his allowance money for these excursions. But asking our 12-year-old to spend his own money would mean he’d stay home. So as much as I’d like to encourage some fiscal responsibility in my kid, right now it’s more important to me to get him outside and off the screens.
(He’s now spent so much time at our local DQ, which is owned by a large, extended family, that the workers call his name out when he walks in, à la Norm entering Cheers.)
For your feral kids, there are likely similar behaviors that you want to encourage that are blocked by something else. For example, you might want them to spend more time with their friends, but don’t want them playing video games. Since video games are a social outlet for many kids, blocking the video games may mean keeping them from socializing.
Let go of sleep schedules
I’m showing my mom-of-teens privilege here, but this summer I have allowed my kids to determine their own sleep schedules when they have nowhere to go in the morning.
We still ask both 12- and 15-year-old sons to go to bed (which means they’re in their rooms with their devices on a different floor) at 9 every night, but if they’re reading in bed or otherwise awake, that’s up to them. And we let them sleep in however long they like in the morning.
Admittedly, this was a different story when the kids were much younger and a disrupted sleep schedule could cause an entire week’s worth of emotional dysregulation. (The children could be cranky, too.)
Depending on your kids’ age and temperament, letting them set their own sleep schedule—provided you lock down screens and maintain good sleep hygiene habits for them—won’t harm them. You can get back into a regular sleep routine in the week before school starts.
Use parental controls
Back when we were running feral through 1990s summers, we could watch whatever happened to be on television (or whatever videotapes our most degenerate friends managed to dig up).
As much as you might prefer your kid to stay off screens entirely, it’s likely that they’re going to be on Disney+, Netflix, or (gasp!) YouTube. Which, frankly, is way scarier than the video Tami’s friend Yvonne found in her boyfriend’s stepmother’s sock drawer.
But here’s the good news. You don’t have to be home to supervise what your kids are watching.
Take a couple of hours to work through the parental controls on all your streaming services and YouTube to lock down what you’re willing to let your kids watch. On YT, you can create a supervised kid account, block channels you don’t want your kids to watch, and even set a daily time limit.
Your kids are gonna go on screens. But you can protect them from the worst stuff on those screens.
Give them chores
While it may feel like it’s making your life harder in the short term, giving your kids chores over the summer will (eventually) help improve your sanity. It also helps provide some of the necessary structure that kids need on days when there’s no camp or childcare.
If imposing chores is a new thing in your house, feel free to use bribery to get the ball rolling. For example, you may have seen the viral photo of the note saying the WiFi password would be released only in exchange for a texted photo of the cleaned kitchen. Putting chores in the way of whatever they would be doing instead—going on screens—is an excellent way to ensure they get done.
Offload new parenting responsibilities
In even the most equitable of marriages, one spouse tends to be the default parent—and it’s typically the mom in heterosexual relationships. That has definitely been the pattern in my family, as much as we’ve tried not to fall into it.
This summer, I decided to hand over a new parenting responsibility to my spouse.
It’s been a busy season for me. I have been planning my younger son’s bar mitzvah and working on two major projects. My older son wanted help signing up for driver’s ed and getting his learner’s permit. So I told him to please ask his father for help and I have remained entirely hands off.
My spouse does not do things the way I would. Getting his learner’s permit has been somewhat infuriating for my kid, in ways that may have been easier if I’d been in charge—although the frustration was mostly down to the kiddo’s first experience with the DMV.
But ultimately, letting my spouse handle this meant I could focus on my work projects and not spread myself so thin I disappeared. In addition, now that we’ve set the precedent that Dad does driver’s ed stuff, he can be in charge of it again when my youngest is learning to drive three years from now.
Summertime . . . and the living’s impossible
Summer break was not created with working parents in mind. Every year, we are faced with nearly impossible childcare challenges that leave us juggling disdainful employers, bored kids, parental guilt, and empty bank accounts. This is a systemic problem that we’re asked to create personal solutions for.
To successfully get yourself and your mental health through the end of the summer, there are several things you can do right now. The first is to embrace aspects of a feral summer for your kids. That means deciding which behaviors you want to encourage—and being open to letting your kids do things you usually discourage. For example, you might let your kids play more video games if it means seeing their friends more often.
A feral summer can also mean letting go of sleep schedules, provided you’re still encouraging good sleep hygiene. You can get your kids back on their sleep schedule right before school starts. It can also mean letting them go on screens and using parental controls to ensure they’re not watching anything you don’t want them to see. Additionally, giving your kids chores—and bribing them by making the WiFi password conditional on chore completion—and off-loading new parenting responsibilities onto the nondefault parent can all help you survive until the first day of school. It will be here soon!