How we handled summer as two working parents

Now that Labor Day has come and gone, I wanted to share a bit about how we handled our first summer as two working parents to an elementary-school student. As a consummate planner, I looked ahead to this summer and thought about it for actual years in advance, knowing it would require thoughtfulness and careful planning to execute what I thought was best, in the way I wanted to live it out. Today, you get to see a bit of the fruit of that :)

In the hopes that our experience might help someone else, I’ll start with a little background information and a few thoughts that helped guide my planning, share a bit about what this first summer looked like, and then end with some thoughts on how it all turned out. I hope it’s helpful. For all the content that is pumped out daily online, this is not the type of thing that gets talked about very often, but as a parent, it’s the type of thing that matters very much to me. Here we go!

A little background info

In bullet-point form!

• In previous years, June attended daycare and preschools that were essentially year-round, so we did not have to come up with a special care plan for the summer months. Our younger two kids still largely kept to their “school-year” routines this summer.
• Where we live, we have the option of attending a traditional calendar or a year-round public elementary school. We opted for the traditional calendar. Call me stubborn or nostalgic (or both), but long summers at home were formative for me, and it’s important to me to offer the same to my kids, even if it means more effort on our part.
• When we began to plan for this summer, we considered three things: what was possible given other constraints (time, money, etc.), what mattered to me and John, and what mattered to June. The third was the least important factor, though I think it will become more and more salient as she gets older. (More on this below!)
• Everything cannot matter, so articulating what mattered most to us was hugely helpful and helped us make decisions. Your priorities will almost certainly be different than ours or your neighbors’. That is okay.
• What mattered to us: Relaxed time to be a kid. Time outside. Time to be bored and use her imagination. Low/no tech programming. Time to read. Time to play with neighborhood friends. A chance to engage her faith. Space for John and I to do our work with minimal interruption. Minimal travel time to and from activities.
• What did not matter to us: Anything overly-academic. Wow-factor activities or adventures. The simplest logistics. The cheapest cost.
• Since we’d never experienced a summer break like this before and June is young and early in her elementary school career, I erred on the side of more “programming.”
• John and I have a good amount of flexibility in our jobs. We both work from home most of the time. John has some ability to set his own schedule. I work part-time (this summer, from 9-3, Monday-Friday). We have worked toward our current situation over many years, in part with elementary-school summers in mind.
• Start making plans early, if possible. I booked her first camp in November of last year.

The week-by-week schedule

Here’s how our rising first grader spent her summer break:

• Week One: Farm camp. Outside all day with lots of chances for water play, stomping in the creek, getting dirty, crafts, visiting animals, etc. The hours allowed me to shift my time slightly to accommodate pick up and drop off.
• Week Two: The original plan for this week was to have one of our babysitters come in the morning to hang with June and then leave her to her own devices in the afternoon. However, it turns out my parents came to visit, so she and my Mom had fun (mostly reading, playing pretend, and running errands I never get around to, ha!).
• Week Three: Our town’s parks and rec tennis camp. It was a half day program, so John or I picked her up on our “lunch break” and she hung out at home (mostly in her room, reading or playing) in the afternoon.
• Week Four: Michigan!
• Week Five: A beloved high school babysitter came from 9am-1pm. They went to the pool, they played pretend, they played with American Girl dolls, they got Crumbl cookies and went to Chick-fil-a for lunch on Friday… one-on-one attention for four hours a day with one of her favorite people in the world?! You bet this was one of June’s favorite weeks.
• Week Six: VBS. The church was in downtown Raleigh and the camp was only from 9-12, so to cut out some travel time I “coworked” with Lisa, who lives about 5 minutes away from the church. For these two former coworkers, it was a sweet excuse to get in a few hours tapping away again side-by-side!
• Week Seven: Back to farm camp.
• Week Eight: Maine!
• Week Nine: Connecticut! John and I worked remotely this week from his parents’ home while the kids hung with their grandparents. They swam multiple times a day, ran around the yard, rode bikes, went to the aquarium, read, and played a lot of Wii Sports, ha.
• Week Ten: A local music and art camp. The hours easily fit within my work schedule. This was also one of her favorite weeks, and I think it was mostly because a good friend from school attended with her.
• Week Eleven: This was a free week. It was the last week before school started, and I kind of ran out of planning steam, ha. It ended up being sweet and hopefully a prelude to what future summers might look more like: she spent hours playing outside with neighborhood friends and reading, and then on Friday (after I had switched to my new schedule), she and I spent the day together as a last hurrah before the first day of school.

Throughout the summer, she took swim lessons about once a week at our neighborhood pool.

A few reflections on this first summer

The bullet points seem to be working, so we’re just going to go with them :)

• The logistics were a lot, but not overwhelming. I’m good at logistics! They don’t bother me! (See: prioritize what matters most to you. Logistical simplicity might matter most to some, but that wasn’t high on the list for me.)
• I was wowed by June’s ability to walk into new experiences and environments week after week, usually not knowing anyone, and to make new friends – all without hesitation. This is so far from what I would have been capable of at her age.
• At the end of summer, June said summer felt short. This was a bit disappointing to me, because part of my desire was to facilitate a summer that felt long – leisurely and somewhat boring. But I wonder if adults only say childhood summers felt long in reflection? I also know that the segmentation of her summer probably contributed to this, and we will likely be able to back off the programming and incorporate more boredom as she gets older :)
• I think she will have more opinions about how she wants to spend her time next year, which makes me both excited and a bit nervous, ha! I’m looking forward to crafting a plan with her now that she’s experienced different options, but it also was pleasingly simple to make the decisions solo.
• This was one summer. It was a good one, and it provided some learning opportunities. Everything is on the table in future years when we have more elementary-school kids and/or our work schedules are different!

And there you have it! As always, I could write many more paragraphs, but I’ll leave it there for now :) In closing, though, I wanted to add this: I know summers can be challenging for working parents: the logistics can be stressful, the clash between what you want and what’s possible can be frustrating or emotional. Maybe you feel pressure to facilitate a certain kind of summer for your child. Maybe this is the time of year when you really wish your work situation were different. However you’re reading this, I hope you’re able to be gentle with yourself and to find the good in your summer circumstances – I’m positive it’s there. You’re doing a great job.

P.S. This is one of those posts where I am truly not sure if it’s helpful at all. If nothing else, it will be a fun record for me to look back on, but if this was helpful, I’d love to hear it! Grateful for you all!