The Tent Poles of a Summer's Day
It’s officially the last week of school here in Florida, and I know places elsewhere have been finished for a week or two already, which means summer break is upon us! I have had a love/hate relationship with summer over the years of parenting, but I think I’ve finally, in the past two years or so, settled into a summer rhythm that makes the time enjoyable for all of us. My kids struggle with full days at home when there is no loose structure to our time together—just telling them to go play all day usually lands us in a place where we’re all frustrated with one another. Yet it’s not feasible or realistic to expect everyday to be full of outings and adventures from 9-5. I don’t want them watching movies or playing Minecraft all day, but I definitely need a break! I don’t know about your kids but when mine are home all day there are also about 200 requests for snacks and meals—for popcorn and popcicles and all the things. I love not being on a schedule, I love so many play dates and so much time with friends, but it is also a LOT of messes, food, noise, whining, and extra laundry from the beach and pool! I have friends who call me every May freaking out about summer break, how are they going to fill all those weeks without loosing their minds? I think I’ve finally, in the past two years, found something that’s been really helpful for me when I think about a summer day, and I’m going to share it here today in hopes that it helps you if you’re in a place of feeling overwhelmed or anxious about these upcoming months.
I started thinking about a typical summer day as a tent—stay with me, I promise this will make sense! A tent has both stable, fixed pieces (the tent poles) that give it structure, yet it also is flexible—the canvas can move and flex within the structured poles as the weather changes. I think summer can be a lot like that. We’ve discovered that our summer days run so much more smoothly and my kids are so much happier with certain fixed events or points in our day, with plenty of time for freedom and flexibility to still make each day different depending on what that day holds. For the past 2 summers we’ve had 5 “tent poles” in our summer routine each day that serve as markers throughout the day the boys have come to expect. Each day might look different, some days we might end up on the beach and other days we’re grocery shopping or swimming with a friend, but these tent poles seem to be pretty stable and constant which helps all of us.
Our first one is breakfast. I know that sounds expected, and I don’t consider the other meals to be official tent poles, but breakfast is kind of a time marker on it’s own in our house. Our kids wake up early. They are up by 6 am every day no matter what is on the schedule or how late they’ve gone to bed. But I’m not ready to parent, meet needs, feed them or interact much prior to 7. Which means they wake up and turn on a show, leaving me some time to get some coffee, wake up, and read my daily bible reading. By about 7 I’m in the kitchen getting them food and as soon as they’re done eating, the TV goes off. They learn that breakfast is that first marker of time signaling it’s time for screens to go off and for us to get dressed and ready for whatever we’re doing that day, even if our outing isn’t for another 2 hours, screens are done and it’s time to start getting creative with how they want to spend their time.
Our second tent pole is our morning outing. We get out and go somewhere every single morning in the summer. Sometimes it’s to run an errand or take our weekly trip to Aldi, but most days it’s to see a friend somewhere—a kids movie, the water park, a pool, the beach, a friend’s house, the library, a park if it’s not too hot, a splash pad—we get out every day because it makes us ALL happier. We usually take snacks and then eat lunch when we get home, but from about 9-12 we are out and about. What we do changes, the fact that we get out to do something is what is fixed.
Our third tent pole is our afternoon reading time. It gets ingrained in their minds that every day after lunch we take 30 minutes and everyone stops what they’re doing and reads silently (we call it DEAR time after a chapter in a Ramona book—Drop Everything And Read!) We all need that quiet time after a morning in the sun, and I want them to know that reading is important. I shared here our favorite kid’s books if you need any ideas! (and if you don’t have readers but want to institute an afternoon quiet time look at audiobooks for them!) Asher will keep working on his Zoey and Sassafrass series and I have Aidan’s kindle set up with all kinds of titles he can choose from —the whole Henry Huggins series, the Wild Robot books, The One and Only Ivan, and others. The only rule I have for them is that they have to actually read for 30 minutes and they can’t read the same graphic novels over and over again during that time (I’m looking at you Dog Man…). Especially for Aidan, that’s the time of day I make him try and challenge himself a bit, getting him into stories I know he’ll love if he’d just sit and read. Last summer he went through several Boxcar Children books and loved them.
We typically have a few hours each afternoon where we’re just home—we might have a friend over, a neighbor over, or it might just be the 3 of us and we play board games, do puzzles, build legos, I’ll read aloud while they color or whatever sounds fun that day. But our fourth tent pole happens about 3:15 each day when we do a snack and a clean up of the living area. Whatever has migrated out needs to be put back before they get their screen time for the day so I don’t have a trashed living room that evening. It’s also the cut off for snacks before dinner—it’s when they’re used to eating since they eat a snack each day at 3:30 when they get home from school, so we just keep that structure during the summer.
And our final tent pole of the day is their screen time. Every day from about 3:45 (whenever snacks and clean up are done) until dinner is ready about 5:30 they can be on their screens—they can watch a movie or play Minecraft or play other apps on their kindle fire tablets but for that hour and 45 minutes they get to zone out in the air conditioning while I take a break and start dinner. Sometimes I’ll read a bit more, take a quick power nap, open a cold fizzy drink and work on a puzzle for a bit or whatever sounds relaxing and then eventually I’ll get up and get dinner going. The Lazy Genius, Kendra Adachi, always has such wonderful tips on structuring time, and in a recent episode she did on kids and screen time the number one tip she had was making sure to schedule it or give them their screen time when it is most beneficial to YOU as the parent for your own refueling. Screen time is for US, not them! So whenever you most need that break—maybe it’s right after lunch, or maybe it’s like me, later in the afternoon when it’s so hot (and here it’s often when thunderstorms come in and they can’t be outside)—that’s when you give them their screen time. The absolute best part of this being one of our tent poles is that my kids learned really quickly last summer that screens wouldn’t go on until 3:45, no matter how much they asked, so by week 2 they had stopped asking! They knew they’d get it, they didn’t need to beg or whine or ask for it, so they really stopped which was amazing.
Summer is full of amazing opportunities to intentionally spend time together, to make memories, to relax and enjoy these people that live in our houses! However you think about summer—whether you need a strict structure and schedule for yours or you like to have nothing planned and just take each day as it comes, may this summer be full of all the things that make it such a sweet time—watermelon, ice cream, beach days, movie nights, cold cocktails in a can, water balloon fights and lots of amazing books to keep you company through long hot days. Happy summer everyone!
