Summer Bummer: When Moms and Dads Need a Break from Break

“MOO-OOM!!! He’s in my room again!”

“SHE BROKE MY AIRPLANE!”

“I’m so booooored.”

“He won’t let me play with him!”

“It’s MY turn!”

“BUT I WANT­ED THE BLUE POPSICLE!”

No more school, no more books, no more…you can prob­a­bly see where this is going. Sum­mer is great! For kids that is. But for par­ents, it can be an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Some­time around the sec­ond or third week after school lets out, the nov­el­ty of break starts to wear off for mom and dad. Tat­tling, whin­ing, argu­ing, fight­ing, tantrums, and aggres­sion–all of these can increase dur­ing the sum­mer months. If your kids are melt­ing down, there are sev­er­al pos­si­ble reasons.

• Too much screen time: Time spent play­ing video games, watch­ing TV, or using smart phones is time not spent being phys­i­cal­ly and social­ly active.
• Bore­dom: I know the last time you felt bored was some­time pri­or to the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, but keep in mind that bore­dom can be a very uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence for chil­dren. Kids with too much time on their hands are prone to pes­ter­ing, whin­ing, bick­er­ing, and oth­er things that can make par­ents feel like imploding.
• Changes in routine/​no rou­tine: Between relaxed bed­times, sports games and prac­tices, camps, meals on the go, and trav­el, sum­mer can wreak hav­oc on a family’s dai­ly sched­ule, not to men­tion mom and dad’s patience.
• Poor social prob­lem-solv­ing skills: Kids are not born with the abil­i­ty to han­dle dif­fer­ences of opin­ion effec­tive­ly. In their devel­op­ing lit­tle minds, swat­ting old­er sis­ter for tak­ing their Bar­bie doll makes per­fect sense.

While the urge to hide under the bed with a bag of pota­to chips for the next month may be over­pow­er­ing, par­ents do have oth­er – health­i­er – options for decreas­ing kids’ bum­mer behaviors.

• Set a sched­ule and stick to it. Well, most­ly stick to it. It is sum­mer after all. It’s okay to push back bed­time and wake­up times but try to be con­sis­tent. An 8:30 bed­time one night fol­lowed by an 11:15 bed­time the next night can cre­ate cranky kid­dos. Try to keep meal times con­sis­tent as well. As it gets clos­er to the start of school, tight­en that sched­ule up to get every­one prepared.
• Post your child’s sched­ule where they can see it. For young chil­dren or chil­dren with ADHD, Autism, or devel­op­men­tal delays, visu­al sched­ules are a great tool for keep­ing kids engaged and on-track dur­ing the sum­mer. A visu­al sched­ule includes words and pic­tures so that chil­dren can eas­i­ly rec­og­nize what’s next. (More details on visu­al sched­ules com­ing in a future post.)
• Keep kids active through­out the day. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in team sports, swim lessons, run­ning clubs, yoga, and walks are all good ways for kids to stay active and reduce stress or ten­sion for the whole fam­i­ly. Check out sum­mer pro­grams for kids at your local park dis­trict or YMCA. If it’s too late to sign up, chal­lenge your kids to seek new ideas for phys­i­cal activ­i­ty using YouTube or Pin­ter­est. How­ev­er, be care­ful not to over­sched­ule. Kids need time to just relax as well.
• Teach and prac­tice effec­tive social prob­lem-solv­ing skills. Teach them to say, ​“May I take a turn please?” and ​“I don’t like when you do that; please stop.” Mod­el this dur­ing your inter­ac­tions with your chil­dren; they will do what they see. Of course, it’s eas­i­er to teach these skills when every­one is in a good mood. If you wait and try to intro­duce new skills when kids are already irri­tat­ed or argu­ing the out­come will involve lots of shout­ing and sob­bing. The kids will prob­a­bly cry too.
• Help kids learn to enter­tain them­selves with­out elec­tron­ics. Read­ing a book or play­ing with blocks just isn’t as stim­u­lat­ing or excit­ing as screen time for some chil­dren. In order to reduce sum­mer bore­dom, set lim­its on screen time each day and enforce them. When chil­dren com­plain about being bored, help them learn to tol­er­ate this feel­ing and fun­nel it into cre­ative play using house­hold objects, craft sup­plies, or even those bor­ing old blocks. Start with empa­thy, ​“Being bored feels yucky, huh? Do you want some help deal­ing with that?”
• Kids need respon­si­bil­i­ties around the house. Chores help build self-esteem and inde­pen­dence skills. Assign dai­ly and week­ly jobs to kids based on their age and abil­i­ties. Many par­ents find it help­ful to require that chores or tasks be com­plet­ed before chil­dren have access to their elec­tron­ics. Sure, you might have to keep their devices in anoth­er zip code in order to enforce this but your kids will thank you…in a decade or two.
• Cre­ate learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Set­ting aside time dur­ing the remain­ing days of sum­mer to read, write, or prac­tice math or spelling is a good way to stop the sum­mer slide, keep kids chal­lenged, and get them back in the mode of learn­ing. Have them write about the movie they just saw or read an arti­cle online about their favorite ani­mal. Get math flash­cards at the local dol­lar store and chal­lenge them to beat their own time each day. If they are par­tic­u­lar­ly salty, have them spell out their griev­ances instead of their usu­al whin­ing and argu­ing. For kicks, you can try it too: M‑O-M-M‑Y N‑E-E-D‑S A N‑A-P B‑E-F-O-R‑E S‑H-E L‑O-S-E‑S I‑T.

With some plan­ning, a whole lot of patience, and maybe a bag of chips just in case, mom and dad can stop a Bum­mer Sum­mer in its tracks.

Thanks for reading!

Until next week,

Nik­ki

*The con­tent in this blog should nev­er be con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive to qual­i­ty med­ical or men­tal health care and is intend­ed to be a source of infor­ma­tion only.