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

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.

The Ultimate Tantrum Tamer

Most of the adults I know have a hard time deal­ing with big emo­tions. Watch me try to par­ent in the gro­cery store and you’ll wit­ness an adult mis­han­dling a vari­ety of feel­ings. Yet we often expect chil­dren to keep it togeth­er under the most demand­ing cir­cum­stances. Their lit­tle brains are still grow­ing though, and the part respon­si­ble for emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion won’t be ful­ly devel­oped until they reach their mid-twen­ties. So when your child los­es it, he isn’t try­ing to embar­rass you or make you crazy. He sim­ply lacks the skills nec­es­sary to man­age those big feelings.

Tablets and Smart Phones and Kids, Oh My!

At no point in his­to­ry have humans had such easy and con­stant access to news, infor­ma­tion, enter­tain­ment, and singing goat videos as we do now? Gam­ing sys­tems, smart­phones, tablets, lap­tops, and smart TV’s – these devices allow us to see and do things pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions could nev­er have imag­ined. It blows my mind that I can ask Siri what a word means and get an answer with­out even pick­ing up my phone. Any­one else adore that you can set an alarm, apply for a loan, shop for under­wear, watch a movie, talk with any­one you’ve ever met (or any­one you’ve nev­er met), play games, and take high-qual­i­ty pho­tos all on the same device?