I aspire to be a Pinterest mom – especially a summer Pinterest mom. I spend enough time on there. I. PIN. ALL. THE. THINGS. However, when it comes to actually sitting down and making paper maché life vests or whatever in the world looked so great on Pinterest… with my 6- and 4- and 1-year-olds wanting to “help” with every little thing… it gets less exciting quite quickly.
Which means that this summer, we probably aren’t going to be checking items off of my extensive Pinterest board for summer fun. I may make an attempt to set up an obstacle course, mostly made out of pool noodles from the dollar store, in the yard.
But this summer we plan to do an awful lot of hanging around the house, listening to Smile FM, playing with this myriad of toys we have accumulated. We will tend our vegetable garden, so it doesn’t turn into a movie set for the upcoming Jumanji sequel. We will frequent Cook’s Farm Dairy {just south of Genesee County} for ice cream and being sucked on by calves. Our car will not see the inside of the local car wash because we will use the hose. And wear bathing suits. And do it the old-fashioned way.
So many of my friends are booking their summer schedules solid with camps and trips and classes. And a very persistent part of me wishes that we could do the same. Some of the issue is money: we just can’t {and don’t choose to} spend money on 3,000 extra-curricular activities this summer, or ever. We don’t have endless vacation days for big family trips.
Nostalgia
The biggest issue I have with over-scheduling the summer is this: My favorite thing about summer vacation, when I was growing up, was the great nothingness and freedom stretching before me. Getting up whenever. Playing video games. Reading a book a day, at least. Staying up late to watch a family movie.
I want my children to have that.
“Mo-om, I’m BORED!”
It seems that summer is the ideal time to fight this particular battle. I’ve read so many times that it’s important for your children to learn to entertain themselves. In fact, the other day when my 6-year-old was bellyaching about how boring it is to wait, I very pointedly informed her {hopefully in a way that will stay with her}, “You’re going to need to learn how to wait. A lot of growing up is waiting.”
Boom.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. So many individual parts of parenting and of being a SAHM could be full-time jobs on their own, and when you roll them all together, who can possibly do it all?
The Technology Battle
A fight I see being a frequent one, since it is all the time anyway, is whether my kiddos can sit and stare at a screen all day, every day. It worries me quite a bit when they start exhibiting withdrawal symptoms after I ask them to put down the tablet or get off the computer… and they’re only six and four. Yikes.
That being said, playing video games all day long, without being hounded about it, is like the Holy Grail of summer, from what I remember. {I wouldn’t mind that now, in fact!} Hopefully, we can have some days with lots of screen time, followed by days of playing outside, without any nasty side effects.
Wide Open Calendar
My MOPS group has about one play date or another event per week planned for the summer, which I feel is just about perfect. Plus, we have a few weeks of Vacation Bible School to look forward to. During the school year, it seemed like there would never be a lazy morning, ever again. This summer, I am making it my mission to spend the majority of our days lazing around, starting the day with Moana or Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre or making a watercolor masterpiece, or just heading outside to water the garden and see how many sugar snap peas are ready for harvesting.
That might not make me the ideal mom, but it is my sincere opinion that as long as I am blessed to be a stay-at-home mom, this is exactly the antidote for the stressful school year. We can afford to have a lazy summer to recover from the craziness of getting up six days a week the rest of the year.
