Low-Key Summer Plans for a Family of 5: How We’re Avoiding Burnout and Supporting Learning Naturally
I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store last Tuesday, one hand clamped around my 4-year-old’s dripping cherry popsicle to keep it off the conveyor belt, the other holding back my 7 and 9-year-old who are tussling over a travel pack of gum one of them slipped into the cart. The woman in front of me is a neighbor I chat with at soccer practice, and she turns over her shoulder, grinning, and asks: “What are you all doing this summer? Any big plans?”
I freeze, like I always do these days. For the past two years, I’d have launched into a whole list of camps, playdates, day trips, and the little reading challenge I’d printed off Pinterest. But this year, I just wiped a drip of popsicle off my jeans and said, “Oh, mostly hanging around the house.” She blinked, then said, “Really? Aren’t you worried about summer slide? All that learning they did this year gone by September?”
I just shrugged. How do you explain a whole year of trial and error in a 30-second checkout line conversation?
Last summer, I was the one panicking about summer slide. I’d just left my first grade teaching job to stay home full time with three kids, and I was determined to make this “perfect” summer of enrichment. We had swim team on Mondays and Wednesdays, art camp on Tuesdays, soccer practice on Thursdays, a new day trip (museum, botanical garden, hiking trail) every single Saturday. I made a color-coded reading chart, with stickers for every 20 minutes of reading, and a $5 toy reward at the end of the month. By the third week, my oldest was faking headaches to get out of swim practice. My middle kid started crying every time I pulled out the reading chart. My toddler stopped napping entirely because we were never home at his naptime. I spent every evening yelling, picking up toys, and trying to get everyone to bed on time, and I couldn’t figure out where I’d gone wrong.
Then I remembered something I told parents every year at back-to-school night when I was teaching: most elementary school kids get less than 30 minutes of unstructured free play a day. All that scheduling, all that sitting still, it wears on their ability to regulate their own emotions and solve their own problems. Summer is supposed to be the time they get that time back. I’d just filled every minute with stuff I thought was good for them, and left them with no time to just be kids. That’s how we landed on our low-key plan this year.
Before school got out, we sat down as a family and asked each kid to name one thing they really wanted to do this summer. That’s it. That was the only requirement for our schedule. Oldest wanted to learn how to build a birdhouse, so we signed him up for a 2-hour weekly woodworking class at the rec center. Middle wanted to do craft days with her friends, so the library has a free weekly craft hour that fits. Four year old just wanted to “go get coffee with mom”, so that’s what we do while the other two are at their activities. That’s the only scheduled stuff we have. Everything else is unplanned.
I put a cheap whiteboard on the fridge, and when the kids complain “I’m bored”, I tell them to pick something off the pre-written list instead of coming up with something for them to do. The list has 10 concrete options: dig in the dirt pile by the garage, bake cookies from the pre-made tub in the freezer, build a fort with the moving blankets, ride bikes to the corner store for popsicles, sort my button jar, read to the dog, play restaurant with the play dishes, look for tadpoles in the creek, draw on the sidewalk with chalk, or help me fold laundry. I don’t entertain them, I don’t solve their boredom for them. They just have to pick one.
For learning, we skipped the reading charts and worksheets entirely. This year, we just keep baskets of books everywhere: by the couch, by the back door, next to the toilet, in the car. No required minutes, no rewards. Last week, my oldest spent an entire rainy afternoon reading a beat-up monster truck book he got for 25 cents at a garage sale. That’s 10 times more reading than he forced himself through for a sticker last year. My middle reads three picture books to her little brother every afternoon while I fold laundry, which has helped her fluency more than any assigned reading ever could. My 4 year old spends 20 minutes a day digging up worms in the dirt pile, asking me what they eat, how they breathe, why they come out when it rains. That’s science, that’s learning, no worksheets required.
It’s not all perfect. Some days, they fight so bad over the water hose that I have to turn it off and send everyone to their rooms for 10 minutes. Some days, after a morning of refereeing, I let them watch a whole movie after lunch so I can sit and drink iced tea and scroll through my phone alone. I don’t feel guilty about that. We can’t do big family vacations this year, with the cost of everything, so this low-key plan fits our budget too—we spend $28 total a week on the two classes, and everything else is free or under $5.
The thing most parents don’t talk about when you have multiple kids is that a lot of “enrichment” is just a way to keep everyone busy and out of your hair. But the actual skills kids need most right now—managing boredom, working out small fights with siblings, figuring out what they like to do when no one is telling them what to do—those can’t be taught in a camp. They only get learned when you have empty time. I’ve had so many teachers say kids come back from summer break acting out, can’t focus the first month. I used to think that was because they forgot their routines. Now I think it’s because they’re just as burnt out as they were at the end of the school year, because their summer was just another schedule of adult-led activities.
Last night, we were sitting on the front porch after dinner, the kids were chasing fireflies in the yard. My oldest caught one in a mason jar, poked holes in the lid, watched it for 10 minutes, then let it go like he’d read you’re supposed to. My neighbor drove by and waved, and I thought again about her question. Some days, I still scroll Instagram and see other families’ big summer trips and fancy camps and that little voice in my head says we’re doing something wrong. But right now, my oldest hasn’t had a full-on meltdown in three weeks, which is better than we did all last semester. My middle can read a whole picture book out loud without stumbling over half the words, which her teacher said she’d get better at over the summer. My 4 year old can put his own shoes and socks on by himself now, because he’s had time to practice instead of me rushing him out the door to the next activity.
We still have six weeks of summer left. There will be more fighting, more lazy screen days, more sticky popsicle messes all over the house. But right now, this is working.
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