Who knew that summer can be the most stressful time of year? When you’re a kid, summer’s the best. When you’re a big kid, it’s still great. Even if you’re working, the days are long, the pants are short, and life tastes like chlorine, light beer, and coconuts.
When you’re a parent, all that changes. Summer becomes the season of dread. You wonder how you’re going to keep the kids occupied. How are you going to get your work done? Why is it light so late and no one will go to fricking sleep? And, most importantly, you wonder when you applied for the summer job of taxi driver.
I’ve had some interesting conversations about this issue over the past few days. Last night I talked to the owner of the local pizza restaurant about how our mothers sent us out the back door every summer morning, and seemed to have no clue where we were and what we were doing, just so we were back in time for dinner. Okay, that may not be quite true, but that’s what it felt like.
Yeah, times change. I send my kids out the back door, but they have clear boundaries, and I keep close tabs on them. But they’re also young.
My seven-year-old likes activity. She wants to go and do. Camp is great for her. But finding the camps that she likes and scheduling them practically requires a spreadsheet. Last week was 8:30-3:00 at The Nature Center, this week is 9:00-5:00 at the Earth Science Museum, next week is 9:00-4:00 at the Tae Kwon Do Academy. I think.
My four-year-old likes to stay at home. He likes to play in his room, watch videos, build things outside, and hang on Mommy. He says I work too much. He goes to the church nursery school for nine hours a week. That’s too much for him. It’s too little for me.
I’ve got too much time with one child, too little with the other, and next to no time for me. Not to mention anyone else.
What’s also difficult, and seems exacerbated in summer, is the tedium. A friend of mine said today, “It’s like that movie Groundhog Day. You have to do the same shit over and over again.”
Laundry, shopping, food preparation, clothes and backpack organization, keeping up with the myriad details of multiple lives. It’s stuff that everyone has to do, but it feels exponential when kids are involved. You have to feed them when they’re hungry. You have to put them to bed. You have to drive them to camp and class and playdates. And I’m convinced that dirty laundry reproduces while we sleep.
Of course, some days, summer is wonderful and rewarding and fun. And other days? It’s the most challenging, tedious chaos I’ve ever known.
School starts August 17. Hurrah. I’ll miss them.
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You really should write a book titled “Season of Dread”. I think it would be a bestseller.
Man, boys that age have a lot in common…my five year old couldn’t WAIT for preschool to let out for the summer so he could spend more time with MOMMY. I love him with all I’ve got, but day in and day out makes errands hard to run. I can’t even think straight because my thoughts are constantly interrupted by this crew. And Ariana, who only recently found this neat eight year old in the complex to play with, now found out that in one week, she moves to Pennsylvania. So, there goes THAT avenue for peace (they would play quietly in her room or on the porch…did you see that word “quietly”??? And sometimes they’d let Jared play too!). Oh well. I love having them around. I just still have to laugh when folks think it’s so great to be a teacher who is out for the summer. Well, yes it is, but I’m just as busy as before…just in a different way.
ha ha. I need to save this post and read it every time I start wishing I had kids.