Parenting is a year-round journey. However, we discovered that summer can be an especially productive and meaningful season in this journey. With school obligations and hectic schedules dialed back, the excitement of sunshine, family vacations, and backyard barbecues naturally brought our family together and created a more relaxed, receptive environment to address — or revisit — important areas in our parenting.
Certainly, kids need downtime, but we decided to take advantage of our summers rather than default to an overabundance of screen-time, video games, or scrolling. We used our summertime excitement as a special time of the year to “super charge” some of our parenting initiatives while enjoying the fun of the season.
After reading some of our Tuesday Letters and listening to the OneFamily Podcast, you know that we love setting goals, so it won’t surprise you to know that we have put together a Summertime Checklist of things you may want to consider initiating/revisiting as you head into summer.
We will briefly examine three key areas and offer some examples of how the checklist worked for us to give you some ideas for making your own summertime checklist. Even though we will provide you with many suggestions, we found it best to only focus on 1-2 things within each area. The idea is to enjoy your summer while intentionally working on a handful of initiatives with your children.
Initiate New Responsibilities
Depending upon our boys’ developmental age, we had several different responsibilities or family chores that we initiated over summer that would become a part of their “new normal” routine when school started back up in the fall.
Younger child – Setting and clearing the table, keeping their room uncluttered, getting ready for bed on their own (i.e – Changing into PJs, dirty clothes in the basket, brushing/flossing teeth, etc..)
Older child – Taking out the trash, loading/unloading dishwasher, putting away groceries, dusting, making bed, putting clean laundry in their own drawers
Middle years/Tween – Yard work, vacuum, help prepare meals, clean their own bathroom, do laundry
Teen – Watch younger siblings, wash cars, yard work with gas powered tools (i.e. Mowing, edging, etc…), fix a family meal (began with lunch then moved towards breakfast and dinner), get a summer job
These new responsibilities not only teach life skills but also build confidence, ownership, and contribution within the family.
TONIC Conversations
Summertime provided us with many opportunities for Tonic (Time Of Non-Conflict) conversations. These are conversations, not lectures, that would allow us time to casually discuss sensitive topics with our boys and see where their level of understanding was – which may or may not lead to more discussions. We would often initiate these discussions with a question to our boys to determine if further conversation or guidance was needed.
Younger child – With a younger child, our conversations would be more about measuring their moral understanding and development. Why do we choose to speak kind words? Why do we use our manners even if others don’t use them? What’s the difference between tattling and sharing important information? Why is first time obedience important?
Older child – What makes words naughty or nice and why are we careful with our words? Why is lying wrong? It’s ok to be angry or frustrated sometimes, but what is the appropriate way to handle it? There was some unwise behavior at the pool, why don’t we behave that way?
Middle years/Tween – There has been some interesting talk about (sex, alcohol, smoking, drugs, new apps, etc.…), are any of your friends talking about these things? These are great things for us to talk about too even if it feels awkward. Why do you think having a relationship with us, built upon trust, is so important? Why do you think we go to church, pray, and volunteer?
Teen –What are your thoughts on dating? What is stewardship and what areas do you think we as mom and dad, or all of us as a family should steward better? What do you think about college? What are the 3 biggest things that surprised, shocked, disturbed, or confused you this last school year? Why do you think our faith is so important?
The questions you ask and how you frame them will be specific to each individual child depending upon their developmental age and gender. The sample questions we provided, hopefully, further demonstrate the conversational approach with such topics.
It’s also important to note that these conversations are typically ongoing and can last months or years as your children mature cognitively and morally. For example, we may have discussed a particular topic early in the school year, but it may have a different feel and tone during the summer. Likewise, a conversation we may have initiated during summer may need to be addressed several times in the new school year.
Reinforce Family Identity
“Peer pressure on a child is only as strong as family identity is weak.”
– Gary Ezzo
Cultivating your family identity is an ongoing process that needs to grow and develop as your family grows and develops. For us, summertime is a natural and fun time to reinforce our family identity.
Family vacation – Enjoy each other and have fun! We told our boys the top 3 things to remember about vacation is 1) Have fun, 2) Have good manners and 3) Have good behavior. We would then go on to tell them that when they take care of number 2 and 3, # 1 will always be the outcome!
Family game/movie night – Because of our boys’ schoolwork and activities, we weren’t as consistent with family games during the school year as we were during the summer. And summer allowed us the time to do things we wouldn’t necessarily do during the school year. During the summer, we might set up a card table in our family room do a really hard puzzle; create a Lego village in our basement; have a marathon game of Monopoly over several nights; summer long Uno card tournament; taking turns selecting what movie or old tv shows we would watch (i.e The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, etc.).
Serve Together as a Family
Serve others together! Investing in the lives of others, as a family, is a rich and meaningful way to rejuvenate family bonds while experiencing many valuable life lessons together. Summer provided fewer schedule conflicts and more opportunities to serve our community even when our kids were young. It can be as simple as offering to help a neighbor or donate unwanted/unused toys to a family outreach program. Here are some other ideas to consider: https://www.somewhatsimple.com/family-service-ideas/
Summer goes by quickly, so having some intentional goals in these three areas, and identifying just a couple priorities to focus on, helped us to make significant strides in our parenting. Then by the end of the summer, we experienced a wonderful sense of accomplishment: our boys learned new responsibilities, we shared meaningful conversations, and we created lasting memories while simply enjoying time together as a family.
Blessings to you and your family as you prepare for summer,
Shelly and Rich
Look for us on the road!
This summer we’ve been invited to speak at several Homeschooling Conferences:
May 28-30 – Texas Home School Convention – Woodlands, TX
July 10-11 – California Parenting & Homeschool Convention – Downey, CA
July 17-18 – Arizona Home Education Convention – Pheonix, AZ
We would love to meet you in person and hear about your family!