Moms who thrive on a routine and structure can start to feel this panic as the end of the school year arrives. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO EVERY DAY? I need the automatic scheduling the school system provides to tell me what to do and then I work around it. Freedom, creativity, endless hours of doing “whatever we want” (what I want to do is be on a schedule) is just not my jam.
Now I know that makes me one of those Not Fun moms and I’ll own that. I know who I am at this point. But I also think some of the Fun Moms end up banging their heads against the wall mid-summer when the kids are cranky and you’re losing your mind because it turns out WE ALL NEED ROUTINES. Even the fun moms. I want to emphasize that as someone who has devoted her life (personally and professionally) to caring for kids from trauma, routines are incredibly stabilizing if you have lived with any amount of instability in your world. Even kids who push against them likely benefit from them. Knowing what you can expect from your day (within reason– things can always change) allows your brain to focus on things other than stressing about what might happen.
So I wanted to share with you a couple of the specific ways I make routine/schedule/rules happen that make my life easier. Some of these things won’t make sense if you just have a kid or two, but feel free to adapt or modify them in any way that works for your family.
-Posted Meal Schedule. I have a breakfast and lunch schedule that is pretty rigid during the summer. Mondays we have oatmeal for breakfast. Tuesdays we have eggs. You get the picture. I don’t have to think every day about what we’re going to be eating and I don’t stress out at the grocery store or during meal planning. I made the decision and I just follow the plan. Dinners are more flexible, depending on what food is in season/on sale, what evening plans we have, what we feel like eating, etc. But no matter what we’re eating, I write it down and post it on the fridge at the beginning of the week. This eliminates the need for me to answer the dreaded “what are we having for dinner” question.
-Screen Time Responsibilities. If my kids want to have screens, they have to complete a few simple responsibilities first. For us, that’s music practice, walk the dog, tidy their rooms, and do one “mom chore” that they pick from a basket of chores I’ve predetermined need to get done. Your list might be different, depending on what you’re working on with your kids. Maybe they need to do 30 minutes of reading or some creative project or go for a run. I’ve seen lots of fun ideas for how to make that work, but I needed a system that was pretty simple if I was going to follow-through. We have also reached a point with our older kids that I don’t have a required list before screens. My high schoolers are working jobs, spending time with friends, involved in church activities, doing summer conditioning for sports, etc. If they want to come home and play a reasonable amount of video games, I don’t care.
-Screen Hours. We’ve come up with a system that works for us to make sure screen time doesn’t get overwhelming, also allows the kids to have some control and allows me to utilize screens to help me when I need them. I give the kids (not including my high schoolers) an hour a day to use whenever they want, as long as they have done their Screen Time Responsibilities. They can use this hour or “bank” it until the next day (if they wanted to watch a long movie, they can just save up their hours). At the end of the week, any hours they didn’t use turn into dollars. We will reimburse them a dollar an hour, although I think the first year we did this our kids were young enough, we just did a quarter. You could also do a treat or whatever motivates your kids. So that hour is THEIRS, but there are also screen hours that are MINE. I can choose for them to use one if I need to make a phone call uninterrupted or run to the store and I want them occupied. They are likely getting 2 hours a day if they use their hour and I ask them to use an hour as a help to me. I won’t say this has solved the constant “can we be on screens” question, but it does allow them to have some additional control over that, so they aren’t arguing with me as much.
-The Mom Chore Basket. I’ve seen people have these cute mason jars with popsicle sticks that have chores written on them. I love that idea, but my kids would try and figure out which popsicle stick said what and would avoid the chores they don’t want to hate and then we have conflict. Also, I don’t own popsicle sticks and my mason jars are typically reserved for my garden flowers, so you make do with what you have. What I had was a little basket and some notebook paper. I made a list of about 30 chores that don’t typically get done around the house (dust the blinds, wipe the baseboards, vacuum under the couch cushions, dust the ceiling fans, wipe down the doors, etc.). If the kids need to do a chore for me, they just pick one from the basket and put it in a different basket when it’s complete (so we aren’t redoing the same chores until they’ve all been done). I can’t tell you how much brain space this has freed up for me. So often during the summer I’m asking the kids to help, but in the moment I can’t think of what I could use help with. This is also useful if kids want to do chores for money or need to do a chore as part of a consequence.
-Posted Chore List. My kids have responsibilities after each meal and on Monday nights we do an extra chore to make sure the house is getting tidied more thoroughly. They have a different chore after each meal, but the overall schedule stays the same week to week throughout the summer. I know we all have ways of making sure things don’t get super messy, but what I’ve come to value is the actual printing out and posting of a chore list. I give the kids some time to offer feedback the first week (in case I accidentally scheduled one kid for two chores or the same chore at multiple meals or something) and then it is pretty set in stone. What I love about this is the kids don’t need me to remind them and they don’t argue with me. The chart is the chart. They get mad at the chart instead of at me when they don’t like their chore. It’s beautiful.
-Family Calendar. I print off a simple calendar and write down our major family activities. This also allows me to plan out the summer “bucket list” items the kids come up with. They love being able to look at the calendar on the fridge and see what we have coming up. No more having to deal with the “when are we going to the zoo” questions because they can see it for themselves.
I hope these are helpful! I’d love to know what you’re doing to keep your sanity this summer.