Crayons & Careers

It doesn’t have to be chaos this summer!

Summer Break is knocking on everyone’s door; the kids are excited and admittedly there is nostalgia for yourself! We think of summer as a break from the mundane, a respite from school, running around playing with friends, going to the local pool and a little bit more freedom! I can’t help feeling excited for my kids. At the same time there is a tiny bit of dread. Summer means change and re-defining schedules outside of school and sports and everything else. There is a new schedule, a little bit more chaos to coordinate with a new schedule and for many people your work expects everything to keep on going without anything slipping, changing or you even giving the slightest inclination that summer vacation has started for your kids.

As much as we all love Summer, the reality is that for many working parents, especially those whose careers don’t have time flexibility; Summer is hard. The excitement is still there in some ways. The kids are off from school, and you certainly have less homework, school paperwork, parent forms, concerts, sports and other activities associated with school. However, it usually means more or a different type of juggling. If you work from home, your morning schedule now might consist of your cup of coffee, your morning call and a bit of chaos in the background. You hope that you won’t be interrupted by your seven-year-old in the background needing a snack as you answer a phone call before you take them to summer camp for the morning. Or your work is flexible in terms of time but you still need to fit four hours of work into the middle of the day around the kids. It’s a balancing act and anytime there is change it makes it more complex, especially during a transition period. For our family this is always the first two weeks of summer break. It’s an adjustment for everyone. Even if you are working in the office, it’s coordinating drop off times for summer camp or daycare and your work start time. The reality is the expectation of much of today’s world says your appearance at work or on calls should be just as picture perfect and uninterrupted as the rest of the year. While I’d love to say that we can make sweeping changes to our modern society on this, the simple fact is that you have more control over you and your reaction than anything else. Yes, many companies are due for an overhaul on work life expectations and balance. I could write dozens of posts on this topic alone. The fact is that these are things that we can influence and change over time but when summer starts next week, it’s not going to be fixed. Let’s start with the things we can.

Monthly & Weekly Organization, Planning and Meetings

Start small by organizing your calendar

• Print out a calendar block for each month from the end of the school year through the first few weeks it starts back up.
• Start by writing everything down. Fill in all your full summer activities including summer camp, parties and anything you currently know about.
• If you have multiple kids, you can use a color for each one so you can see where activities overlap.
• Once you list everything you know of in the calendar, list out any other possible activities. Maybe you’ve promised the kids a zoo day, or maybe your sports kid has another possible camp if they are selected sometime in the season. This keeps you aware of the other possible items and keeps them from being forgotten.
• Now, take a close look at the next month ahead and then the week ahead. Determine timing and coordination and possible challenges with the schedule.
• Remember that as much as we love to try and do it all, it’s ok to prioritize and pick a few of your favorite things to check off the list. You don’t need to do every zoo trip, play date or activity. Pick and choose what is a priority for your family and budget.

Full disclosure, I usually start our summer calendar planning when I need to start to sign the kids up for activities. This could be several months ahead of time. I didn’t realize how much this freed up my mind to work through this task until about two years ago. I finally felt that we had a summer where we weren’t as overwhelmed by last minute changes and schedule juggling even with three kids at that time in activities. Starting early also meant by the time I get to the month before much of this is done. Just remember it’s never too late to start! Once I have my calendar written out and the various other odds and ends listed out that could happen. I then add it to our phone/shared calendars. If you have teenagers with phones this can be a great activity for them to help with that you then can review. It teaches organization and executive functioning skills! You can use a different calendar color for each person here too, but the important thing is that you have one place you can all share updates as adjustments need to be made. Now, I continue to update my paper planner as well just because it helps me track and be a bit messier on paper, so my phone is nice and neat, but this is a personal preference!

So now you have a calendar, what now? Look at your work calendar to see how things line up. Are you or a key person who helps (grandparents, nanny, babysitter) not available on any days? Do you have a work dinner or event? Add those into your calendar if you know about them. Once you have eighty to ninety percent of this completed it makes all of this a lot easier to plan and pivot. As much as we think we can remember it all, our brains work best on a routine, with habits and information laid out.

This is where a monthly review and weekly family meeting can be helpful. Let’s say that Friday night your family eats dinner together on a regular basis. Use ten to fifteen minutes of that time to review the week ahead. Assign who is responsible for drop offs and pickups for each activity. Does everyone know what day their activities are if your kids are older and then what can you do now to prepare?

• Meal Plan – This can be done as a family, between you and a spouse or whatever works but choose meal ideas based on how it lines up with your week. If everyone is out of the house Wednesday night, it’s not the night for a sit-down dinner. It may need to be a crockpot day or a to-go order or sandwiches.
• Grocery shop based on your meal plan and schedule. Use grocery delivery or pickup if needed. Yes, it’s hard to create this habit initially but planning ahead a grocery order or even just planning the time you are going will help. For example, if you drop your oldest at sports practice and can run down the road to the grocery store during that time period you have this scheduled, so you know when you are going, and your meal plan helps with what you need so you are likely to miss less.
• Plan ahead – If you can lay out who is responsible for what in your meetings and 80% of the time it gets done with older kids than great. If you have little ones. Then spend ten minutes and pull out their outfits for the week right now. Pack snacks in the fridge or cupboard now so you can grab them before leaving for summer camp or daycare. Prep an activity bag for soccer practice for your older one if the younger one is tagging along. The mental load this takes off your plate is hard to measure in the moment but over time these small habits stack up!
• Time block your week and don’t stack the entire week so full you can’t breathe. Rigid schedules break under pressure so don’t stack things so tightly every hour or the day/week.
• Leave buffer time. Yes, you will want to crash on the couch and surf your phone or watch tv for thirty minutes or do nothing. Sometimes we run late, or kids are slow to put their shoes on! So, when you leave buffer time, you leave space to not let the stress build up!

Working From Home with Kids

The ideas above are wonderful and can work well for parents that work from home or the office but let’s say you work from home and your kids are home part of the time in the summer as well. There are endless possibilities here and perhaps we will expand on this in a later post as well. For starters, kids need a combination of free play and structure.

Create a time blocked schedule that aligns with your work. For example, you grab a cup of coffee and need to be on a call from eight am to eight thirty am in the morning every morning to start your day. While planning your week ahead you can create a simple box with a handful of items around the house. Pinterest can be one of your best friends here as there are lots of ideas on age-appropriate boxes. Add a coloring book and crayons, some playdough, maybe you can prepare a simple box of quiet time activities ahead of time and make this a habit. A box of playdough, coloring books, or dozens of other items. Switch out items every week or have two boxes to rotate. It can be helpful to include a timer here for your kiddo so they can see what time your call is scheduled to be over and manage their expectations. The key here is to create a habit and plan ahead. Yes, it can take a week or two to get used to but start small and work your way up and build it into your routine.

Use your lunch break for kids to play outside in the yard while you work on emails or choose a task that you can balance while still interacting with them some. Will it be as focused, no! However, in an hour you still might knock out thirty minutes of work.

Hire your pre-teen or teenager to watch the younger kids for 1 hour of focused work in the afternoon. Yes, this can work in small increments. You don’t want your teens to feel like they are the only one’s responsible for watching the kids everyday but let’s say you plan this for Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week and you pay them $10 an hour. That’s three hours of uninterrupted of focused work time. Or maybe you hire the neighbor kid instead to be a mother’s helper for two hours a couple days a week. Yes, it’s spending money but it’s also saving you from driving them the kids to camp and if you can make that a productive use of time then it may be worth it!

If your work is flexible, then maybe using the hour during sports practice to work or changing your schedule to get up at five to be able to fit in an hour or two of work before the kids get up will help. Is it perfect, probably not but it’s about changing little habits that allow you more focused time. Sometimes, two hours of focused work in the morning maybe more efficient than four interrupted hours in the afternoon. No, this doesn’t work for everyone. The key is to figure out what works for you and your family. Ask for help, hire a coach to help, find a friend as an accountability partner, ask your spouse to help. If you can create a little less chaos every morning or afternoon with some simple habit changes, your coffee and calls may just go a little bit better. Progress not perfection.