The girl has been watching TV for three hours. The boy did not want to shower today because “it’s a party”, and he has asked for an ice-cold snack three times. The summer holidays have started weeks ago, the children spend the first week with their grandmother and the routines and rules have already been dynamited. The mother comes home from work and the creatures jump on her: “Can we turn on the Plaaaaay?”.
For most children, summer is synonymous with illusion, rest and freedom. For families, it represents a change in routines that can be liberating but also very stressful: reconciling the 11 weeks off school with the three or four weeks off work is not easy.
“Summer highlights the difficulties families have to reconcile. During the course they cheat thanks to the school, but the classrooms are not for parking the children. In summer it is clearly seen that conciliation does not exist. The cost of the centers for many families represents a serious problem”, explains the psychologist and educational psychologist Laura Cerdán in RAC1.cat. “I have often heard mothers and fathers say ‘I wish September came’ or ‘I can’t wait to go back to work’; I recommend approaching it in another way”, adds the specialist.
“Boredom, the amount of time spent living with siblings, the change in routines, the heat, and the lack of structure can cause a brain short circuit that makes the most anticipated days of the year the most difficult,” says the neuropsychologist, father and writer Álvaro Bilbao, in an article on the subject in his popularization blog.
So that summer is not an ordeal at home and day-to-day management can be carried out more easily, we review some basic tips: a kind of guide that can help us arrive in September with more desire for energy and a good mood.
If, because it is a vacation, the days and hours are completely open and free, there will be more conflicts at home. “Summer can be more flexible, without military routines, but schedules help: lunch, play, park or pool, lunch… Maintaining routines allows you to anticipate things and that facilitates family dynamics. If every morning they get up, have breakfast and play a board game for a while, they get used to it. Thus, anticipating, you set guidelines and you know what time you can, as an adult, take advantage of to work or household chores, for example”, says Cerdán.
In general, he comments, “anticipation always helps children, so they know when to shower, have a snack, watch TV… All these routines, even though they are playful, facilitate the day-to-day dynamics and have some control.” To give an example: if during the year they know that they should shower before dinner, and they already do it every day, maintaining the dynamics in summer will avoid conflicts of not wanting to do it.
The child’s brain enjoys doing useful things, according to Bilbao. “We assign each of them responsibilities related to the tasks of making the beds, setting the table, cleaning it up and helping in the kitchen. When we detected conflicts we gave them more responsibilities; if we saw that they were bored, we didn’t wait for the conflict to break out, we asked them to do something useful. It could be preparing the snack for the rest or accompanying the mother to the gas station. Any activity seemed like a good idea”, explains the neuropsychologist.
All year round the children’s contribution to household chores must be marked, but also in summer, and it can be adapted at any time. “Don’t ask the three-year-old to put the washing machine on, but he is capable of taking the towel out of the pool bag and leaving it in the dirty laundry. Not only because of the fact that they collaborate at home, but because it also affects their self-esteem”, says Laura Cerdán.
“Physical exercise is a physiological need for young children, which is why one of the first routines in the morning that we put into place at home (before it gets too hot) is to go shopping for bread and fruit. This allowed them to be on the move first thing in the morning instead of lying on the sofa watching TV or waiting for pool time, ”Bilbao explains from his personal experience with three children.
“Kids need to move. Going to the park or the beach is enough, it is not necessary to spend a lot of money or do very spectacular things, but you have to do different things and get away from the screens and from home”, explains Cerdán. If you live in a town or in a rural environment, you have it much easier; If you live in the city, at least some park or different walks are necessary.
A curious thing about rules is that they can be lost out of context. “Somehow when we go on vacation it seems that it is not necessary to brush our teeth or that it is not necessary to leave the house at a certain time. Remembering the rules on issues that seem important to us helps a lot”, advises Bilbao.
With the little ones, nap time must be respected, especially if they still do it at school. “They are tired because of the heat, and at 7 pm they are exhausted. Since we don’t have school schedules and they go to bed late, there is a difficult time at night, they are sleepy and they don’t know how to express it, the adult gets nervous…”, says Cerdán. For the elderly, the hottest hours can be used to put on the television for a while and rest, slow down.
Getting kids to nap in the same room can be very tricky because they turn each other on. “We put in a while to rest after eating. The first day all together no one fell asleep. The second day all separated, the three fell asleep. You can also divide them into other times of the day if you see that there is one that is especially energetic”, says Bilbao.
Homework yes or homework no? For Cerdán, up to the age of six it is neither necessary nor advisable to mark academic work as the ones they do in class. “In ESO, perhaps you do have to review, do something to maintain the habit and remember the curricular content.”
What he defends, at any age, is reading as a summer enjoyment. “It is a good time to install reading as a pleasure, not as a duty. Public libraries help a lot, now that we have perhaps more time. Family discovery activities can also be carried out, such as visits to museums, which provide a lot of learning”.
For Cerdán, another of the essentials of summer, which helps to calm the spirits at home and which works well for everyone, is contact with nature. “Again, no extraordinary things are necessary. With a walk through Collserola, to say the least, it’s fine. Nature helps us relax, and it is a way of instilling in children diverse hobbies beyond new technologies”, says the psychologist. Mountain, nature, contact with animals… “Children who have experienced it, even if they put it aside during adolescence -a parenthesis stage-, sooner or later will recover the pleasure of these things”.
Always being with the children is nice, but “it can also be frustrating if we don’t rest, and there can be moments of “I can’t take it anymore”. The adult needs moments of disconnection, like at work. You can take turns with your partner, or ask your grandparents, uncles or friends for a while to each have their own space. “You have to find times for each one, depending on the support network,” recommends the psychologist.
