Episode 111: 3 Small Changes That Could Make This Your Best Summer Yet

ITUNES | SPOTIFY

Summer is here and if you're a working mom, you already know the tension. Your schedule doesn't change, but everything else does. The kids are home, the routine is gone, and somehow, it's August before you've done a single thing you actually wanted to do this season.

In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on three new systems I'm personally testing with my family this summer, not because I have it all figured out, but because I got tired of summers that felt chaotic, screen-time battles I was losing daily, and kids who forgot how to be helpful the moment school let out.

I'm sharing exactly what we're trying: themed after-camp evenings so nobody's asking "what do we do?" (including me), a once-and-done approach to screen time rules that I'm hoping will save my sanity, and a simple daily practice plus weekly chore system designed to keep the summer vibes and make some actual progress.

Take what resonates, leave what doesn't, and maybe find one idea worth trying in your own home this summer.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Check out @annadkornick on IG

• Follow @everydayreading on IG

• Apply for one of 2 open summer coaching spots!

• + Click here to read the full episode transcript

  You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.   Hello, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you doing this week? It is our first week of summer camps. School ended for my children last week, if you're listening to this in real time, so it's the first official week of summer. I am still honestly wrapping my brain around the new schedule, what this is going to look like for all of us, including my husband and I, as we continue to work through the summer. And I know that everyone is in a different stage right now. Some of you have already been out for a couple of weeks. Others have a few more weeks to go into June. But we are all feeling this seasonal shift. And so this episode and actually the next one, maybe two, are going to address some of the themes that I experience, as well as my clients , and those of you that I chat with about your school to summer transition. And when I think of this season, honestly, I have, , mixed reviews about summer from the last few years. Some have been really great. Others have been really challenging. I definitely know that in my earlier years of having school-aged children, that transition into summer, even when my kids were in daycare, I didn't always navigate the season as well as I think I would have liked. But I think of summer as, you know, there's more flexibility, there's more fun to be had possibly with the sun being out, and there's so much to do when we have access to this nice warm weather. But when you do have to work, your schedule remains unchanged. It can be challenging to not just manage the schedule, but to have fun, too. And I'm curious if you've ever had a summer where you blink and it's over, and you felt like you didn't really make the most of it, or you felt like you didn't really do those quintessential summer things. You were so busy working. Or maybe you said, "This is the summer we're going to teach you," speaking to your kids, you know, "teach you how to do X," or, "We're gonna really focus on Y." And then the weeks fly by, and suddenly you're back to school and you didn't do any of those things. Without the structure and the routines of the school year, summer can feel a bit more freestyle, and at times chaotic, especially when you're working and you still have deadlines and people to manage and projects to complete. So how do you find that balance where your kids get to have a summer that hopefully they're gonna look back on and remember, where they get to, yeah, do a little bit of relaxing, have some fun experiences, right? I'm seeing all of these social media posts about a '90s summer. And how do you find that balance where you get to have a little bit more fun this season too, while still having the structure that you need for work, and providing a little bit of that structure for your kids? Because I do think it can be helpful, even through these no school months or these summer months, to maintain some structure. So I thought it would be fun in today's episode to share a behind-the-scenes look at three new routines or summer systems, whatever you wanna call it, that I am testing out for the first time this summer to support and hopefully create the kind of summer that I think we want. There's a lot of question marks in that opening statement, I realize, , because as with any new thing, I am truly approaching this as an experiment. That is a key part of my coaching, and I do that in my own life as well. When there are changes that we want to make or ideas that we have, we have to test them out. We have to figure out what works and what doesn't, what fits and what feels like too much, or where did we over-optimize things and lose out on some of that flexibility and spontaneity I always tell my clients, "You know how this feels," this being the way you do things today, whether we're looking at your calendar, your schedule, your routine. You know how what you're doing right now feels Or maybe you know the way that summers have felt in the past. You can always come back to what you already know. But with this new experiment, you might find that something about this new way of doing things is worth keeping, or it's worth keeping with maybe some small adjustments, and maybe it's better than you expected. But we have to be willing to change, to test, and to have a little trial and error. So I'm gonna walk you through the three experiments that I'm implementing in our family with my three kids this summer to hopefully give you some ideas, some inspiration. I'm not saying that what I'm doing is going to work for you exactly. That's not the point. But I, first of all, just love hearing how other people manage things, and I think there's always something that we can take from that and apply in our own way to our own unique experience. So the first change that I am making is to really address that question that we often have in our household of what to do after camp. So my kids do summer camp throughout the summer. They are at a different camp every week. , we've never found the one that we could just go to all summer every week the same. But there's often this, like, lull between after camp and when we're sitting down to dinner. And in trying to figure out how to answer that question of, what do we do in this time, it's really twofold. It's both providing some structure, because I really don't like that question, "What should we do? I'm bored." They've had all of this fun at their camp, and then they come home, and they're like, "Blah, there's nothing to do." And also, it's addressing this problem that I sometimes have had in summers past where I save all of the fun summer activities for the weekends, and then the weekends also feel kind of exhausting And a little bit to that point as well is they have fun all day at camp. I work all day. Not that work isn't fun, I do enjoy my work, but what about me? I wanna have some of that summer fun, too, during the week, and so how do I bring some of that playfulness of summer to our weeknight evenings? Now, some of our summer camps do have aftercare, others do not. Some days I do need to continue working while they're at aftercare or even after they come home, and others I don't. And so I think regardless of your situation, of whether you're working full normal 9:00 to 5:00 days and your kids are at childcare all day, or you have maybe some flexibility, take this experiment that I am testing out and make it your own, make it fit for your schedule. So I saw last summer on Instagram a colleague of mine, her name is Anna Dearmon-Kornick. I was actually on her podcast, I wanna say earlier this year, but it might've been last year, I can't remember. And she decided to try out this summer schedule that was themed days, where they would have a built-in activity for this exact time of day that I'm talking about, the after camp time. And so I think hers were, like, Make It Monday where they always did a craft, and Treat Tuesday where they went somewhere to get some fun treat, and Water Wednesday where they spent at the pool or a splash pad, and so on and so forth. And so what I like about it is that it has that structure to it So that we are not deciding in the moment what to do. And I could see this working either in those late afternoon hours if you don't have aftercare, you have that flexibility to be with your kids before dinner, or even after dinner, or in place of dinner. I mean, you could fit it in in different parts of that afternoon, evening timeframe, again, depending on your kids' bedtime and how flexible you want to be. You could do it every day like I'm going to do, or you could just do one day a week, right? And so here's loosely what we are thinking about, , and my oldest actually helped me brainstorm these ideas, which I love. Always enlist your kids if you can, if they're old enough to have input. And so we are going to do, Mondays are going to be our library day, and so we happen to be in a city where there are lots of library branches in different neighborhoods, and so we're gonna go explore a different library branch on Mondays. Hang out, read, check out some books, you know, whatever they have to offer there, we're gonna check it out. Tuesdays, , two of my children continue with their piano lessons, so I don't really need to fill that time. That's just gonna be a home evening with piano. Wednesdays we're gonna either go explore a hike if the weather is nice, or if not, we're going to do this art studio that has free drop-in family art time in the afternoons and evenings on Wednesday. Thursdays are gonna be our water day, so we're gonna go to the pool or splash pad. And then on Fridays, , instead of Treat Tuesday like my friend, we're gonna explore a different creamy whip on Friday and taste test our way through different cones throughout our city. Do y'all call them creamy whips where you are? Would be like a dairy bar or, you know, a local outdoor ice cream shop. Around here they call them creamy whips. So that's our plan, and I don't think every week we'll do everything to a T, but what I like is that it does give us, one, something to look forward to. It allows me to have some fun in the summer when I am still working, and it avoids that question of, what should we do? So again, if you are working, maybe you just do something fun every Friday. Give yourself a summer challenge or a tradition that you can start to look forward to so that everyone has a little summer fun, you included , and I do wanna put in the caveat here is yes, because I will not always be working the full day that I am used to during the school year, I may do a little bit of work in the evenings, and that's okay. But as always, if that is also going to be your choice, be sure to choose what you're going to work on in advance so you're not aimlessly or endlessly working just to, quote-unquote, "clock hours." You need to have a purpose for that time. All right, so that's the first thing I'm testing out are these themed afternoon evenings with fun things so I don't have to answer the question, what should we do? Which sort of leads me into the second challenge that I wanted to address with our summers, and that is screen time. Because often that what should we do or there's nothing to do results in them asking if they can watch something or play a video game. And I know I'm not alone in this one, and probably also depends on what age your kids are, but I feel like I am very consistently fielding questions about can we, can we, right? We wanna watch Dude Perfect. Are your kids into that? Or we wanna play this game. We do allow screen time, and it is their summer, too, and I recognize that just like Sometimes we like to veg out in front of a show at the end of the day. They also enjoy that. And so within reason, with some limits and moderation, I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with is me having to make the decision and remake the decision every day. How much? When? What are they allowed to watch? It is exhausting. And so what I wanna test out this summer is setting our screen time rules, our screen time limits at the start as a blanket rule for the season. It's that decide once , and not have to decide in the moment again. So my husband and I will set the expectation with everyone in advance in a sit-down conversation, probably over dinner this evening, and then it's not, I hope, me in the moment that they might be upset with if they didn't get the answer they wanted. It's the rule that we set that they're upset with. Now, my hope, or I guess what I want to test out, the theory that I am testing here, is that they feel more empowered because they understand what the rules are, and that hopefully they ask less, and hopefully I feel less angry and resentful about screens in general because I'm not so exhausted from having to always think through and make the decision in the moment So I will let you know how that goes. This one could be very idealistic. I don't know, but that is one challenge that I have had and I've noticed more and more as they've gotten older. And so this is the solution that I am gonna see what about this works and what doesn't. So stay tuned. I will definitely report back. And then the third experiment that I am testing out is to address what I notice often happening in the summer where my children turn into sloths. I mean, not really, but in all seriousness, I have noticed this trend in summer where they get less helpful, and then I get more frustrated. I think there's something to when we have the structure of the school year, they're doing their things. You know, an object in motion stays in motion, and there's something about the flexibility and freedom of summer that just results in them not noticing things and not doing as much and always wanting to be doing fun things and never wanting to do anything helpful. Plus, there are things that we do wanna work on this summer to set them up for success the next school year. I'm not thinking about anything too intense. I still definitely want those summer vibes, but I do want to teach them some ownership, and I wanna practice those executive function skills of managing their time. And so my solution that we're gonna test out this summer is a small daily 10-minute practice for each of them and a weekly project. Now, project sounds big. It's not big. I'm gonna give you some examples of what this actually means, but here's what we are looking at for our family and then maybe some ideas that you could take and apply depending on how old your kids are. So a 10-minute daily practice. I have two of my children that are taking piano lessons, so for them it's 10 minutes of piano a day, which doesn't sound like much, and I love how usually when they sit down for 10 minutes they end up practicing for a little bit more. But, , I have a tracker printed on the fridge for each of them to color in their circles. We're going for 80%. 80%. We do not need 100% around here. I am okay with a B grade on this, but some weeks that's more than what we are doing right now. So 10 minutes of piano for my two older kids and 10 minutes of reading for my youngest because that is something that we do wanna work on with him this summer. So maybe if your kids are younger, that's doing, 10 minutes of writing their letters or sight words or maybe, I remember one summer we did a challenge of learning to tie shoes, right? And so it was a little bit of practicing shoe tying every night. Maybe there's, , another skill like that that doesn't have to be academic, bike riding, you know. Anything like that is how do we just do a small little daily practice 80% of the time? And in this season where they're not as rushed with other things happening, I think it's totally doable And then for the weekly project, I saw this on Instagram. I follow this account, Everyday Reading. I can link to her account in the show notes, which you can always find at themothernurture.com/podcast. But she talked about giving her kids a weekly project chore. So these are not the daily chores that I will still hold them accountable to doing, like unloading the dishwasher, packing their lunch for camp, setting the dinner table, clearing their dishes from the dinner table, et cetera. But these are things around the house that are a little bit of a heavier lift than that. They're just a little bit more than that. So for example, this week, all three of them are assigned the project of cleaning out their mudroom cubby. So I want them to empty it out, empty their book bag, wipe it down, only put back in the things that they actually need. They can do that at any point this week. Other examples throughout the summer are, like, empty out the spice drawer, vacuum it out, wipe it down, and put everything back. Or sort and tidy the drawers in your desk, in your room. Or for my daughter, sort through all of your hair ties and bows and hair stuff, and just make sure it's all things that you actually use, and let's get rid of what you don't. Or I'm gonna have my oldest take everything out of our lazy Susan in the kitchen and wipe it down. I cannot tell you the last time that was done. I'm so excited for him to tackle that, and it's totally doable for an 11-year-old to own that project They have a whole week to do the task. So at any point, they can knock it out first thing on Monday, they could work ahead if they want. I don't care. It's up to them, but they do need to have it done by the end of the week Now, I imagine I will probably be doing some assisting with my youngest, and that's okay. Who knows? I mean, this may end up causing more work for me. I really hope it doesn't, because they are 11, 9 and 7 now. But I am willing to test this out and learn from it. And maybe some of these trouble areas in my kitchen will finally get cleaned thanks to my children, right? So that is what we're testing out on that front, a small daily 10-minute practice and a weekly project chore. So maybe your weekly project chore, that's a little bit too big because your kids are really young. Maybe it's something that you all do together. I love bringing, when my kids were younger, bringing them along to help me and be my assistant in a chore. Again, I know that's work for you, but if it's something you needed to get done anyway, you can start to plant those seeds, hopefully for as they age, to be able to do a little bit more. And if nothing else, it gives you a little bit of time together, and you're crossing something off your list that you were going to be doing or wanting to do anyway. So those are the three that I'm testing out this summer, the after camp evening fun, the screen time limits set once and let it be in place for the rest of the summer, and then those small daily practice and weekly chores Because summer can be so fun, and it also can be hard to find that fun when your schedule as a working parent doesn't change. And in some ways, I think summer can be harder than the school year, depending on what your childcare situation looks like. But I do think there are ways to find the fun, to make sure that the season doesn't pass you by without experiencing some of those things you want to do, and to work on some of the things, , the projects or the skills that are harder to do in the school year when there's so much more going on. So these are the things that I am trying out. I will definitely report back. Maybe you can take one idea from this to make it your own. Because really, that's all we can do. We can notice the challenges, notice the things that we don't love about how our lives are functioning, and then come up with ideas to potentially change them for the better, test it out, and learn. That is exactly what we do in coaching, whether it is about a particular season, like we talked about today, a particular routine, a system, or a pattern, maybe of overworking or something similar that you notice with your career. We work together to identify what's not working, and then come up with small, manageable experiments to make things better, to help you feel like you have more time, to get things done more efficiently, and to just make the experience of being a working parent less stressful and more enjoyable, because that's totally possible, too. And sometimes what you need is an outside perspective to help you spot potential changes that you're just too close to be able to see yourself. I have two one-on-one coaching spots opening up this season. I would love to talk to you if you've been thinking about it. Summer is actually a great time to start coaching. I usually get an influx of new one-on-one clients during this season because it is often a season where you can feel that tension between work and fun and wanting to make progress, but also wanting to relax. And so this is the perfect time to get started. It will set you up for not only a great summer, but a great transition back to school and into the fall, which can historically be a very busy time of year, both personally and professionally. So what better time to get started than now? If you wanna learn more, I would encourage you to submit a short application. You can do that at themothernurture.com/application. I would love to hear from you and talk to you about what coaching could do for you. All right. I hope you have some fun this week. I hope you are inspired to test out a new experiment in your own life. And until the next episode, I hope you take care. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast, you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com. I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.

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