For the most part, summer has been great. Carla, I think, has had a good mix of being in camp and not being in camp. It’s been a good mix for me, too, because I’ve had some nice chunks of Not Driving. We could be doing more friend get-togethers, but those have proven surprisingly difficult to arrange; I’m assuming everyone else is in the same boat of trying to work vacation and camp and downtime into the remaining days before school starts.

The hardest part of summer for me is the lack of a set schedule. Sure, it seems nice, to have loose lazy days where we do not much of anything at all… but in practice, I end up feeling kind of yucky about it. I think if we had a more rigid schedule on most days, an occasional lazy day would feel more like a break than a waste of time.

Well, it feels quite late in the game to be thinking about re-jigging our schedule. Especially as we have both a two-week vacation AND another full week of sleepaway camp coming up which will throw everything into disarray.

It feels kind of stupid to be stressing about schedules in the summer. And yet, I persist. The stress is the result of two pressures. No, three pressures:

• Academic Pressure: I want to make sure that Carla stays engaged in things that challenge her brain and encourage critical thinking. Plus, she has a robust array of summer assignments she’s supposed to complete.
• Sports Pressure: Carla is an active, athletic kid who likes to participate in sports. We’ve never gotten into the whole travel/club sports scene, about which, frankly, I feel quite relieved. (My god, talk about stress and scheduling complexity.) She’s only participated in sports through school. For my particular child, who is unlikely to play sports in college let alone professionally, sports offer an array of benefits that go beyond Being A Star X Player. I want her to continue to play the sports she likes and continue to feel good about her contribution to her teams. As she gets older, and as her peers advance their own skills, it feels more and more important to encourage her to practice and build up her strength and endurance. I would also love for her to get into the habit of regular exercise, because it’s good and necessary for her. She got this for her birthday, which seems like a way to combine fun and exercise. If the weather would cooperate, maybe we can try it out.
• Break Pressure: The counterweight to the above two pressures is the pressure to give Carla a freaking break, and let her experience the pleasure and freedom and, yes, boredom of long, lazy summer days with no commitments and no expectations. When I was her age, I had ZERO summer expectations. I’m pretty sure I either stayed at home with my brother and his nanny all day, or my mom dropped me off at various friends’ houses on her way to work in the morning and the friend and I roamed around town all day until my mom picked me up on her way home from work. I had no summer homework, no summer sports practice, no summer camps, no supervision. It was glorious. Clearly, it was a different time. For many, many reasons, I don’t think trying to recreate that experience for my kid would fly. But I do want her to have SOME of that summer freedom. It’s so fleeting.

My reaction to all these pressures has been to create a daily schedule.

I did a lot of research into schedules, and compromised my morals by asking ChatGPT for help fitting everything we wanted to do into each day. Then I designed the schedule in Canva and had Office Max print it out and laminate it for me, so we can add specifics to each day. It’s taped to the kitchen wall, directly across from Carla’s spot at the table.

I like this schedule because it incorporates all the things I want Carla to experience in a week: dedicated time for schoolwork, exercise, and music alongside plenty of time to do Summer Things. The key for me is that we get all the work done before noon, and then our afternoons are wide open. That feels both doable and like I’m not weighing her down with a grueling workload. I feel like having a half-hour dedicated to music practice, for instance, is a lot less onerous than telling her, “You need to practice your music today.” I want all her to-dos to be finite.

The schedule worked beautifully. For about a week and a half. Then, as is ALWAYS my problem, one little hiccup brought down the whole system. If I had to identify one culprit, it would be going to bed late. Carla still, at thirteen, does best if she gets ten to twelve hours of sleep a night, and sleep has always, always been one of my top priorities for her. Which means I am reluctant to wake her up at seven when she’s gone to bed at eleven the night before.

Nights are SO HARD though! My husband is not on a summer schedule. He is on his regular, everyday work schedule. He gets home at six or seven most nights, works out, and then we eat dinner at eight or so. We like to watch Taskmaster as a family, and it’s very difficult to keep ourselves to one episode a night (although we succeed, most nights). This means that Carla’s 8:30 bedtime creeps up to 9:30 or 10:00 and sometimes later.

Could I be more strict? Certainly. But it’s not easy, and I grow weary of being the Bedtime Bitch who is pushing and nagging and trying to keep everyone on track. (I would also prefer to go to bed at 9:30 or 10:00; but I still read to Carla every night, so when her bedtime gets pushed back, so does mine, and I end up in bed around midnight. I still wake up at 5:30, so I am VERY TIRED a lot of the time. Which also makes it harder for me to keep on top of things.)

Last night was one of the late nights – and I think Carla was up until midnight working on her summer reading, which is both commendable (and relatable) and also go to sleep. This morning, I feel groggy and unmotivated. How am I supposed to motivate my child into action when I struggle with motivating myself??? If I allow her to sleep in, she’ll have more energy for getting things done… but then our schedule will creep into the afternoon, and we won’t have time for the fun stuff… and then I’ll feel like a Mean Mom, or we’ll allow fun stuff to bleed into the evening, and then we’re in bed at midnight and the whole misshapen cycle continues.

Well, there’s not a lot to be done except try to get back on track.