Welcome to July, everyone! Four short weeks ago, we were diving into summer, thrilled to not be driving to “all the things,” and watching your kids sleep until noon. It was such an innocent time.
Now? There are dishes everywhere, someone has been wearing the same sweatshirt for three days straight, screen time is off the rails, and you’re somehow still driving to 10,000 camps.
“OMG, please leave my house and go find something to do” has officially entered the chat.
First off, congratulations on taking that much-needed break. Seriously. June was never supposed to be about “fixing” anything. It was about letting your child decompress after a long school year and letting yourself decompress too. If you managed to do that, even a little bit, that was the work. You did great.
But now we’ve hit the middle of summer: the summer doldrums.
This is usually when something starts to shift.
Maybe your child no longer needs to sleep until 1:00 PM, or maybe they’re slightly more willing to engage with you and not just when they need Starbucks money.
Or maybe you’re seeing the opposite. Bedtimes are drifting into another dimension, motivation has vanished, and “avoiding things” has become the unofficial family hobby.
And then, almost overnight, you can feel the shift happen in your own brain too.
One minute, everyone’s relaxing and pretending calendars don’t exist. Hooray! Then the 4th of July hits and Target releases the hounds (err, sets up back-to-school supplies). Your brain might start whispering, “We should probably do something. We can’t waste the rest of the summer. We’ve wasted time! PANIC!”
But what if “doing something” stayed light?
Right now, the goal is not to recreate school at home or launch Operation Fix My Child before Target puts out the binders and locker chandeliers. The goal is simply to add a little structure back into the mix. Just enough to help things move forward instead of fully unraveling into feral summer chaos.
Some ideas might mean a quick Sunday check-in about the week ahead. For example, your kids can designate a spot for backpacks, chargers, and the fourteen water bottles rolling around your car. Practice that now, and hello! You’ve gotten something “done.”
Most of these moments happen casually anyway, while you’re standing in the kitchen or driving to camp. If it starts feeling like a Pinterest productivity bootcamp, you’ve probably gone too far.
Kids were still unwinding back in June. However, there’s enough distance now from the school year that they can practice skills without feeling like they’re already behind. Executive functioning skills stick best when there aren’t so many balls in the air.
It can seem small when you help your younger child pack their swim bag the night before or create a simple routine for putting shoes and backpacks in the same spot every day. It can also look like helping your child organize their summer job calendar or talk through how to begin something they’ve been avoiding. The good news is that something bigger is happening beneath the surface. They’re beginning to think, “I actually can handle this.”
You do not have to sacrifice summer to make that happen. Keep the slow mornings, the pool days, and random ice cream runs. You’re just adding a little intention underneath it all.
A few small shifts now can help your child walk into the school year feeling a little more capable, a little more confident, and maybe, just maybe, with both shoes on this time. You know… calm(ish).