Summer Survival # 2: Defying the rules

Summer is, we are told, the perfect opportunity to “work on” all the things we don’t have time for during the school year. We should:

• Keep up the academic momentum.

• Reinforce social skills.

• Do all that therapy you couldn’t squeeze in.

• Encourage independence, build executive functioning, and improve self-regulation.

• Skip camp and spend your whole day optimizing their growth, instead of or in addition to working your actual job.

• Do it all while making magical family memories, limiting screen time, keeping a consistent schedule, and going outside every day.

If you don’t? 

Well, obviously your kid will regress, forget how to do math, lose all their friends, and end up living out whatever your worst late-night fears for their future are.

Except. After all these years of parenting and helping other people do it, I know exactly one thing that is true for every family:

You are the expert on your kid. You get to make the rules.

This summer, we’re skipping the shoulds, and defying any experts, who’ve clearly never parented our kids. Here’s how.

1. Stop trying to fix your kid.

Put down the social skills workbook. Cancel tutoring. Skip the chess camp you secretly hope will teach them to lose without punching people.

Your kid doesn’t need to emerge from summer transformed. 

They need a break from being constantly worked on.

If they want to line up rocks for an hour, let them line up rocks. If they want to watch the same Phineas & Ferb episode seventeen times, fine. They’ve been masking and coping all school year. Let them just chill. Let them be weird in the fountain at the park. Give them a chance to be less burnt out when school starts.

Give yourself a break from being their teacher, OT, behavioural therapist, and social skills coach. This summer, you get to just be their parent. 

If your kid has to go to camp because you have to work? You’re still giving them what they need: a safe place to land, some rhythm to their day, and your love when they come home. 

You are not failing them by not “working on” them constantly. You are loving them exactly as they are, which is a lot more important than chess.

2. Structure doesn’t require schedules

Yes, children need structure. But this summer, try a looser routine without time markers, if you can work it. Morning stuff, then activity, then clean off and food, then something quiet, etc. If “activity” is three hours digging for bugs, that’s still structure. It’s knowing what to expect that’s helpful, not being there right at noon.

The goal is predictability, not precision. You’re not trying to have your kid experience their summer days as “productive.” What they need most is the space to slow down, feel safe, and have enough of a pattern to rebuild the internal rhythm that helps with real self-regulation.

3. Screen time is not the enemy

Not all screen time is the same.

Watching a favorite show while snuggled = connection. 

Building in a game for 45 minutes = maybe regulation, maybe escape (sometimes screen time isn’t entertainment, it’s a lifeline).

Yes, limit screen time. Yes, someday they should learn to connect and regulate in other ways. No, you’re not failing if your kids watch a movie every single afternoon, or build the whole movie in Minecraft afterward.

Ideas for making it work: 

• Be deliberate about when it’s screen time and put the devices far away when it’s not (no “dropping in” to the iPad every time there’s a down moment)

• One screen at a time (no game playing during the movie)

• Have a plan for transitions out (it’s so hard to put screens down, especially if they’re offering something you have a hard time getting elsewhere)

Pay attention to how the screen time affects your child. That’s a better metric than total hours. And if it really feels like your kid is “addicted” to the screen, ask yourself, what might be behind this behaviour? My guess is it’s that piece about something they can’t get elsewhere…

4. Give up on making them touch grass

Yes, nature is good for kids and a miracle drug for ADHD. Yes, movement is great for regulation. But if it’s unearthly hot and your kid says the sweat on their shirt feels like “spiky slime”? It’s not a moral failure to listen.

For sensory-sensitive kids, summer air, sticky sunscreen, buzzing bugs, and bright light can be legitimately intolerable. Pushing through it doesn’t teach resilience. It teaches them that their experiences of the world are irrelevant to our expectations.

🔗 Read: It might be sensory: strategies for tackling sensory challenges in summer.

You can invite. You can plan super fun activities. You can offer to tell fabulous stories and carry a stuffed friend on every walk. You can try early in the AM or after dark, if they’re up. But if going outside becomes a daily argument, it might be time to let it go for a bit. 

There are other ways to regulate. There are other ways to connect. There is time.

5. Re-envision outings and adventures.

Forget the highlight reel. Here’s how we’re doing outings this year:

We are not going on family bonding hikes this summer. It is a million degrees and this kid only wears plastic knock-off Birkenstocks.

We are not planning stock photo beach days or picturing all of us screaming in joy on the rollercoaster. Pile into the car with some Pop Tarts as soon as they wake up, before the sun is strong enough to burn, jump in the lake for 20 minutes, and come home while it’s still fun.

We are not pretending to be like most families. Ask for the accommodations. Explain their difficulties, and model effectively advocating for their needs. Let them be weird in the fountain.

(Get strategies for outings and adventures, including summer camp, in Part 3 - coming soon!)

6. Make your own rules.

Ignore anyone who judges you for deciding what’s best for your kid and getting it for them. 

You got this from me, so you can tell busybodies, “Actually, our parent coach said it’s fine.” Or just hand them a popsicle.

One more thing: What can *you* let go of this summer?

Your kid doesn’t need fixing, and you don’t need to win summer.

You don’t need to optimize everything. You don’t need to turn everything into a learning opportunity. You don’t need to have the Most Magical Summer Ever.

You don’t need to be constantly working on yourself as a parent. You don’t need to be a different person to help them. Just being here loving your imperfect and wonderful kids is enough.

This is the summer to help them feel safe. Seen. Unpressured. Let them be weird. Let them do less. Let them rest.

Let yourself rest too.

[Read Summer Survival #1: It might be sensory]

[Read Summer Survival #3: Your game plan for outings]

Want more support this summer?

Join a Huddle with other parents. Talk to me 1:1. Or ask your anonymous parenting question here. Nothing is off-limits, and nothing you say could shock us. Even if it goes against all the rules.