It's your summer too
5 small ways to claim the season, even if you are the one still cooking
It’s coming up to that time again…summer holidays! My kids have already broken up, and we’re a few days in. We’re having a very home-based summer and aren’t going away, but I’m excited to take my foot off the gas after a busy time.
Something I hear a lot from mothers, is a version of this. “I know the kids will love it. I am dreading it.” Or “I’m struggling to jigsaw it all together”, “I will be working through most of it, so won’t really get a break.”
Whatever your summer looks like, whether you are taking weeks off with the kids, working through with them at home, juggling half a dozen holiday clubs, going away for one week, going away for none, or somewhere in the middle, this summer is not just theirs…..it is yours too!!!!
So much of summer can feel like facilitating rest and fun for your kids, and I’m with you. But these days, I like to add myself into the frame too. I want a little more rest and fun! It’s my summer too, so what makes it feel like a gear-shift for me? I’m going to be doing bits of work as they play, but we need and benefit from a slow pace, and whilst I’ll be planning in some playdates (also I’m desperate to see the new Toy Story movie), most of our trips will be to the supermarket and the park, and maybe some puppy training classes thrown in if it’s not too hot!
In pursuit of taking some things off my plate, I am doing something I’ve not done before. I’m pausing my Substack until the kids are back at school in September (I am pausing billing for paid subscribers of course).
But first, whatever your circumstances, here are five small, practical, achievable ways to make this summer yours as well.
1. Put things in your own diary, not just theirs.
The mental load of summer defaults to being about the children. Which clubs, trips, snacks, activities will we do? Almost all of us build a summer around them.
Try this. Open your diary, or your notes app, and put three things in it that are for you. Not big things, realistic things like a morning coffee with a specific friend, a morning in the park with a book, a walk somewhere you love, a film in the middle of the day in front of a fan. A trip to the garden centre alone on the weekend.
Put them in the calendar. Give them a time and protect them the way you would protect a swimming lesson. This is the smallest version of ‘it is your summer too’ .
2. Buy the things you love, for you.
We stock the fridge for them. I buy the lollies they like, the yogurts they love, the specific brand of crisps that stopped a meltdown last week.
What is in there for you?
I mean it. Actually go and look….if the answer is nothing, or a wilted cucumber and half a lime, put that right! Add some Magnums into your online shop, grab some of the good coffee, or the sparkling water in the pretty bottle and some fresh limes.
And while you are at it, grab the summer novel you have been eyeing up on Insta. Better still, take the whole family to your local bookshop this weekend and turn it into an outing!!! Let each child pick something they love, and don’t just supervise…browse for yourself. There is something about walking out of a bookshop with a novel that is yours, next to theirs, that says the summer is starting for YOU too!
3. Notice the pockets, and claim them.
Summer, for working mothers, is not a big block of holiday. It is a jigsaw of pockets of little moments. The two hours while they are at a club, the Saturday morning your partner is with them or that evening you have unexpectedly to yourself.
Most of us fill those pockets with admin, or with feeling guilty for not being productive enough.
Try to treat those pockets as yours, as a chance to shift into that slower gear. Take a nap in the middle of the day, or twenty minutes in the garden with a book or a slow lunch instead of eating a sandwich standing up. The pockets can be yours if you let them.
4. Put tighter boundaries around your phone.
If you are going to be around your children more this summer, and want to actually be with them rather than half in their orbit and half in your inbox, then create some rules for yourself.
I always rave about an app called AppBlock, which lets me set specific times of day when certain apps are unavailable to me (I block social media, news outlets and my IG). I do this vigilantly in the school term, but I’m going to set some blocks in the summer hols too, around the windows I most want to be present.
The point is not to swear off the phone entirely, but to help yourself make presence the default in the moments you most want to be present, so you are not relying on willpower to stop scrolling! Especially heading into a summer where the temptation to escape into the phone will be strong.
5. Lower the standards on the bits that don’t matter.
The pressure to make summer wonderful for children is MEGA, and a lot of it is manufactured. Nobody’s six year old is going to remember the twelve activities you crammed into a Wednesday. No, they’ll remember the ice cream, the sprinkler in the garden, the simple, lovely things.
Lower the standards on the elaborate stuff. Make dinner simple, serve it on a picnic blanket, lay out leftovers and call it a heatwave menu. Let the film be the plan for the afternoon, let the day be about nothing in particular. The saved energy is where your summer will come from!
6. Give yourself permission to be ‘off’
If you are working through the summer, or holding down family life while the school structure disappears, please give yourself permission to be off in whatever pockets you can. Not to run a small internal marathon, or catch up on admin, or sort the house whilst nobody needs anything (unless you get immense joy from that one like me, hehe).
This is what I am doing with the Substack pause… it’s an acknowledgement that if I want to slow down I need to be honest with what my output can be, and pull back where I can. I will still be seeing clients, but if there are things I can take off the table to buy some extra capacity, I will try and do so!
If you want something to read while I am away, my book, How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love, It is the long form version of all of this. The perfect thing for a bath, a garden, a plane, or the sofa on a rainy Tuesday when everyone is fed up.
Have a good summer. It is yours too.
I’ll be back soon.
Anna xx