Do you need to change your mindset about the summer holidays?

When I was younger, I swear the summer holidays were longer. They felt like decades of dusty knees, hours spent catching midges in yoghurt cartons at dusk, and games of kerbie (throwing a football against the kerb!) that started after breakfast and were still going days later. Now they still feel long but in a very different way. Six weeks’ worth of military planning that I do not necessarily look forward to. Six weeks of days to fill and memories to make while still attempting to maintain a day job and enjoy every single second. There are so many decisions to be made that I end up making no decisions and then panicking (probably rightly) that I have made hasty, last-minute decisions. So, this year, I’ve decided I need to change my mindset.

I mentioned to my Mum (a single parent) once, that it must have been hard for her to manage the school holidays around work. She looked at me strangely, then reminded me that as a teacher she didn’t work during school holidays. She seemed a tad aggrieved that I didn’t recall this fact, so I laughed and pretended that I did.

I did not. In fact, the happiest memories I have of my summer holidays do not include much of what I now fall into the trap of believing entails a ‘good’ summer. They do not include lavish trips out, or hours of her undivided attention. They do not include organised activities or holidays (unless you call our regular jaunt to Scotland, squeezed into a double bed with three cousins, a holiday). They do include lots of time at home and lots of my own play.

They do include a huge water fight we had with kids from down the street. They do include teetering on plastic garden chairs to knock off unripe pears using broom handles, leaving out picnics for the fairies I was sure lived under our weeping willow tree, and games where you wore just one rainbow roller skate.

I had two friends who lived on our street who I played with most days, chalking the front path and riding our bikes around the cul-de-sac. At one point, their cousin came over to look after them for a week. She was older and MUCH cooler. She knew all the inside gossip on Neighbours and the words to most Madonna songs. She walked us down to the local shop and didn’t supervise the sweets we bought, meaning a whole afternoon of sticky-papered pockets. Apparently, she was not my designated carer, but I was so in awe of her that I hung around with them the whole time, adopting them as my own family.

Now a parent myself, I understand why my Mum was a bit frustrated that I didn’t recall her daily presence. But it is also fairly comforting to realise that, actually, our kids don’t need us to orchestrate every hour of their daily lives. If you’re not able to take much time off work, that the kids will be alright. If you can’t afford to go on big days out, they won’t be worse off than their friends. And that if a daily schedule of ‘fun’ activities feels like hard work, you probably don’t need to worry (plus of course, our app can help take that pressure off – many of our activity suggestions are so easy to set up, low in cost and promote open-ended play).

The things they do remember will probably be the small moments you didn’t plan for – like the interaction with an older kid at the park or the spontaneous picnic you end up eating in front of the telly because it’s raining. Kids absolutely love when you say yes unexpectedly, or join them in their imagination. When you take something that happens regularly, even something fairly routine, and mix it up. My brother once told me that during the holidays they took breakfast to the park and ate it on the top of the climbing frame. There was no one there and they had it to themselves. Another friend described how they all camped out in their back garden in a make-shift (slightly dubious) home-made den. No one got much sleep, but joy was guaranteed. A third, told how on a particularly long and rainy day, all the kids ran around outside in their underwear. It was a beautifully spontaneous, sensory experience.

It’s easy to romanticise the past, and I’m sure my Mum had days where she felt guilty, bad-tempered and short on both cash and ideas. I’m sure I complained mercilessly about being bored, fell out with my friends on our street (and siblings), and I do seem to remember the rainbow roller skates ending up at the tip. But I also know that I felt safe and loved and that this was enough. That being given the freedom to be bored helped my creativity (I’m still a sucker for a fairy garden). And perhaps there are benefits to a summer being less rushed and manufactured. Or at the very least, days within a summer.

Whether you’re lucky enough to have happy memories of your summers growing up or not, considering this can provide useful perspective as we head into a period of fairly intense parenting. What do you hope your children will remember about these weeks away from school or childcare? If not the specific memories, then what feelings? What words do you want to be using in September to describe your summer? And how can knowing this help you to manage the dreaded guilt or pressure to do more, to do better?

So that when you’re talking to a friend about their holiday plans and start to notice the unhelpful voice of comparison, you can bring this to mind instead. We all have to make plans that are right for our individual circumstances and our own children, whether that’s to embrace holiday clubs, call on family members for support or accept that the television is your friend. We will all, no doubt, have days that test our patience but also ones that are breezy and fun. But a ‘good’ summer isn’t necessarily one that goes exactly to plan, it doesn’t have to be an expensive one or a thrill-packed one, there are plenty of memories to be made in the mundane.

In reflecting on my own childhood and thinking about what really matters to me, the six week holidays do feel less like a challenge and more like an opportunity to slow down. I am starting to relax my shoulders a little and embrace the unknown. Hopefully now, once again, I can get excited about the long weeks ahead, about the promise of messy, beautiful days, full of dusty knees and sticky fingers!