Cork mum: This summer I’m planning on lowering the bar
But I’m slowly realising that children do not need us to become full-time cruise directors every July and August. In fact, boredom might actually be one of the healthiest things we can give them.
Summer with tweens and teens is a strange contradiction. For 10 months of the year, we fantasise about slower mornings, no homework battles, no lunch boxes and no frantic evening runs to activities. Then summer arrives, and within approximately 36 hours, many parents are standing in the kitchen, wondering if it’s socially acceptable to fake their own disappearance until September.
There is enormous pressure now to create a ‘perfect summer’ for our children. Somewhere along the line, summer holidays became less about children roaming around in mismatched clothes, eating ice pops, and more about military-level scheduling.
Camps need to be booked by February. Playdates seem to require diary management skills normally reserved for world leaders. There’s pressure to ensure your child is not just entertained but enriched, socialised, active, creative and preferably outdoor, while consuming organic watermelon slices.
Meanwhile, many of us are just trying to stop the house from descending into complete lawlessness.
As the mother of a teenager and a preteen, summer can feel like managing two housemates who operate on entirely different internal clocks and communication styles.
One appears to regard morning as a theoretical concept rather than a time of day, while the other moves rapidly between bursts of energy, declarations of boredom, and a strong desire for independence that somehow still requires parental entertainment coordination.
And then there are the screens. Ah yes. The modern parent’s favourite source of guilt and internal debate.
Every summer, I begin with noble intentions. There will be structure. Boundaries. Limits. Educational activities. We will become one of those families who casually play cards together in the evenings while discussing our feelings over hummus.
By week two, I’m usually negotiating screen time like an exhausted hostage mediator.
The reality is that summer with teens is different. They want downtime. They want to stay up later. They want to message friends, scroll endlessly through videos and exist horizontally for concerning stretches of time. Part of me resists this every year because I worry I’m somehow failing if I’m not constantly ‘doing’ things with them.
But I’m slowly realising that children do not need us to become full-time cruise directors every July and August.
In fact, boredom might actually be one of the healthiest things we can give them.
Not the dramatic “there is nothing to do, my life is ruined” type of boredom that arrives five minutes after suggesting 17 activities. But genuine empty space. Time without constant stimulation. Time where children have to figure things out themselves.
In my house, when screens disappear for a while, and the initial outrage settles, something interesting begins to happen. My children drift outside. They start making things. One afternoon involved wood, nails, a hammer and what looked like a serious violation of health and safety regulations. Another day, they created some kind of obstacle course involving buckets, string, and complete chaos.
None of it was polished or planned. Nobody was learning Mandarin or building STEM-certified robots. But they were using their imagination. They were problem-solving. They were interacting without every moment being structured or directed by an adult.
And, honestly, some of my favourite childhood memories involve exactly that kind of freedom, hanging with my friends, inventing games, and complaining about boredom while secretly enjoying every minute of it.
Of course, camps absolutely have their place. They are brilliant for socialising, confidence and giving children a sense of routine. And let’s be honest, they also give parents the occasional chance to drink a hot cup of tea in silence, which should probably count as a basic human right.
But camps are expensive. Really expensive.
By the time you add up registration fees, lunches, extra activities and the inevitable ‘everyone else is doing it’, summer can start to feel financially overwhelming. There is pressure to keep up and guilt when you simply cannot do it all.
But children do not need every week to be filled.
They need connection. Friends. Rest. Fresh air. Food constantly. And a balance between structure and freedom that allows them to breathe a bit.
I also think we need to stop panicking quite so much about teenagers sleeping late in summer. Their body clocks genuinely shift as they get older, although this knowledge does little to ease the mild irritation of watching someone emerge at 11.45am asking what’s for breakfast.
Summer loosens routines, and perhaps that’s not entirely a bad thing. During the school year, life becomes so rigid. Wake up. Rush. Homework. Activities. Bedtime. Repeat. Summer can offer breathing space for everybody.
That includes parents, too.
If I’m honest, a lot of the pressure isn’t coming from the children at all. It’s coming from us. We compare. We overthink. We feel guilty. We wonder if we’re creating enough magical memories.
Meanwhile, the children are often perfectly content with toast at odd hours, meeting friends, and long stretches of doing absolutely nothing in particular.
So this summer, I’m trying to lower the bar slightly. Not in a neglectful way, more in a realistic, human way.
The house will be messier. Sleep schedules will drift. Snack consumption will reach alarming levels. There will be boredom, moodiness, and at least one dramatic argument over screen time before breakfast.
But there will also be slow mornings. Random conversations. Laughter. Freedom. And moments where children rediscover how to entertain themselves without an adult turning every second into an organised activity.
And, honestly, if we all make it to the end of August relatively sane, slightly sun-kissed (weather permitting), and only mildly traumatised by the snack budget, I’ll consider that a very successful summer indeed.
App?
