What Every Parent Needs to Hear as They Begin Summer - 314

And I share these with you not to put more pressure on you.

Lord knows we have enough pressure on us, don't we? But I also don't want to put another checklist on you.

You're just wrapping up your school year, depending on when you listen to this podcast, and if you're like me, or at least most pe- most moms and most families, you have a checklist.

It kind of keeps you going.

I don't want to add to it.

I do want you to consider a few things, and one of those is that summer needs to become another season of proving you're doing enough.

I think parents need permission to breathe again.

Summer is actually that gift.

Think of it as a reset.

It can be a time to reconnect with your children, especially if you've had an incredibly hectic season and the kids are all running in multiple directions.

Summer is a time to observe what the needs are of your children as you are getting ready to pivot and go to the next year, whether it's the next school year or the next, uh, endeavor or project that you have.

It's also a time to strengthen relationships.

Often, we can find ourselves so busy doing, we don't pay attention to what's actually happening.

Again, thanks to the checklist, we find ourselves acting more like a taskmaster trying to check off those lists, but our children aren't a list, and they're certainly not something we want to check off.

We want to check in with those relationships and keep their minds and bodies in a recover from the incredible pressure that they had in that school year.

So today, I want to talk to you about what you can do as the summer begins, and actually what you can do for the next few months.

I want this episode to feel like really a deep breath, not a lecture, and not a plan that you have to perfectly follow.

Just a steady reminder from one mom to another.

You do not have to carry summer like you had to last year with always being in performance mode.

Can you just receive it as a gift?Now, I know what happens this time of year.

A school year ends, the conference season wraps up, the curriculum catalogs start arriving, social media fills up with everyone's summer plans.

You know, the ones that you're not taking, the ones that don't go as smoothly as your summer plans did, but they show up in your newsfeed on your social media platforms anyway, and suddenly you start thinking, "Oh man, we're already behind.

Should I do this over the summer, over the school year? Do my kids need more structure? Should I sign them up for camp? Do we need to go travel? Should we rest? Should we keep math going? Are my kids going to forget everything they learned? Am I doing enough?" And before summer begins, so many of you already feel tired.

You were eager until you're not.

So let's just slow down.