photo credit: MooreALX

Today is the first day of summer vacation and I am determined to make it a lazy one for us. I need the vacation as much as my kids do. I never realized how much work parenting is when the kids are in school. Making lunches, ensuring that homework is done, shuttling to and from after school activities. It can wear you down. But too many lazy days can also have the same effect.

I am not a big fan of sleep away camps. I know - kids love them. But I like having my kids home with me over the summer months. And I never went to sleep away camp as a kid. As parents we cannot help but to draw upon our own childhood experiences as a foundation for how we raise our own kids. So, my kids will be home with me all summer.

To keep the summer from turning into a video game extravaganza at our house I did MY homework many months ago and looked into summer kids camps that are local. My kids are now registered for the few kids summer camps that they really wanted to do. But there are still large blocks of free time in between.

In a technology loving family like mine, it would be easy for the kids to wile away the days on the computer, playing video games, and watching tv. I, of course, would love to spend the time building and growing my business. We would blink and summer would be over.

To make sure that we don’t waste the summer, I took a look at the blocks of time that we have available and pulled out my folder of local summer kids camps. I asked each of the kids if there was anything that they really wanted to do this summer that we haven’t yet looked into. For the most part they were pretty happy with what we already have scheduled. Aside from adding in a little tennis and golf instruction we were set.

But there was one surprise in the package that parents can overlook. One of my children had a little trouble with math over the past school year. He did fine overall but the concepts did not come easily. His request: summer school. I am very proud of him.

As parents, we want summer to be fun and relaxing for our kids - so they can re-energize and be ready to go back in the fall. But summer can also be a great time for kids to put in a little work on the academics so they don’t struggle in the fall. So, here is my parenting advice for today: if your child needs it, consider a little tutoring or summer school now before the summer gets away from you.