School's Out. Parent Panic Has Started.

Summer vacation is here, and I was just as excited as my kids for it to start. I don’t know why either. You would think by now I would know better. I am a grown-ass man with a full-time job, bills to pay, and a house to keep clean. But every year when school is almost over, I catch myself counting the days until summer break right alongside them, like it’s going to benefit me somehow. I am so dumb lol.

Then summer break starts and every parent has the exact same thought.

"Oh shit. Now what?"

Because the fantasy version of summer and the actual version of summer are two very different things. The fantasy version involves happy kids running through sprinklers, family adventures, barbecues, and memories that somehow turn into photo albums twenty years later. The real version involves trying to answer work emails while your son is asking for a snack for the fourth damn time in an hour and your daughter saying she is bored despite having approximately six thousand dollars worth of toys scattered throughout the house.

The first few days always feel great. Everybody is excited. Nobody has to wake up early. There is no rush. No homework. No trying to remember if today is some bullshit Crazy Sock Day, Pajama Day, Twin Day, or some other school event. Then reality slowly starts settling in. The kids are now home all day, every day, for weeks.

Summer Turns Parents Into Event Planners

Summer starts feeling like a second job. Every night we have to plan our day and theirs. What are we doing tomorrow? Should we go to the park? Do we need to leave the house before everybody starts driving each other insane? And speaking of activities, they are seriously so damn expensive. Holy shit.

Every year we look into camps, classes, sports, and other programs thinking we are being great parents. Then we see the prices and say Fuck that. The crazy part is that many of them only last a week. Or half a day. You pay enough money to fund a small military operation and your kid attends from 9 AM until noon for five days. That only leaves another eight hours to figure out every day for the rest of the summer.

Summer Survival

Then comes the snack situation. Kids eat a shitload of snacks. Not food, just snacks. We buy enough snacks to survive a natural disaster and they disappear within days. Every conversation starts the same way.

"Dad, can I have a snack?"

You literally just had one.

"I know, but can I have another?"

Then the fights begin. I can't even explain most of them. Somebody looked at somebody. Somebody touched somebody's toy. Somebody sat in somebody's spot. Somebody breathed too loudly. The reasons do not matter. The conflict will occur regardless. I love my kids more than anything in the world, but damn lol.

The Truth About Summer Break

The funny thing is that when I actually think back to my own summers as a kid, most of them were not that exciting. I think we forget this. My childhood summers were not filled with nonstop activities and carefully planned experiences. Most days were honestly pretty boring.

I would wake up, pour myself a giant ass bowl of cereal, and park myself in front of the TV for hours. I had a schedule. First came Sally Jessy Raphael. Then Maury. Looking back, I probably should not have been watching daytime TV in elementary school. After that I would usually finish strong with a couple episodes of Little Bear. One minute Maury is revealing somebody's life-changing secret and the next minute a cartoon bear is calmly looking for a frog in the woods.

After TV got boring, I would wander outside and figure something out. Sometimes I just sat around not doing shit.

And you know what? It was great. Kids are allowed to be bored.

We act like boredom is a crisis that requires immediate intervention. The second a kid says they are bored, we start scrambling. We suggest activities. We offer games. I swear being told "I'm bored" by a child standing in a room full of toys feels like being insulted personally. But despite what our kids might think, summer is not supposed to be nonstop fun.

Summer is stressful, expensive, chaotic, and loud. The house stays messy. The grocery bill becomes terrifying. The fighting increases. My patience gets tested on a daily basis ..... by my wife. JK, kind of.

But mixed into all of that chaos are the moments I know I will miss someday. The random conversations while driving nowhere. Lying on the grass outside. The ice cream runs. The afternoons that were not planned but somehow became memorable anyway.

What Kids Really Need During Summer

My kids do not need an event coordinator. They do not need every day packed with bullshit. Most of the time they just need us. Even if I find myself staring at the calendar and wondering exactly how many days remain until August.

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