Q: Summer holidays with my kids is driving us crazy. The holidays used to be fun when they were younger. The kids would go outside and find things for themselves to do. But now that they are in high school, they do not bother to go out.
They are seldom up in the mornings, and when they are up they are forever asking their dad and me to drive them into town so they can be with their friends. We will soon get a seven day reprieve when they are at a summer camp, but otherwise it is difficult. They do not do much.
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Do you have any suggestions for keeping them busy? I have two teenaged boys and a 10-year-old daughter.
A: As much as people look forward to the holidays when school is out, the time off does not always work out to be as enjoyable as either parents or their children expect.
The advantage of the school year is that it forces all families to live within some kind of a structure for five out of the seven days of the week. The kids have to be out of bed, dressed, fed, and ready to go when the school bus pulls into the yard. They have homework, school projects and their chores to do in the evenings. They have to behave reasonably well, and when they hit adolescence they want to dress, if not respectably, at least fashionably.
Many people believe summer vacation from school brings a release from the structure under which they live for the other 10 months of the year. That is generally where their problems start. You may not have as rigid a structure in the summer as you had during the fall, winter and spring, but the family needs some kind of routine to keep the peace.
I know that summer is already here, and you may think that putting a structure into your house is a waste of time, but it is never too late. If you can get some routines in place now, life is going to be easier once classes start again in the fall and your children have to return to the expectations of the school year.
The structure you might consider is relatively simple. The kids need to be up and dressed at regular times, prepared to eat at the same time as everyone else does and discouraged from spending too much time either on the computer or watching television.
I am not suggesting that you become autocratic in the process. You can negotiate with your children. Perhaps they can have an extra hour to stay up in the evening, with equal time to sleep in a bit in the mornings. But whatever you and your children decide, it needs to be consistent and as regular as the alarm clock that gets them to the school bus the rest of the year.
Building a structure for your children in the summer, regardless of their ages, is more important than trying to figure out ways to keep them busy. I do not believe that you have to find things for your kids to do. Your job is simply to get them up.
Their job is to learn how to use all of that time they now have to challenge their own creative energies.
You would be amazed at how enjoyable life can be once you stop trying to entertain your children at home and simply encourage them to look after themselves.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
