Helping Families

Summer Sanity

Just a note about keeping your kids busy during the summer.....Oftentimes parents become focused on getting kids signed up for summer extracurricular camps, religious activities, and play dates that parents may forget that summer can be a great time to teach children about responsibility. The biggest complaint I hear from parents is that their children complain about BEING BORED!

We, as adults, wonder with all of our responsibilities how children can't seem to find anything to do with their time without our assistance. A great summer time recommendation is to suggest that your children clean out their closets, mow the lawn, dust the furniture, organize their toys, weed the flower beds, water the lawn, unload and/or re-load the dishwasher, go through their clothes and shoes that don't fit so that they can get prepared for their new clothes that WILL fit in the fall.

There is no time like the present to teach children that keeping up with household responsibilities and preparing for the future, whether that means cleaning out clothes or researching colleges is important. Oftentimes you'll find that when children come to you complaining of boredom, and you suggest tasks they could be working on, your children will often either find ways to entertain themselves or learn lessons of responsibility. In either case, you as a parent have helped your children become more independent and responsible.