Ask any parent — summer has just started, and they are already losing their minds. For the next 10 weeks or so, it’s about managing expectations about social distancing, postponed vacations, and canceled camps, all while trying to balance work and other obligations that don’t magically go away just because it’s June. How do parents create structure, manage rules, and re-create the magic of summertime with the pressures of a pandemic — and 8:30 a.m. arguments about screen time?
Here are 10 parents who are trying to make it work.
A pool
A new YouTube channel
Laurie Lyons-Makaimoku, of Hilo, Hawaii, is helping her daughter and a cousin start a YouTube channel to educate other kids about what Hawaii is really like, not just what you see in tourism videos. “The plan is for them to do all of the hosting, storyboarding, editing, etc., themselves,” she says.
'Power Hour'
Mary Beth Foster, of Mint Hill, North Carolina, has a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old. In addition to loosely themed days — “Take a Hike Tuesday,” “Get Wet Wednesday” — she’s attempting a daily “Power Hour” — inspired by Gretchen Rubin. “We do 20 minutes reading, 20 minutes of chores, and 20 minutes outside. We try to do it at 4:00, which puts a nice hard stop to the ‘veg out’ time. It hasn’t been perfect, but we’ve gotten some stuff done!” she says.
Camp
Joanne Lubeck Esser, a mother of two, is doing a camp for her almost-7-year-old daughter. It will have pods of 12 kids that remain together for three weeks. “Heaven sent,” she says.
It’s a puppy!
“We got a puppy,” says Joe Bettencourt, father to 16-year-old twin girls. “The timing is perfect, and it’s all hands on deck with him.”
The gift of boredom
“We are all in this together,” says Eoin O’Shea, father of three (ages 11, 9, and 6), in Philadelphia. “If you’re bored — you’re boring. Figure. It. Out. Use your senses, kids. Hone them.”
MasterClass subscription
April Peveteaux is mom to a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old, who, she says, are old enough to take an interest in a MasterClass subscription. “By the end of the summer, they should be making me French pastries, have planted an urban garden, learned all of Martin Scorcese’s directing secrets, and how to be a boss bitch with Anna Wintour.”
