Hellobee

Growing up, my sister and I spent most of our summers riding our bikes to the pool, going swimming with our friends, and maybe taking a couple summer school classes. I don’t know if summer school was the norm just because we were Asian and that’s what most of our Asian friends did during the summer, but little did I know that many other kids were spending their days at summer camps or other organized outdoor activities.

Most of my friends’ parents worked full-time outside of the home, so that meant we were pretty much left to our own devices for over two months. My grandmother lived with us and was always home, but we were still free to do what we wanted for the most part. Sure there were pros to all this freedom. What child doesn’t love having hours of unscheduled time to play with friends, read books, watch TV, and whatever else we could do within the confines of how far we could travel on our bikes?

But the downside to all this freedom was just as obvious– and that was the problem of being bored. Luckily I had a few friends that lived only lived a couple blocks away, but even getting to the other side of town on our bikes seemed too difficult most days. And without our parents to drive us around, and virtually no public transportation in the suburb where we lived, we were pretty much stuck.

Now that I have two school-age kids and I work at home, planning for the summer becomes one of my biggest anxieties. I know that many parents these days are nostalgic for those summers when kids didn’t have scheduled activity after activity, but for my kids, especially my older one, lack of structure = clear and certain disaster.

Last year, HJ tried out a local summer camp for the first time. There is bus transportation to and from our home, and the program runs from 9 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday. They have sports, swimming twice a day, lunch that you can bring from home or have provided at the camp, archery, arts and crafts, games… basically a kids’ paradise. Because I had heard such great things about this program, we bit the bullet and were willing to pay the high cost. She attended for three weeks and it turned out to the best decision for her.

Fast forward to this year, and I was seriously thinking about sending both HJ and her younger sister to the same camp for the full eight weeks 9 am to 3 pm. I had dreams of working peacefully all day long at home, getting everything done that needed getting done, and no driving back and forth from pickups to lessons to gymnastics, etc… which is what my day to day looks like during the school year.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we recently came out of an IEP meeting with HJ’s school where they told me that they “strongly recommended” that HJ attend the Extended School Year program during the summer, AKA summer school plus speech and occupational therapy.

I don’t know why, but their recommendation came as such a surprise to me. I realized I had been hoping that because HJ had made so much progress this past school year that she wouldn’t need the extra help during the summer. I had all these ideas of her just enjoying the entire summer at camp like all the other kids, and not having to spend half of the summer in school catching up on her reading and math skills.

The good part of it, though? Financially it saves us quite a bit as the program is funded by the state, and it also includes bus transportation and breakfast. She will hopefully be with some of her friends from the school year, and to be honest, she really does have a bit of a backslide any time she has an extended break. Even after a long weekend, she tends to have a rough time transitioning back to school.

So after weighing the pros and cons, we decided that she would do 4 weeks of camp and 4 weeks of summer school, and one week where we will go back to Kinnikinnick Farm for another glamping experience.

It’s not quite the summer I was planning, but I’m hoping that it provides that elusive balance between relaxation, fun, and routine that she needs to survive. (And that I need to survive!) Isn’t it always the parents who are the most excited when summer break ends and the school year begins?