From the Deep

When the Gershwin brothers–George and Ira–and their fellow writer DuBose Heyward, wrote “Summertime, and the Living Is Easy” for the opera Porgy and Bess, they clearly weren’t anticipating spending three months home with gifted children. I’ve done this gig for a few years now, and I always find myself trying to outsmart summer, to make it bow to my need for predictability and sanity. But the only two predictable things that will happen are: 1) within fifteen minutes of vacation beginning, my children will make me wish it were over, and 2) multiple times during the summer I will lose my sanity.

So what can I do to make summer easier if I can’t exactly make it easy? Here are some strategies I will be trying, and I offer them as possibilities for you and your family too:

• Sign up for summer camps! I just signed up my kids for the final camp I plan to send them to. I will also remain open to other opportunities that will present themselves. The National Association for Gifted Children has a listing of summer camp opportunities; you can access this resource here. (Note: this is not an endorsement of the list or any activity on it, merely a mention of a resource for you to view.) Giving children something to anticipate, a new experience to try, and just time out of the house can create sanity for all of us!
• Practice, practice, practice. I’m a big fan of practices, those actions we take on a regular basis for our own self care. This summer, I’ll be delving into M&Ms. No, not the candy (well, yeah, maybe the candy), but practice-wise I’ll engage in movement and meditation. If I can do those two things each day, I will maintain physical and emotional energy for meeting the challenges of being with my kids all summer and running my life coaching business. If I find I’m feeling stressed, I can do one of these two disciplines again to help me recenter myself. What practices feed your soul? Can you commit to doing them everyday for your own sake and, ultimately, for your kids’ benefit?
• Balance structure and flexibility. According to Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, we all fall somewhere on a continuum between being really structured or really flexible. (To learn more about personality type and to take a temperament test, you can click here.) I tend to fall on the side of flexibility. In fact, adaptability is a great strength of mine. It can also be a weakness for me; I rely on it too much, and with children, it can cause confusion and insecurity. I’m recognizing my need to give my kids more structure in order for us all to feel good. My kids need to know what’s going to happen each day. They also need tasks to do so they feel good about accomplishing something, so we will be exploring new chores that they can grow into doing (and that’s a win for mommy!). Others may lean more on structure and may need to allow space for flexibility in their schedules to make summer a more free-flowing, relaxing time. Where do you fall? How can you create a palatable balance between structure and flexibility for you and your kids?
• Create a summer perspective. Sometimes when we feel stuck in situations–for example, when we know we have the kids home for summer and we’re going to face a challenges such as arguments between siblings, multiple proclamations of boredom, and the responsibility of being the adult on duty 24/7–we can get ourselves unstuck by creating a new perspective about it. Think of how you currently view it. Perhaps you have an “Ack!” perspective, or an “Ugh…” perspective. Perhaps you have a “Bracing for Any and All Challenges” perspective. Can you feel how clenched these perspectives might make you, and what possibilities may or may not be available to you if you stay in these perspectives? What if you were to shift your perspective to “Ease” or “Summer Island” or “Swimming Pool”? What might be possible for your summer then? What actions would you take? How would you feel? As for myself, I’m exploring the perspective of “Bright Colors” and seeing what lightness and joy that perspective might bring me and my kids this summer.
• Have a summer powwow. Today I took my kids to Starbucks, and over our tasty drinks we imagined what we want our summer to be. I drew pictures of each of us with smiles on our faces, and asked my kids what it would take for us to look like that every day this summer. They had plenty of ideas about how to be with each other and activities they’d like to try. I was also able to share my desire of balancing my time with them with my work responsibilities in a way that can bring us all joy. Might you find value in tapping your kids’ ideas creativity about how to have an awesome, ease-filled summer?