And just like that, summer break has come to an end. Gone are the days of kids in pajamas past noon, screen time for hours on end and seven loads of pool towels in the laundry a week. School is back! Routine is back! Bedtimes are back! And all the Type A moms said HALLELUJAH!
We’ve spent the last couple of weeks checking off more activities from the kids’ summer bucket lists and squeezing in all the last weekday sleepovers with friends. And while I love structure and a little more time to myself while the kids are at school, I will say that I’m going to miss summer break 2024. I decided at the beginning of the season that I was really going to try to focus more of my energy on being “fun mom” this summer, filling our calendars with waterpark trips and themed parties to remember and making sure our pantry stayed stocked up on their favorite pre/post swim snack junk food. I decided that I was going to focus less on maintaining “order” and cleanliness in our house all hours of the day and instead just make sure our house was cleaned at the end of the day. I must admit… it all worked out just fine. I honored those commitments to myself. I didn’t spend the whole entire summer in a frenzy over dirt on the floors. (Don’t get me wrong, I am so eager to get in a better housekeeping routine now that our days look a little more uniformed, but giving myself a break from the stress of always keeping a clean home for just a short season was nice. I survived. We all did… even when the main rooms looked like a dumpster fire.)
As I wrote about a couple of months ago, this was the summer before we embarked on a new journey of change with our big kids. Our oldest greeted high school. Our middle girl greeted a county-wide middle school merger. Our littlest one welcomed a whole new era of activity and development that has required an incredible amount of energy and patience from his parents. It was our last summer before a new chapter, before change, and we soaked up every bit we possibly could.
Now, our schedules revolve around school pickup/drop off, soccer schedules and after-school activities. Our calendars are not our own anymore, and maybe I miss that the most about summer. Flexibility. The freedom to choose your days’ activities is so nice, isn’t it? As it is said, with the sweet comes the sour.
The sun is setting earlier and our days are getting shorter as we close out summer and usher in autumn. The nights are cooler. Our home systems are changing. We work a little more closely with each other to take care of farm and house chores. And as I think about how well it works, how much ground we all cover, all the things we accomplish in a day, I realize how important intentionality is. Thinking ahead and preparing for the next day before it hits us square in the face is a key factor in how well our “family machine” runs. Making sure sport uniforms and socks are washing, ensuring lunch boxes, water bottles and sippy cups are set out and ready for quick assembly, that there’s gas in our tanks… so much of our life requires forward thinking and intentionality. And really, without it, our days are mass chaos.
Being intentional about things in life has never been a disservice to me. Forward thinking, even when not required, has never been to my detriment, so while it requires mental and physical energy on my behalf (and my family, too, most often), I think teaching our kids these life skills (and leadership skills) is to their advantage. This school year, I want to teach our kids how to be intentional with their schedules and their thoughts. I want to teach them to be purposeful – purposefully kind, purposefully thoughtful, purposefully studious.
-by Destini McPherson
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