How to End Summer with Less Stress and More Joy

Darlynn: [00:00:02] Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host, Darlynn Childress, a life and parenting coach. It's the 6th of August if you're listening to this as it comes out, and I bet a bunch of you are looking at your calendar anticipating school starting next week. You're counting backwards from the first day of school, thinking, "Okay, if school starts in a week, we need to start moving bedtime up tonight, we need to cut off screens, we need to start getting back into it." And your kids are still very much in summer mode — staying up late, sleeping in, no schedule — and you're about to spend the next seven days fighting them on all your new rules trying to get back to the routine.

Darlynn: [00:00:53] So if that's you — if you're prepping and wanting to plan and get back to the routine, and you're feeling stressed about school starting and thinking these kids are out of control, we need to buckle down and get them ready — I want to talk to you about that today. I want to talk you out of thinking that way. Not because routines don't matter — of course I want you to have good sleep routines and bedtime routines and screen routines. I love routines. But this isn't the week to force your routines, because as much as I love routines, I know from experience, from coaching hundreds of moms and my own family, that when I try to force it too early it ends up backfiring and causing me more stress than it's worth.

Darlynn: [00:01:34] So I want to talk today about savoring this last week instead of stressing over it before school starts. If your kid's school doesn't start for a week or two, just bookmark this podcast and save it for the week before your kids go back to school so you can have this reminder.

Darlynn: [00:01:54] I often hear from moms right around this time, and I've already heard it in my own coaching practice, that they feel they're supposed to be getting ready for school in a very specific way. They're like, I've got to get early bedtimes, I've got to cut back on screen time, I've got to start getting them up early, and I have to get them back into chores. There's this instinct to get it all organized. I want to make the case today that even if you put in all that effort, it won't actually work, and it will make the end of the summer stressful instead of enjoyable.

Darlynn: [00:02:34] So let me talk to you about what's worth doing, what you shouldn't try to do, and why I want you to spend this week savoring the last bits of summer instead of scrambling and feeling stressed.

Darlynn: [00:02:44] Before we get into why I don't really want you to force getting back into your back-to-school routines right now, I do want to acknowledge why you might be feeling that way. On one hand you might think this is best for the kids, but what I've noticed in my practice is that a lot of times we as moms are desperate to get the routines back online. We justify that by telling our kids, or telling ourselves, that we have to do it because it'll help them get ready for school. It actually doesn't really prepare them for school, and I'll talk about why in a minute.

Darlynn: [00:03:14] But I want to acknowledge that you are eager to get them back into school. You're eager to get those bedtimes back online, eager to get those morning routines up and out the door, because you've had two months of very little schedule, a lot of togetherness, and a lot more decisions and logistics with less structure. You might just be plain worn out, and bringing that routine back early is about you. It's giving yourself that feeling of control, a little predictability, and a sense that we're getting back to normal after the summer.

Darlynn: [00:03:55] And I want to say that's a completely legitimate reason to want structure back. That could happen at any point in the summer, and it can also happen in the school year. There are periods of time where our routines or our boundaries or our limits get sort of squirrely, and maybe we get off track and we need to go back to the foundations and reset bedtime, reset screen limits, reset snacks.

Darlynn: [00:04:25] Those are important things to do as a parent when you start to feel like things are getting loosey-goosey around your house. But in the summer, that happens normally. So if you are feeling like an earlier bedtime or a tighter evening routine will help you feel calmer and more regulated right now, that's a good reason to do it.

Darlynn: [00:04:45] But I don't want you to feel like you need to justify getting back into the school routines before school starts just because that's what good moms do. If you want structure because you want it, that's great. But if you're feeling pressure to do it because you think it will help your kids, I'm going to tell you that forcing it early doesn't actually help your kids have better success once school starts.

Darlynn: [00:05:05] The distinction I want you to make is: are you getting back to routines because it serves you, because you need the predictability, because you're depleted and this will restore you? Or are you doing it because you think you're supposed to, because good moms get the routine going early, because you'd feel guilty otherwise? One is taking care of yourself, and the other is pressure dressed up as responsibility.

Darlynn: [00:05:36] If it's the first one — if you want to get back to structure and routine because it will serve you — great, know that you will probably have a lot of resistance from your kids because they are still in summer mode. School hasn't started, and they don't believe in prep time, so it might be very challenging to get your boundaries and routines back online. But if it's important to you and you want to do it now, go ahead, don't apologize for it. If you find yourself doing it because you think you should, that's the pressure I want you to let go of this week, because you don't have to.

Darlynn: [00:06:06] Now here's why. The idea is that if we give our kids a week before school starts, they'll have more success once school starts — but that's not actually how it works. It doesn't create a smoother transition just because your kids have gone to bed early. The truth is they are not ready to go to bed early because they haven't gone to school yet and had that experience.

Darlynn: [00:06:26] Have you ever tried to prepare yourself for jet lag by moving your calendar up an hour so that when you get somewhere you won't have jet lag? It doesn't really work, because you can't force yourself to fall asleep when you're not tired. That's sort of what happens when you try to fix routines early. The school schedule itself is the routine — that's what creates the routine for your kids.

Darlynn: [00:06:57] So when you try to add that back in before school starts, you end up fighting about bedtime because your kid isn't tired at 8:00 p.m. just because you've decided it's bedtime. They're tired at 8:00 during a school week because they woke up at 6:30, went to school, sat still, and socialized all day, and their body is actually ready to wind down. You can't manufacture that tiredness or rhythm just because you declare it's time. The circumstance of school does most of the work for you.

Darlynn: [00:07:38] Once school starts, your kid has to be up at a certain time, they're active, they're mentally engaged, they're around other kids, and they're using up energy in a way that summer's late mornings and lazy afternoons don't require. That structure is what naturally pulls your kid back into routine with sleep, screens, sweets, and all the different rhythms school offers. It's not something you need to preload a week in advance — it's built into the first few days back to school.

Darlynn: [00:08:09] So if you try too early, you might end up with a lot of frustration. You're going to say lights out and your kids are all wired up, and you'll get frustrated and they'll get frustrated. The last week of summer that's supposed to feel fun and easy and delightful will end up feeling tense instead.

Darlynn: [00:08:29] I actually coach moms out of pre-routining their kids for this reason, because I want you to have ease and stress-free experiences with your family. I want you to enjoy your family and enjoy the last bits of summer, to squeeze it out and savor this last bit like slurping up a milkshake with a straw, taking all the last bits in instead of rushing into the next week. If your kid is still on summertime internally and you try to rush them into school time, you're going to create friction for a routine that's going to happen naturally anyway the moment school circumstances start.

Darlynn: [00:09:10] Now, I'm not saying don't do anything, because it can be pretty rough to get a kid up at 7 if they've been getting up at 10:00 a.m. So you may want to, one or two days before, get them up at their regular school time so they are more tired that evening, and try to get them to bed at a regular time or a little earlier than you have been.

Darlynn: [00:09:30] Bedtime might still be challenging, but you won't have a whole week of challenges. I'd rather you have just a little bit of a head start than turn the whole last week of summer into a battle and negotiation and frustration. So that's all you really need to do to get ready for school: a night or two of earlier bedtime and a couple of days where you wake them up at the time they'll wake up for school.

Darlynn: [00:10:00] You can build in that school schedule a little bit — maybe if your school starts on Wednesday, do it Monday and Tuesday. But I want you to feel free to have that whole last week of school without getting into the discipline and the structure and the rhythm of it all. Just wait, because school itself is going to do that.

Darlynn: [00:10:20] Now the other permission I want to give you is that it's okay if the first few days of school are rough. I have an episode coming out next week called Back to School Shit Show, because I want you to know that after a couple of days of school you will end up with a very tired, overwhelmed, and dysregulated kid.

Darlynn: [00:10:40] Even if you are perfect and you adjust everybody, they're still going to be overwhelmed, because the demands of school themselves are overwhelming and demanding. So if your mornings are slow, if your kids are tired and cranky in the afternoon, if bedtime is still a fight the first week even after school starts, that's not a sign that you didn't prepare. That's just what it will look like even if you did prepare.

Darlynn: [00:11:00] So why bother preparing? Also, I want you to know that teachers expect kids to be a little bit of a mess once school starts. They know kids are coming off of summer, they've done this every year with every batch of new kids, and they know the first week of school is not anyone's best week. So no one at school is judging your kid for being tired or a little off during the first few days, and there's no reason for you to judge yourself, panic, or think you need to have fixed something before the bell even rings.

Darlynn: [00:11:31] Give the transition back to school a couple of weeks. That's what it's going to take, and you don't have to have it all solved on day one.

Darlynn: [00:11:42] So if this week isn't about installing the school routine, what is it about? I'd say it's still summer, right up until the first bell rings, and I think this week deserves to be treated that way — not as a training camp for school, but as the last stretch of the summer you've been in for the past two months.

Darlynn: [00:12:01] There was a tradition in my family, all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade, that I did with both of my kids, because we didn't like that summer ended. It honestly felt sad, like saying goodbye to that slow, looser rhythm. Years ago, when my son was in kindergarten, he came home from school on his first day a little grumpy from the heat and sad that school had started.

Darlynn: [00:12:32] So we made a decision on the spot: let's pretend summer's not over. My two boys and I jumped right into the pool fully dressed in our school clothes, and we did that every first day of school for the next twelve or thirteen years. It became our way of saying the transition back to school doesn't have to erase the thing we're leaving behind.

Darlynn: [00:12:52] We can still savor it even though we're back to school — we still get to spend time together, we still get to enjoy each other, we still can have fun. And I want this last week to be that for you.

Darlynn: [00:13:02] That's the spirit I want for this last week before school. Don't spend it bracing for school — spend it actually being in the summer: the pool, the lake, the river, the creeks, the late nights, the lack of schedule, the extra ice cream at night, because that's going to end soon enough on its own without your help.

Darlynn: [00:13:22] So what I want you to take from today is that you don't have to force the school routine into place a week early. It mostly won't work, and it'll cost you a stressful last week of summer for very little payoff. The one thing worth doing ahead of time is nudging bedtime earlier the night or two before school starts. Everything else, you can just wait until the school rhythm builds into your actual life rhythm.

Darlynn: [00:13:52] There's an adjustment period — it's going to be bumpy, teachers expect it, you can expect it, and it's okay. And if you want the routine back early because it genuinely helps you feel steadier, go for it, just make sure that's the actual reason and not a "should."

Darlynn: [00:14:02] So I want you to try this this week: pick one summer thing — a late night, a pool day, an unstructured afternoon, a movie marathon, ice cream by the lake, or whatever you do — and actually savor that one last thing on purpose. Instead of spending time worrying about school starting, enjoy that one last thing and make it meaningful.

Darlynn: [00:14:22] Okay, that's it. I hope you have had a wonderful summer, and that you kick off the school year well when it starts. I will talk to you next week.