ChildrenSchool's Out! Are We Happy?
"No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks, throw the pencils in the well, tell the teachers.....". This is a family column so I won't finish the line of the "song" that the entire bus would be singing as we rode home on the final day of school each year. I always remembered the arrival of summer as the most wonderful of events. I was a good student and enjoyed learning but nothing compared to the annual adventure of summertime. I grew up waaay out on Long Island, about 75 miles from Manhattan, and never had the opportunity to spend my summers in camps. But I lived near woods and rivers and the ocean and there seemed to be no end to the adventures one could have when you weren't restricted by the walls of a school building. Even as I got older and had to work, I never lost that thrill of summer's arrival.
As a parent, I looked forward to summer because my profession allowed me to take an extra long vacation and spend time with the family. I was happy that my sons preferred shorter sports camps and didn't go away for a month or two. It seemed to be a time we all enjoyed.
But times have changed and personalities vary. For many young children, school provides an order and stability to their life that is very important. They initially approach summer preoccupied with a sense of loss - a teacher they felt close to, children who may not be around or might even be moving away, the certainty of routine that they prefer. At the other end are often parents who both work and are trying to make arrangements to fill the hours normally covered by the school day. They often wish schools WERE open year-round.
So June is, for some, a time of increasing stress rather than wonderful anticipation. Parents are sometimes surprised by an increase in children's negative behavior near the end of school. Of course, teachers may be running out of steam or trying to finish curriculum that was supposed to be covered by now, so the atmosphere in school may not be very relaxed. But, usually it's more an issue of the child's and family's "fit" with the changes summer brings. We can't let children just hang around any more. The woods are mostly housing lots, the rivers are polluted, everyone is afraid of dangers that can befall children on their own, and so many children are away at camp that there's no one to play with anyway.
The children who like structure will enjoy day camp. But, you may need to first empathize with the losses they might be feeling or with anxieties about what their new environments might be like. This is especially true if none of their close friends will be in their group. Some families have summer places where children ARE free to play and those often become fond childhood memories in their adult years. Children have far less free time these days and have lost the sense of what to do with it when they do have it. I was struck, during the many years that I coached Little League and Senior League, how the kids couldn't seem to gather and play baseball unless an adult organized it!
Many a young teen pleads with parents to be able to just hang around for the summer. In our wisdom, we nearly always tell them they'll be bored but we are really afraid they'll get into trouble. So we insist they sign up for something. I often wonder if we are robbing our children of a valuable experience - or am I just wistfully remembering a past that is simply out-of-date and no longer works for the contemporary family? The main point is that the approach of summer doesn't herald the arrival of wonderful times for everyone and parents need to be attuned to that in case it affects any of their children.
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