The school year ends tomorrow, and the beginning of parent guided enrichment and supplementary programs begins. The lazy summer does not exist anymore.
Studies show that middle class kids get smarter over the summer, and that lower income kids lose skills over the summer. Why? Because we’re plunking our kids in camps and enrichment programs for ten weeks. Music programs, computer classes, space camps, sports clubs, math enrichment. Kids are busy.
Ian starts camp on Wednesday. He’s going to a Jewish camp that will provide him with a shadow. He’ll increase his conversational skills and build muscles at a camp in the woods about a half hour from here. It means a lot of driving for me. Three hours in the car. The school district first said that they would pay for part of it, because he’s entitled to an extended school year. Then they said they would pay a small portion. Now, they’re not paying for anything. But this is the right place for him, so we’re going to deal with it. Ian needs constant social inputs. Between camps and trips to shore with grandparents, I think I’ll have him booked for almost the whole summer.
Jonah will volunteer at a local camp and start training for cross country. The sports season begins in August. He’ll have much more free time than Ian, but not as much as he would like.
I have mixed feeling about being part of the middle class parent brigade that over schedules her children. Ian needs the programming, so I don’t feel bad about booking him up. Without some organized activities, he’ll spend too much time alone. There are no neighborhood gangs of freewheeling kids. Without some structure, Jonah will sleep until noon every day and that will drive me batty.
If kids grow so much in these private programs that parents set up in the summer time, why can’t the rest of the school year be like summer? What if every kid had a middle class summer experience, all year long?
Apt. 11d 
I would have hated being scheduled all summer when I was a kid. I looked forward to all that free time to read, read, read, and read some more. I wrote plays (from Peanuts cartoon books!) and then directed my siblings in them. We made fairs with fortune tellers and games and invited the adults to come to them. We created our own board games. We wrote a neighborhood newspaper. I feel a little sad that kids don’t have time to get so bored they have to do something about it, though I admit that cable (which I never had growing up) and computers are mainly responsible for that, not camps.
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It hasn’t been established that the activities support summer “growth” (or not-decline.) For middle-class kids, it could be that summer allows more time to follow individual interests. You’d have to compare MC kids in summer camps to MC kids of similar backgrounds who are not in summer camps. I suspect you wouldn’t be able to find a difference, unless you happened to use a particular skill learned at a camp as an assessment point. For example, my children would bomb any test based on knowledge of Japanese, because they don’t know any Japanese. Were we to send them away to a Japanese language camp, such as Middlebury, they’d do much, much better than the norm.
We use the summer months as a time to relax. Everyone spends lots of time reading. We visit family. This summer, we’ll visit some colleges for tours & info sessions. The oldest kid is working, the middle kid will volunteer for a short time, and the youngest will do a non-academic camp for a few weeks.
We do use the time for the youngest to work on skills he needs to keep sharp–math, typing, and (let’s hope) handwriting. Much of that is sheer practice. We’ll visit art and science museums, guided by fairly quirky interests. If the weather holds, we’ll go to the beach. Everyone will sleep in.
Yes, the parents who worry most about college admissions send their children to camps to try to buff up their kids for the application process. But you know, I haven’t really seen any evidence that it pays off, except for the recruited athletes. (and recruited is a technical term. It’s the kids the coaches will put on their lists sent to admissions, not every high school player who wants to play in college.)
I’m very wary of confusing correlation with causation. The average middle class/upper middle-class home may well be a more stimulating environment than the school classroom.
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“For middle-class kids, it could be that summer allows more time to follow individual interests.”
Yes. This summer, nearly all of our kids’ activities were kid chosen. The two things where there was a bit of arm twisting was 1) a 4-hour babysitter training for C (she’s going to get paid by us for her time) and 2) guitar for C (her first individual music lessons ever–she really did not want to do the second lesson). But even the items that required some arm-twisting were chosen very specifically to match the kids’ interests, abilities or needs.
In past years, I’ve insisted that the kids do a minimum of one gifted camp or class and one two-week session of swimming lessons. Above that, there’s a lot of consultation. My one big camp screw-up of the last few years was insisting that they both do a zoo camp–that was not a success (too hot, too much walking around, lots of complaining afterwards).
In the future, we may shift the kids over to doing community college classes instead of the gifted classes, but, once again, that will be largely kid-driven. (I may insist that the kids do a modern language at the community college, as their K-3 Spanish was rather disappointing.)
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Why can’t every child have the middle class educational experience?
Lemme ask another question. How much sarcasm do you want from me today?
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Ha! I deserved that!
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“Without some structure, Jonah will sleep until noon every day and that will drive me batty.”
It will drive you batty, but why? Will it drive Jonah batty? FTR, my Jonah-age kid has 2 weeks of required band/dance camps, 2 weeks of family vacations, and weekly wind ensemble rehearsals for 1.5 hours. The rest I will leave to her to decide, and she’ll spend most of it alone. Doesn’t drive me batty. What drives me batty is driving her around all the time.
The Ian’s-age kid? We’re under strict instructions from his psychologist to push socializing with school friends outside of school and involving him more in our own social occasions. Ugh. Work for me. I don’t want to socialize with anyone, and at age 48, I think I’ve earned the right to hole up in a room and read all day when I’m not working.
I am basically the laziest parent ever.
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I am with you on the driving kids around thing. I frequently joked to my kids that the happiest day of life was getting my driver’s license and the second happiest day of my life was my son getting his driver’s license. Even worse is the expectation that you will stay and watch. I guess I understand that for kids under ten (or, at least I understand what is driving it even if I don’t agree), but when my kids were teens? Really, you expect me to sit here and watch? Why can’t I go do other errands?
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“[S]it here and watch” can often mean “read books on my iPod” or “try to beat Laura’s score in 2048.”
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Of course, I read stuff or worked on proofs etc, but it really would have been nice to be able to go grocery shopping, or pick up the dry cleaning or return movies and books to the library etc with out the kids (my speed through the grocery store was much faster without them), and then come back to pick them up. Instead they were tired and we still had to go to X, Y and Z because of stupid rules.
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Sleeping in was my favorite part of summer. But what got me out of the house was the need to earn money. I realize things are different in the UMC but I remember I and most of my friends doing babysitting and yard/house work under the table till we could reach that magical age 16 when you could get a real job. My co worker’s son is making good money taking a neighbor’s boys to the pool a few afternoons a week. They are lucky enough that the pool is a 20 minute walk so no driving needed. He swims with them some and spends the rest of the time texting his friends. A win win for him and the parents.
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“But what got me out of the house was the need to earn money.”
Yeah, it was an interesting moment when she went on about being excited to go see Neutral Milk Hotel in concert with a few of her friends, and I informed her that we do not pay for concert tickets. I believe the moment, from her perspective, could best be characterized by the words “Oh shit.”
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Wendy,
Funny!
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There are teen activities that require you to sit and watch your kid? We’ve had activities where we might have ended up doing that, but only because no errands or driving away was possible (’cause the activity was too far away).
Sometimes, they need parent volunteers for activities (i.e. scorekeeprs in basketball and baseball, . . ., but we a haven’t had to sit and watch).
The swim club’s policy of letting kids eight and older hang out at the pool is awesome, and, I think, had the potential to change the local membership. Unfortunately, the waiting list is so long that not everyone can belong, and, people set up their schedules without using the option, so they get used to the idea that the kids need the supervision of an organized camp.
We dropped off our kid for an 8:30 swim practice, followed by a 10 AM tennis practice, with a 45 minute interval, and I worried quite a bit about what kiddo was going to do for the 45 minute gap between the two. But, he was fine. I am working hard to teach myself to give him more freedom. Next step is letting him walk the mile home from the pool (totally doable, but also uphill, and with not much experience).
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/30-things-only-antisocial-people-understand?bftw=main
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I hate the gif trend. That’s got to correlate with being anti-social in some way. I had to actually put my hand over the gifs to read through the antisocial article. It has always driven me absolutely batty to see small clips repeated over and over again. Actually, it’s a reason why I can’t stand posters/prints/collectibles with words on them, because I read them over and over again, getting trapped in an endless chain.
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I am SO this parent! Our older one is entering high school in fall, and has mandatory band camp in two week chunks through the summer. The rest of the time, he’s sleeping in, reading all he wants, and hanging out. The younger one will do some math in July to keep her from forgetting everything, but also has only tuba lessons (band) – lots of sleeping in, and a cut back of driving for us parents! Win all around!
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Ever since the city’s system decided that Autistic Youngest was too functional for the special needs camp, we’ve had nothing for her. Fortunately, she’s well into her teens now and with my partner underemployed, he can enact a daily exercise rotation while also supervising her completion of a distance-ed health course (which she needs for her high school diploma).
Summers are a complex combination of geography, economics and class. You have to have the available time, the opportunity and the information to get your kid into a supportive situation. We’re just choosing to use our own time after being continually frustrated in accessing any outside service which is probably what the people who run those systems count upon.
Good luck with your busy summer schedule!
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The big kids’ June gifted camp has a morning session and an afternoon session and my husband was teaching several courses in the camp, so we barely know whether we’re coming or going. I goofed up a couple times thinking I had the car when I didn’t. Hilarity ensued.
Next summer we may wimp out and sign one or both kids up for the lunch option so that somebody else has the headache of picking them up, giving them lunch and then getting them back to class.
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Speaking of camps and middle class experiences, the kids’ gifted summer courses have 1) the traditional gifted camp population and 2) a special scholarship program for promising kids from uncolleged families. They have student mentors (ed majors, I assume) who ferry them between courses and lunch on foot. I’m not sure how the transportation to and from campus works for the program.
The courses on campus are for 4-12 graders with a morning class, an afternoon class, and a long break for lunch in between. Each course is 5 days long and there are three weeks of different courses.
Both programs are run out of the school of education’s community outreach program.
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When they hit 20, they can drive themselves to wrestling camp and get paid to be counselors! YEA!
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My kids mostly wanted to go with me, or stay with me, because I am the most fun there is to be had. If we’re going out, it’s because I’m doing something fun for at least part of it (maybe there will be trying on clothes–which they hated–but there will also be the library and a park). If we’re staying in, it’s to play table top role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or card games or board games or Xbox games (and if you think a kid doesn’t learn reading, math, and socialization through playing Dungeons and Dragons, you haven’t played it). And sometimes when we go out for a meal together we each bring a book and just sit quietly together, enjoying our food and our books. And read aloud good bits of the books to each other in between bites of food. And sometimes we each have “I need to be alone in my room” time, and sometimes it’s all at the same time, but other times we each take our own alone time.
And now my kids are 28 and 24 and would still rather spend time with me than do lots of other things. And so would most of their friends. I’m really glad we did family things, because 20 years on neither of them will be saying “I wish I’d studied piano instead” or “gone to camp instead” (we did go camping a lot, but it was as a family), they’ll be glad they have a close, mutually supportive family to be part of, with lots of shared memories.
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This is really sweet – talk about making good memories…
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I know a mother daughter pair like this, who share a lot of activities, especially over the summer. It’s lovely.
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While I’m lucky enough to work from home, I do work almost full time hours, and I’m in school full time (in a distance degree). So not only are my three kids at home — they don’t have a parent at home with time to entertain them. They are reading books for hours at a time, playing basketball in the driveway, filling up water balloons, watching World Cup soccer, writing their own books, and of course, folding laundry, sweeping unloading the dishwasher and helping prepare meals. They are “busy” but for the most part, not at all scheduled, except my youngest, who is still in swimming lessons. Most parents in my area work, but a lot of my friends’ kids are now old enough to stay home alone. So there are plenty of kids to now play with again.
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I’m going to brag a little–humor me.
Our C (nearly 12) has figured out the geometry for how to do the piecing for star-pattern patchwork quilting. She’s had a couple of quilting classes where they did simpler patterns, but she figured this out for herself out of a book (and with some mathematical reasoning about angles).
She’s also making French toast at home right now–she learned how to make French toast on Monday in a cooking class.
I really like summer camps and classes where the kids take an idea and run with it.
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Yes! and true for school and academic classes, too “where the kids take an idea and run with it.” I call it “transfer” around here, when people are able to take something they’ve been taught, and apply it to something different, and best, when they can run with it creatively.
My favorite quilt pattern is the necker cube (the optical illusion where a block can shift direction.
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