My kids are twenty-somethings now, and what I've learned is that trying too hard to create "memorable" moments is futile. What I remember from their childhoods and what they remember from their childhoods are completely different moments. Their memories are not under our control as parents. What your son will remember is how much he was loved. It us so clear from your writing that your family is the center of your world, and that is all that really matters.
I really, really appreciate the transparency you shared here. It is so easy to look at Instagram and think everyone's summer involves multiple weeks off to scenic destinations (mine definitely doesn't!) and I've always had a hard time reconciling the idea of "summer" with the reality that my full-time job still requires just as much of me. And my daughter is only 18 months so still in full-time childcare - I can't imagine how much more challenging it will be to juggle camps, summer care, etc. Just wanted to write in that it sounds like you're doing an amazing job (and your kid likely DID have a great summer) and thanks so much for sharing so transparently!
Love your work, Lindsey. I work for myself now as a consultant, after years in a 9-5, and most recently at a pretty intense gig. One thing I’ve learned: working for yourself, you often can take more time off than you think. I know every situation is different, and any time off is a privilege in our country, but for years I shorted myself out of fear of losing clients or missing opportunities or even a particularly stupid fear of losing some ambiguous relevance. I've started planning several weeks off a year and blocked others for reduced work time and it really seems like no one has noticed. I know you're starting on new endeavors, and our work is different, but sending you a boost for your time-off planning for next year!
This is great advice, Emily! I've made the excuse that this was a summer of building, but it was also a summer of learning that I need to be more protective of my time!
I've never been able to recapture family vacations from my youth. I tried. It didn't work. Ever. My parents must have spen a lot of money to take our annual trips to Florida. I cherish the memories.
We didn't take summer vacations. Everybody else (my friends and extended family) spent fancy summers on Lake Michigan, heading up to Mackinaw Island, heading to the amusement park at Sandusky, and so forth. I spent summers entertaining myself, playing golf, riding my bike, going to my grandpa and grandma's cottage (about 12 miles away by bike) and playing badminton in the yard.
The planned family vacations were magical, almost dream like... but the summers spent home 'just doing' is what I missed most as an adult and what I sometimes daydream about.
You never know what your kid might look fondly back on... but I suspect it will be the moments spent with you... and this is priceless.
Great read, it brought back a lot of (good) memories for me. Thank you.
I’m 27 and these days I get excited to take my parents on vacation. They’ve openly admitted that vacations have become more enjoyable for them after my sister and I passed our teenage years since they dont have to worry about taking care of us and entertaining us. We’ve grown into a beautiful adult relationship and its funny learning about some of their memories from childhood trips where we were just kids having fun and they were adults struggling to act like they had it all together. You have many more than 18 years with your kid!
We are lucky to live in an area with a ton of outdoor access, but our favorite summer vacation is camping! We can camp at the beach, on the mountain, on a different mountain, at a lake...just for the cost of a campsite (about $30/night) and gas. We've been collecting used camping gear slowly over the years, so besides our tent haven't spent very much money on equipment. Camping isn't for everyone but it's a great low-cost way to get lots of fun time outside - we're just about to do our fourth long weekend this summer. Sometimes we only go for one night which makes it easy to squeeze in a night here and there when we can. And, it gets easier the more you do it - we have our go-to meals and our packing list, so there's not a ton of planning required. Again, not for everyone but highly recommend it for those who think it sounds fun!
Sorry about your bummer summer. Maybe this will make you feel better: I spent $$ and time planning a week-long family trip to Niagara Falls, and then mere hours before we set off to leave I discovered that my passport expired in October (we were staying on the Canada side). I had taken care of one trillion things for everyone else and forgot that detail. I never forget things! I tried everything under the sun but we ended up having to cancel the trip and didn't get any of the money back for the AirBnB or hotel. Then I had to scramble and plan a week of fun staycation activities. My kids will 100% remember this summer as the year mom forgot to renew her passport and canceled the trip they were looking forward to..
Don't give up on Coney Island! It's easy to never get to places that are nearby (I think you are in NYC?) because you don't have to make a big plan to get there, but that doesn't mean it requires 0 planning. But it will be warm for a while and even in winter it is worth going to. Brooklyn was my grandfather's favorite place so after his passing we took a family trip to Coney Island to celebrate his life. It was February 2020, we ate hot dogs at Nathan's and walked on the boardwalk. So happy we did it because it ended up being our last family gathering for a long time.
I may be in the minority, but I think staying home with the kids all summer is a gift! I LOVE not having big stressful trips to plan and execute. My kids love lazy days where we go to the park, garden in the backyard, and sit on the porch. I don't think just BE-ing is a waste of a summer at all. Kids mostly just want time with us, so maybe a better thing to focus on is finding time away from work to give more attention when school's out (not all the time or anything, just what you can manage) and don't worry about planning big trips.
I marvel when I see my friends doing Hawaii one month, Yosemite the next, and quick plane trips out to visit people in between. Seems tiring! I'm so happy to just be home and in community with our neighborhood and neighbors. An adventure for us is to bike to another neighborhood and play in a new park. We have family in town which helps too, of course. Just another perspective to throw into the ring :)
I know I talk about this a lot, but because travel is expensive, we have gone all-in on staycations in our own backyard, which we’ve turned into an oasis. Last weekend, my daughter and her family (they live near Chicago, three hours away) visited. We swam, grilled, played in the treehouse and had a ball … while my daughter sat in the house alone with her laptop, working. She was behind and badly needed some quiet time. But she knew the kids were having fun and she did take some play breaks. My son also came over. So we all got to enjoy some time together.
Sometimes you just have to do the best you can! And honestly, when my kids were growing up we didn’t take any real vacations beyond visiting relatives and one weekend in Chicago and one weekend in St. Louis. Travel is a privilege denied to many. After I married Harrie and after my daughter graduated from high school, we managed to go to Europe so they could see where he is from and meet his family. It was somewhat affordable because we stayed with one of his siblings. That’s the sole real family vacation my kids got with me, and it was at the end of their childhoods. But it’s far more than I experienced growing up, which for me puts things in perspective.
A rich friend could not believe my family of origin only took one vacation. She assumed I meant “other than Florida” because, she said, “everybody goes to Florida on spring break!”
You can have wonderful family time anywhere, and it sounds like you did get that, so don’t worry about the rest!
Thank you, Michelle! I'm sure your daughter really appreciated the quiet time! I feel less guilty working during the summer when my son gets to hang out with my mom.
This was the most refreshingly honest motherhood piece I've read in a LONG TIME. Thank you so much. Summer is definitely when I feel the full time corporate working Mom guilt most intensely. The biggest differences for us when school starts up is that we have actual full day childcare (since they do aftercare at school until 6pm and most camps end at 4pm) and lunches are provided. Otherwise, they've been in camps all summer as we worked (save 1 week vacation). I tell myself that the camps are enriching and fun and not "school" so they are playing. And I know my friends that are home with their kids all summer are also pulling their hair out. But I spend a good deal of time wondering if we should move (we are in DC so basically have to be a dual income household to stay afloat), if I would even want to cut back at work, is this just reality in 2024 and the grass will always be greener? I don't think there is a right answer.
Anyway, as my Mom continually reminds me, if you are thinking about your child's feelings, memories, and your actions this much, then you have to be doing something right. Your son is one lucky kid.
I so badly want to "cut back" in the summer as I often read about people doing - getting out of the summer camp rat race! doing local outings to the park and lazy afternoons at the pool! - but I truly do not know what that even looks like in my career? My job is necessarily in-person, and I am not my own boss. I am employed with a salary, not a freelancer. In theory we have "unlimited" time off but in reality I take so, so much time off around all the random school holidays, the weeks before camp starts and after camp ends but when there still is no school, etc - that taking random "staycation weeks" off to desperately attempt to approximate some of that "lazy summer" feeling is just not a feasible option. But it's not like I can just put my job on hold and take a "light season" and then come back full swing in September. It's a 9-5 salaried position and people rely on me.
Lately I feel like so many of the newsletters I subscribe to have been talking about opting out of the summer madness - cutting back on work, taking no big vacations to account for the work cutback, getting out of the camp craziness, and just "hanging out." And I feel so much like.... who can even do that? Sometimes I feel like an enormous failure for not having figured out a way to "be my own boss" and therefore just be able to find a way to "make do" with less income for a season. I could make do with less income for a season, but unless I had a reason to qualify for FMLA, my job would be filled by someone else when I "came back." It gives me so much grief, especially because my kids do not really love camp, at least no camp we've tried so far. They are not having epic weeks at camp while I am over here fretting about not doing better. They are asking me why some kids' moms don't have to work and why I do; why some kids only go to camp for a few weeks, for fun, where they have to go every week, even when they badly do not want to. I grieve the summers I wish I could give my kids, and every year I vow to do better...somehow, but I just don't know what to do differently.
I feel this whole piece so deeply. I work a full time corporate job and the guilt I feel about working all summer and not being a fun summer vacation mom is immense. Kids, of course, don't notice a thing, but I feel bad that I'm working all day and their summers aren't the fun, adventurous, beach going, lazy things that it seems like everyone else gets to enjoy with their kids. I know that's not true, but I can't turn that off in my brain.
Sorry your summer sucked, Lindsey, but I hope you can let yourself off the hook. I feel like summer is truly a pressure cooker of unreasonable expectations and while we stress about all the things that aren't going well, all kids care about/remember is eating ice cream or buying a cheap sword at a gift shop. i still haven't figured out how to do summer "right" but maybe i need to just let go of the idea that there is ever a right way to do it under the pressure of caregiving and late capitalism and anemic care infrastructure. And thanks for mentioning The Double Shift!
I feel like I am suppose to plan a vacation that makes everyone else happy and if it’s at my expense then that’s ok (it’s not but that my irrational brain). I had an anxiety attack on our recent trip to Destin with my little family because I had to work, but my husband was mad that I had to work, and I didn’t know who to make happy. He is wonderful and was more mad at the situation than me, but I felt (and still feel) intense pressure to figure out how to make it all work. Really appreciate your transparency ❤️
I feel like there are definite pros/cons to social media at play here, for sure. We have been really fortunate to do a beach vacation for 10 years (since we moved to the east coast) and in some summers, I've pulled off two (one with my mom, one with other families who are friends). But my feed is full of my kids' friends spending 2 weeks in France, or a month in Brazil, or visiting family in Europe with a "side trip" to the Olympics, and the like. As much as I enjoy the scenery, I also wonder how they are affording it and sometimes feel envious. Summer is also hard because it's my husband's busiest work season so he almost never gets to come with us (since you can't really be a performing musician remotely). I don't feel bad about using my PTO, but I do have trouble not working on vacation, knowing what I'll come back to when I return. I agree that TIME is the second biggest challenge (behind money.)
My kids are twenty-somethings now, and what I've learned is that trying too hard to create "memorable" moments is futile. What I remember from their childhoods and what they remember from their childhoods are completely different moments. Their memories are not under our control as parents. What your son will remember is how much he was loved. It us so clear from your writing that your family is the center of your world, and that is all that really matters.
Thanks so much, Tracy! This means so much to me! They really are the center of my world, and I'm glad that comes through in my writing!
I really, really appreciate the transparency you shared here. It is so easy to look at Instagram and think everyone's summer involves multiple weeks off to scenic destinations (mine definitely doesn't!) and I've always had a hard time reconciling the idea of "summer" with the reality that my full-time job still requires just as much of me. And my daughter is only 18 months so still in full-time childcare - I can't imagine how much more challenging it will be to juggle camps, summer care, etc. Just wanted to write in that it sounds like you're doing an amazing job (and your kid likely DID have a great summer) and thanks so much for sharing so transparently!
Thank you, Abby!
Love your work, Lindsey. I work for myself now as a consultant, after years in a 9-5, and most recently at a pretty intense gig. One thing I’ve learned: working for yourself, you often can take more time off than you think. I know every situation is different, and any time off is a privilege in our country, but for years I shorted myself out of fear of losing clients or missing opportunities or even a particularly stupid fear of losing some ambiguous relevance. I've started planning several weeks off a year and blocked others for reduced work time and it really seems like no one has noticed. I know you're starting on new endeavors, and our work is different, but sending you a boost for your time-off planning for next year!
This is great advice, Emily! I've made the excuse that this was a summer of building, but it was also a summer of learning that I need to be more protective of my time!
I've never been able to recapture family vacations from my youth. I tried. It didn't work. Ever. My parents must have spen a lot of money to take our annual trips to Florida. I cherish the memories.
We didn't take summer vacations. Everybody else (my friends and extended family) spent fancy summers on Lake Michigan, heading up to Mackinaw Island, heading to the amusement park at Sandusky, and so forth. I spent summers entertaining myself, playing golf, riding my bike, going to my grandpa and grandma's cottage (about 12 miles away by bike) and playing badminton in the yard.
The planned family vacations were magical, almost dream like... but the summers spent home 'just doing' is what I missed most as an adult and what I sometimes daydream about.
You never know what your kid might look fondly back on... but I suspect it will be the moments spent with you... and this is priceless.
Great read, it brought back a lot of (good) memories for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Patti! There is something to be said about being a kid and having nothing but time in the summer.
Yes there is. 🌹
I’m 27 and these days I get excited to take my parents on vacation. They’ve openly admitted that vacations have become more enjoyable for them after my sister and I passed our teenage years since they dont have to worry about taking care of us and entertaining us. We’ve grown into a beautiful adult relationship and its funny learning about some of their memories from childhood trips where we were just kids having fun and they were adults struggling to act like they had it all together. You have many more than 18 years with your kid!
I love this so much, Millie!
RT!!! Me and my 3 siblings spend SO much of summer with our parents now and it’s truly the best
We are lucky to live in an area with a ton of outdoor access, but our favorite summer vacation is camping! We can camp at the beach, on the mountain, on a different mountain, at a lake...just for the cost of a campsite (about $30/night) and gas. We've been collecting used camping gear slowly over the years, so besides our tent haven't spent very much money on equipment. Camping isn't for everyone but it's a great low-cost way to get lots of fun time outside - we're just about to do our fourth long weekend this summer. Sometimes we only go for one night which makes it easy to squeeze in a night here and there when we can. And, it gets easier the more you do it - we have our go-to meals and our packing list, so there's not a ton of planning required. Again, not for everyone but highly recommend it for those who think it sounds fun!
Sorry about your bummer summer. Maybe this will make you feel better: I spent $$ and time planning a week-long family trip to Niagara Falls, and then mere hours before we set off to leave I discovered that my passport expired in October (we were staying on the Canada side). I had taken care of one trillion things for everyone else and forgot that detail. I never forget things! I tried everything under the sun but we ended up having to cancel the trip and didn't get any of the money back for the AirBnB or hotel. Then I had to scramble and plan a week of fun staycation activities. My kids will 100% remember this summer as the year mom forgot to renew her passport and canceled the trip they were looking forward to..
Oh no! That really sucks!
Don't give up on Coney Island! It's easy to never get to places that are nearby (I think you are in NYC?) because you don't have to make a big plan to get there, but that doesn't mean it requires 0 planning. But it will be warm for a while and even in winter it is worth going to. Brooklyn was my grandfather's favorite place so after his passing we took a family trip to Coney Island to celebrate his life. It was February 2020, we ate hot dogs at Nathan's and walked on the boardwalk. So happy we did it because it ended up being our last family gathering for a long time.
I love this, Jasmine! What a special tribute to your grandfather!
I may be in the minority, but I think staying home with the kids all summer is a gift! I LOVE not having big stressful trips to plan and execute. My kids love lazy days where we go to the park, garden in the backyard, and sit on the porch. I don't think just BE-ing is a waste of a summer at all. Kids mostly just want time with us, so maybe a better thing to focus on is finding time away from work to give more attention when school's out (not all the time or anything, just what you can manage) and don't worry about planning big trips.
I marvel when I see my friends doing Hawaii one month, Yosemite the next, and quick plane trips out to visit people in between. Seems tiring! I'm so happy to just be home and in community with our neighborhood and neighbors. An adventure for us is to bike to another neighborhood and play in a new park. We have family in town which helps too, of course. Just another perspective to throw into the ring :)
I know I talk about this a lot, but because travel is expensive, we have gone all-in on staycations in our own backyard, which we’ve turned into an oasis. Last weekend, my daughter and her family (they live near Chicago, three hours away) visited. We swam, grilled, played in the treehouse and had a ball … while my daughter sat in the house alone with her laptop, working. She was behind and badly needed some quiet time. But she knew the kids were having fun and she did take some play breaks. My son also came over. So we all got to enjoy some time together.
Sometimes you just have to do the best you can! And honestly, when my kids were growing up we didn’t take any real vacations beyond visiting relatives and one weekend in Chicago and one weekend in St. Louis. Travel is a privilege denied to many. After I married Harrie and after my daughter graduated from high school, we managed to go to Europe so they could see where he is from and meet his family. It was somewhat affordable because we stayed with one of his siblings. That’s the sole real family vacation my kids got with me, and it was at the end of their childhoods. But it’s far more than I experienced growing up, which for me puts things in perspective.
A rich friend could not believe my family of origin only took one vacation. She assumed I meant “other than Florida” because, she said, “everybody goes to Florida on spring break!”
You can have wonderful family time anywhere, and it sounds like you did get that, so don’t worry about the rest!
Thank you, Michelle! I'm sure your daughter really appreciated the quiet time! I feel less guilty working during the summer when my son gets to hang out with my mom.
I’ve been struggling with my own “lack of vacation” summer woes and your transparency and perspective is so appreciated here 🩷
Also - We always took family vacations (from Nashville) to Destin too! So many rich memories. My grandparents still love there 🥹
Oh, I love that you know Destin! And as someone who now spends time in the Cape, you can appreciate the differences, LOL.
Yes! 😅 Culture shock when I moved to Boston and started going to the Cape / MV with my husband’s family…
This was the most refreshingly honest motherhood piece I've read in a LONG TIME. Thank you so much. Summer is definitely when I feel the full time corporate working Mom guilt most intensely. The biggest differences for us when school starts up is that we have actual full day childcare (since they do aftercare at school until 6pm and most camps end at 4pm) and lunches are provided. Otherwise, they've been in camps all summer as we worked (save 1 week vacation). I tell myself that the camps are enriching and fun and not "school" so they are playing. And I know my friends that are home with their kids all summer are also pulling their hair out. But I spend a good deal of time wondering if we should move (we are in DC so basically have to be a dual income household to stay afloat), if I would even want to cut back at work, is this just reality in 2024 and the grass will always be greener? I don't think there is a right answer.
Anyway, as my Mom continually reminds me, if you are thinking about your child's feelings, memories, and your actions this much, then you have to be doing something right. Your son is one lucky kid.
I so badly want to "cut back" in the summer as I often read about people doing - getting out of the summer camp rat race! doing local outings to the park and lazy afternoons at the pool! - but I truly do not know what that even looks like in my career? My job is necessarily in-person, and I am not my own boss. I am employed with a salary, not a freelancer. In theory we have "unlimited" time off but in reality I take so, so much time off around all the random school holidays, the weeks before camp starts and after camp ends but when there still is no school, etc - that taking random "staycation weeks" off to desperately attempt to approximate some of that "lazy summer" feeling is just not a feasible option. But it's not like I can just put my job on hold and take a "light season" and then come back full swing in September. It's a 9-5 salaried position and people rely on me.
Lately I feel like so many of the newsletters I subscribe to have been talking about opting out of the summer madness - cutting back on work, taking no big vacations to account for the work cutback, getting out of the camp craziness, and just "hanging out." And I feel so much like.... who can even do that? Sometimes I feel like an enormous failure for not having figured out a way to "be my own boss" and therefore just be able to find a way to "make do" with less income for a season. I could make do with less income for a season, but unless I had a reason to qualify for FMLA, my job would be filled by someone else when I "came back." It gives me so much grief, especially because my kids do not really love camp, at least no camp we've tried so far. They are not having epic weeks at camp while I am over here fretting about not doing better. They are asking me why some kids' moms don't have to work and why I do; why some kids only go to camp for a few weeks, for fun, where they have to go every week, even when they badly do not want to. I grieve the summers I wish I could give my kids, and every year I vow to do better...somehow, but I just don't know what to do differently.
I feel this whole piece so deeply. I work a full time corporate job and the guilt I feel about working all summer and not being a fun summer vacation mom is immense. Kids, of course, don't notice a thing, but I feel bad that I'm working all day and their summers aren't the fun, adventurous, beach going, lazy things that it seems like everyone else gets to enjoy with their kids. I know that's not true, but I can't turn that off in my brain.
Sorry your summer sucked, Lindsey, but I hope you can let yourself off the hook. I feel like summer is truly a pressure cooker of unreasonable expectations and while we stress about all the things that aren't going well, all kids care about/remember is eating ice cream or buying a cheap sword at a gift shop. i still haven't figured out how to do summer "right" but maybe i need to just let go of the idea that there is ever a right way to do it under the pressure of caregiving and late capitalism and anemic care infrastructure. And thanks for mentioning The Double Shift!
Cheap sword at a gift shop. So true! 😂❤️
I feel like I am suppose to plan a vacation that makes everyone else happy and if it’s at my expense then that’s ok (it’s not but that my irrational brain). I had an anxiety attack on our recent trip to Destin with my little family because I had to work, but my husband was mad that I had to work, and I didn’t know who to make happy. He is wonderful and was more mad at the situation than me, but I felt (and still feel) intense pressure to figure out how to make it all work. Really appreciate your transparency ❤️
I feel like there are definite pros/cons to social media at play here, for sure. We have been really fortunate to do a beach vacation for 10 years (since we moved to the east coast) and in some summers, I've pulled off two (one with my mom, one with other families who are friends). But my feed is full of my kids' friends spending 2 weeks in France, or a month in Brazil, or visiting family in Europe with a "side trip" to the Olympics, and the like. As much as I enjoy the scenery, I also wonder how they are affording it and sometimes feel envious. Summer is also hard because it's my husband's busiest work season so he almost never gets to come with us (since you can't really be a performing musician remotely). I don't feel bad about using my PTO, but I do have trouble not working on vacation, knowing what I'll come back to when I return. I agree that TIME is the second biggest challenge (behind money.)