Summer brings a mix of emotions for parents. On one hand, it’s a time for rest and recharging, vacations and trips. On the other hand, it’s often a stressful time. With school out, parents have to devise a master plan that allows them to continue to earn their paychecks while keeping children and teenagers occupied in meaningful activities.
This often leaves parents in a double bind. The summer camp industry has grown significantly over the past few decades offering productive, skill-enhancing alternatives during the working hours. But these camps are often cost prohibitive. Parents with younger children may have to choose between shifting to a single income with a stay-at-home parent or exhausting their savings with camps or babysitting. Even if one parent stays at home, long days with less structure can cause kids to wander into destructive habits. This dynamic only increases in these final weeks leading up to the start of the school year.
How do we balance rest and work, keeping our children from being destructive without overburdening them? Here are three principles that can help.
Define the Goal
Every parent should have a clearly defined goal for their children during the summer months. As a Christian kid parent, it should fall in the realm of the gospel. We are to raise children in the training and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). Every activity (or inactivity) should reflect this goal in some way, so that they grow into a deeper understanding of the love that Christ has for them. You may even want to write out a mission statement for this season and share it with your children if that helps.
There are many Proverbs that speak of the destructiveness of being idle, but the overarching message is that, as human beings, we need to spend every day learning about and growing into the image of Christ. Mere activity, while it may minimize destructive behaviors, will fall short of this goal without the proper focus. Even church activities can’t change our children apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. Whatever we do should be done for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).
Find the Balance for Each Child
The Bible presents two equally important realities: a warning against idleness and an invitation to rest. Consider these two verses:
“Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger.” (Prov. 19:15)
“Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’” (Mark 6:31)
Every parent must learn how to balance these two biblical priorities because there is a strong tendency to take each one to an unhealthy extreme.
If parents only consider the verse in Proverbs, they can fall into thinking, “My child must constantly be active, involved in some activity somewhere all day because if she isn’t, she will become lazy, slothful, and destructive. Therefore, I must put her in a camp every week, enroll her in a travel league on the weekends, and maintain a highly rigorous academic schedule.” The downside is that children can get burned out, exhausted, and disinterested in activities they may otherwise enjoy. They may retaliate in passive-aggressive ways.
And while parents want to take rest seriously, they may take the invitation from Mark to rest to an extreme. They might think, “School was grueling; give the kids a break.” Adults, however, will use 10-12 weeks of free time differently than children. Children require a certain amount of stimulation and managed activity every day. If not, their boredom can lead to destructive patterns of behavior.
Every child will fall somewhere along this spectrum of activity and rest. As parents, we need to gauge where our children fall and make adjustments as needed each year. Some need constant supervision. Others need a certain amount of physical activity each day to burn off their excess energy. Some need time alone to process their thoughts and the world around them. Some need a certain amount of social interaction. We need to reevaluate every year for each child because all of these tendencies can change with age. The child that needed constant supervision at eight wants more independence and alone time to process at 14.
Practice the Sabbath
Families should practice the sabbath all year, not just in the summer. After all, it is the fourth commandment. As a matter of fact, practicing a regular sabbath of rest one day per week throughout the year can make the summer much more manageable. Instead of coming into the summer months burned out and overly exhausted from spending every waking hour over the past nine or 10 months busily running from activity to activity, we can approach it with a better sense of balance for both ourselves and our kids. God designed us, so it’s best to trust his judgment. As Jesus says, “The sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27). It is a gracious limit imposed by our Creator that, if followed, allows us to flourish in Christ.
Gospel-Centered Summer Focus
Whatever our summer plans are, as parents we need to ground them in the principles of the gospel. Our main role is to be conduits of the Lord’s work by helping our children be conformed into the image of Christ. Rest isn’t merely an opportunity to indulge in our desires; it’s an opportunity to step back to enjoy God’s creation and reflect on the direction of our lives.
On the other hand, our kids also need to know that they aren’t working to earn God’s favor or make our lives easier, but out of the love he has shown them. Whether we are working or resting, everything we do or plan to do throughout the year is for God’s glory in our lives and our children’s lives.
The Asian American Parenting podcast offers help and hope as it looks at how the Gospel intersects with Asian American faith, culture, and parenting.
