A Silver Lining to Simply Not Having the Bandwidth
When Robbie started prek3, we were supremely lucky to snag one of the limited spots in his school’s aftercare. A friend’s daughter, in kindergarten at the time, was at the same school and also registered for aftercare. A month into the academic year, the friend pulled her daughter from aftercare because, she said, it didn’t have enough enrichment programming. It was glorified babysitting.
My friend has a flexible schedule and was able to rearrange work to be home with her daughter after school every day. Jon and I do not, and we feel incredibly lucky to have access to glorified babysitting at a reasonable monthly cost. Even now, with Robbie in first grade, we feel the same. And anyway, what’s the alternative? We both work full time and can’t afford a nanny or au pair who would chauffeur our kids to and from afterschool activities.
On vacation last August, while catching up on links I’d had open in my browser for weeks, I finally read We Don’t Need to ‘Make the Most of Summer’ from Melinda Moyer’s excellent substack. (And yes, I recognize the irony in that!) Her kids are older than mine so she’s grappling with issues that we aren’t yet facing; Robbie, at 7, is only on the brink of the pressure to sign up to every extracurricular on the sun - or to devote himself 24/7 to a single one - and his friends aren’t doing anything so entrancing that he feels FOMO. That said, I do still understand this on a visceral level:
One of the problems with our culture is that we work so hard for so long, stuffing our wants and needs under our desk chairs and minivans, and then we hope and expect the world of our time off… As parents, we often bear these hopes and expectations on behalf of our kids as well. They want the most epic summer vacation imaginable, too, perhaps because they have been overscheduled and overworked during the school year.
When Jon and I are at work, which includes all but a few weeks in the summer stretch, our requirements for our children’s care are pretty basic: they need to be safe, we want them to have fun, and we have to able to afford a situation that offers both of the above. We don’t have the bandwidth to optimize their summer activities when we’re working by signing them up for specialist camps (which never last for a full workday, by the way, and require additional bridge care). We’re fortunate, especially because my mother is local and helps out when needed, and yet we simply don’t have the option of fully maximizing summertime.
Honestly, I see this as a silver lining. It forces us to, paraphrasing Moyer’s words, ask ourselves whether we can build lives that make us feel satisfied all year around rather than obsessing over what we can do to make our summer the most epic (or productive) one imaginable. It releases the pressure on our weekends together and on the weeks that Jon and I do take off during the summer. We want to have adventures, yes, but they’re adventures of our own defining and our own choosing. Because, again, what’s the alternative? We don’t have the time or money to even try to achieve epic on a grand scale. And, at this stage, that’s perfect for our family.
