Summer break is a magical time for kids — especially those first few weeks. You're free! And staring at a long time of play and fun. It's awesome!
For parents of kids who are too young for sleepaway camp, it's more like, "what in the world am I going to do with my kids for the next two to three months?"
Sure, Memorial Day and July 4 holiday offer a welcome reprieve, and you can plan some small vacations here and there. But ultimately everything changes once school's out.
If you send your kid to local camp, it starts at a different time and is often at a different location. Sometimes there's a buffer between the end of school and camp, which leads to trying to figure out how to fill your child's day, if you don't send them to some sort of daytime activity in between. Sometimes TV becomes their friend, and that makes you (by you, I mean me) feel like a bad parent.
Also, a large sector of working adults aren't off these months. We continue to work, while also trying to make sure our kids have that "magical" time we enjoyed when we were their age. It's really, really not easy!
But you know what? We do the best we can. And that's what's most important.
It's just interesting, the difference from being a kid in summer (yay everything is great!) to parent (I have to make sure my kid enjoys their time).
So ... let's all just take it one day at a time and figure it out and have a magical summer! All of us, in whatever way we can!