Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to the Women's Mental Health Podcast.
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I'm Randi.
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I'm
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Randi.
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And I'm Jess.
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And we're two licensed psychotherapists.
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This is a safe space where we talk about mental health, well being, and strategies for coping with life's challenges.
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And how all of this is normal and you are not alone..
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In today's episode, we're going to share our insights and strategies as therapists, women, and moms as summer approaches and routines go out the window.
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You're giving me anxiety just saying that.
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Learn how to survive summer with us.
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We're going to dive into the challenges of keeping your children and teenagers entertained and engaged during the summer months.
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Also while you're trying to balance work, family, responsibilities, and most of all, our mental health and sanity.
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Have you ever thought, why am I excited and anxious about the school year ending?
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I literally just said that.
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What am I going to do with my kids this summer?
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How am I going to work and manage my kids?
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Online, gaming, iPad, whatever during summer.
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I don't want it to be a babysitter, but I do want it to be a babysitter, but like, how am I gonna manage this so I don't mess up my kid?
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Why
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do day camps and summer camps end at age 10?
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Seriously.
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And why are they so expensive for all day away camp, half a day, whatever it is.
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I even noticed I was signing up my son for the local, resident, day camp and it's even gone up.
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I think in the last two years, double what it was.
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And I was like, what it's only like a couple hours a day, like two hours a day for four days during the week.
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And I was like, okay, I just need to get back to work to pay for summer camp.
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And then you're like, why is it only half a day?
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I gotta work all day.
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That's the part where I'm like, do I even send him?
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Because how am I supposed to stop in the middle of my work day and go get him?
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And it's then I need to pay a nanny or like somebody else to pick him up.
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And then that's even more expensive.
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Here's the other one.
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What the hell did my mom do with me during summer?
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I think I just drank out of a hose in the backyard and I was on my own.
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I think I watched
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cartoons or soap operas or something.
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I have no idea.
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I
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was talking about watching soap operas with my grandma the other day.
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Probably where all my messed up ideas and relationships came from.
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Guiding light as the world turns.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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What is this summer shift or this summer transition from school to summer?
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What exactly is it?
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I have seen this come up for the last couple of weeks Not just in our home, in other homes where the kids are burnt out, school's almost out, we have another couple of days before school is done.
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Yeah.
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We finally got summer here and it's like all of the, yeah.
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The weather, yeah, is warming up, you want to be outside, yeah.
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There's this excitement.
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Oh, thank God we're done with our routines.
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And then there's this freak out because there's this unstructured and super flexible summer break happening.
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it just really messes up the entire house.
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this transition can be a total challenge for not just kids, but us as caregivers, as workers, it has come up so many times that people are like, I guess we're not going to have sex now because the kids are home all summer because you're like, Oh, we got
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two more Friday.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So it's like your whole routine changes and That can be really hard on your mental health and your kids mental health
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because they don't see their friends they don't have the structure
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A lot of us, especially us who are ADHD rely on structure and when we don't have it and we're left to our own devices.
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We can get squirrely out there and make bad decisions and impulse control.
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That can happen with kids too.
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They get bored and they're just like, Oh, I'm just going to try to dye my hair or dye the dog like purple or, or
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like your son did cut his hair, right?
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Yeah.
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Or color on the wall and it's, I swear, I just turned my head for a second, but also a lot of us work from home, so it's like having our kids home And being that role of a provider, a full time worker, and a full time parent.
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We don't get a break from that during the summer.
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No, because they find you.
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I don't know what it is.
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I have even gone and stretched in the closet.
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I'm just going to go lay and do some stretching in the closet because I need a break.
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And they're all still, Hey, what are you doing?
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Yeah, I'm hiding in my closet.
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Yeah, I'm trying to be away from you and it's like my office doors I have two glass french doors So they can see me and I actually used to have my desk faced the opposite way So they could just walk in behind me and I switched my desk to face the door so I could be like Stop.
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Pause.
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Don't come in.
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Even my teenager, too like, she's the worst.
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She wants to come in, have a full conversation right in the middle of whatever I'm doing and it doesn't matter what I'm doing.
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And I'm just like, okay, let's learn to knock on mom's office door.
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I don't know how you have glass doors.
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I would have put some curtains.
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I would have put that Elmer's glue trick going around on TikTok right now.
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Oh my gosh, I haven't seen it.
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Oh, you haven't seen it?
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Oh, we're gonna have to do that to your office door, right?
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You can just, Frosted with
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Elmer's glue and do designs on them.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah, I couldn't do it.
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That's not happening, but you can buy that stuff on Amazon.
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But, so how does this impact our
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kids?
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So the disruptions to the routines is the big one, right?
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These are, there are abrupt changes and it just leads our kids to feeling disoriented a lot of times and anxious, right?
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And we would think why would they be anxious, right?
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But it's this absence, a consistent schedule.
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It doesn't give them a sense of stability.
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Think about it.
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Some of these kids, they, Eat not they eat at school.
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Yeah before the government ended the free lunches for everybody.
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I know stupid so annoying anyway But some of these kids they go to school and that's where they get their lunches So
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for some kids it can cause like food insecurity Yeah, or the it's taking away their safety space, like if that's a safe space, like if they have a traumatic home life, but just in every day to like regular kids, it's hard to make a huge transition.
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And like my son is on the autism spectrum and he has a super hard time with transitions.
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Yes.
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Like any type of change in his schedule, like he has a very rigid like thinking pattern.
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And so it's always like a huge shift for us.
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So that's why I'm very anxious about this.
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It's I can try to prep and prepare.
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Prepare and do as much as I can, but it's always like a little dicey, like
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a couple of weeks.
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And then it also with mine, right?
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She has this idea that school is ending.
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So are the routines at home, right?
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So it's like a free for all.
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Yeah We're not gonna shower anymore and we're not gonna do dishes and we're not gonna clean up after.
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No, no Okay, so what are some of the, we were just talking about challenges, what are some additional challenges and why do these kids freak out?
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Yeah, so boredom, like we talked about maybe social isolation, if they're not seeing their friends as much, lack of stimulation, like education wise too, like they're not reading as much, they're not engaging in math, they're not engaging like in their core functions too, like their handwriting, their hand eye movement and things like that.
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Yeah, when we used to
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own the tutoring.
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center.
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We would call it the summer slide.
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And these kids would lose so much during the summer because they sat and just watched YouTube videos all day long.
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And this, this contributes to feeling of loneliness in kids and that affects their overall wellbeing if they feel lost.
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And it's so interesting.
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In the last state we lived in, kids wouldn't go play.
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Here, you see these little kids.
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Like just playing by themselves.
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And you're like, where are the parents?
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Where are the parents?
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And people are like, yeah, yeah, just go play.
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And it's such an interesting thing to see state by state and city by city, how we look at kids playing, right?
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Like we have that busy road down the way that is considered a 55 and up.
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And there's kids that jump off the bridge into the river.
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And we're like,
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is that safe?
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What's happening?
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It's very interesting too.
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There's a lot of those like TikTok videos too, that are like in Asian culture, young kids take themselves to school.
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Like they ride the bus, like they go and do like chores, like on, they go down to the store and get stuff for dinner.
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Like they cook and people are like, what's wrong?
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Or people talk about their experience of going to live over there and seeing children.
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And they get all anxious and worried until they start realizing like, That's normal for their culture over there.
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I love that one video of the Asian, there's two little boys.
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One's really tiny.
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One looks like he's four and he's like cooking with oil and he's frying like eggs and stuff.
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People are freaking out, right?
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Everybody in the U.
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S.
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is what?
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And it's, he's got to burn himself.
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I think so.
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a lot of the times we like overcompensate for our kids and baby them like in our culture in a way and that can hold them back from learning responsibilities.
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And I don't want to say we need to push all this responsibility on them, but giving them more responsibility, giving them age appropriate chores and things and tasks can be like so beneficial.
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I find like my son will be like, I can't do this.
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I can't do this.
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But then when I'm like, Hey, do this, Hey, do this.
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Hey, show me you can do this.
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He like gets so excited.
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I'm like, follow me around, like helping me around the house.
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Also because I'm spending time like engaging with now.
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And so I think it's important to maybe give our kids a little bit more freedom and a little bit more responsibility at the same time during summer.
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And that might help us in a way.
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Yeah, maybe.
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You see my kid in the backyard cooking.
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With some hot oil.
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With some hot oil.
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It's cool.
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It's cool.
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It's cool.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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But all of this can also heighten like stress and anxiety in kids, right?
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With the transition, the uncertainty, adapting to a new routine, adapting to a new schedule.
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And same here too, like where we live in our state.
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It stays a light out until 11 p.
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m.
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at night.
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At night.
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Yeah, at night.
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So it's so hard to get a good routine going during the summer because it's like, it's light outside.
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And I even lose sense of time because of that.
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And so does my kid.
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And he's, it's light outside.
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I don't need to go to bed.
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And I'm like, it's 9 p.
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m.
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Our first
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year here.
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We were out, it was still like May or something, and our first year here, we were out in the front yard playing soccer at 10 o'clock at night, screaming and yelling.
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And then I realized it's 10 o'clock at night, crap, everybody else is sleeping, go run in the house quick.
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It wasn't us being jerks.
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Yeah.
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So how does this transition from school to summer impact caregivers and parents and grandparents and things like that?
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It's crazy.
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It is the it's the impact, right?
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It's this adjusting responsibilities.
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It is trying to figure out how do you get the kids ready before your eight o'clock meeting?
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If you're leaving for work, what are they doing?
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It is trying to balance all of this.
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And we've talked about it in our kin keeping series, right?
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This mental load that us as moms, that we're trying to.
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Navigate them.
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It's stupid things controlling the fricking wifi password.
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Or finding extra daycare or childcare or setting up summer camps.
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I was just thinking that the other day, like, why am I the only one signing him up for summer camps?
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Why is my partner not doing research on this?
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Like why?
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And I was like, here, help me find stuff.
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It's not help me.
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No, yeah.
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It was just like, here, do this too.
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Like not asking for help.
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Yeah, yeah, but it is also it is there's so much that we do as moms to make sure that this happens So it's hard when you have little ones And then when you have older ones, you want to make sure that they're not up till three in the morning or they're not sleeping till noon.
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And so who's going to take care of that?
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Yeah, exactly.
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It's my daughter quit her job.
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She's a teenager and I'm like, now you need something else to do.
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She's like laying around the bed and I'm like, Oh no, I don't think so.
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We're not going to do this.
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This summer, but like all of this can really take an emotional toll on us as women, as caregivers, as parents and cause burnout.
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And that affects our, yeah, that affects our relationship with our kids.
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It affects our relationship with our partners, our friendships.
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Oh, and then the whole mom guilt thing, which I think is complete crap, but we all get this feelings of guilt or inadequacy or I don't know how these people take off and go camping all the weekends and how they can either a of.
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All of that how can they take the time to go do that?
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It's just so hard to try to rein in and provide this stimulating activity Or even better is when you think it's going to be a stimulating activity and they fucking hate it Oh my god, I paid this last weekend I did this amazing art thing.
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That's so cool.
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I'm gonna take you next time.
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Yeah,
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she was like no Did she complain the whole time?
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That's what my kids
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She sat there and looked like I told her she had to go pick up the dog poop.
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It was torture.
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She hated it.
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It wasn't her thing.
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Oh, okay.
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And I'm like, I just paid.
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Almost 200 for this really cool art experience.
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We were like hammering copper and enamelling it with glass and putting it in a kiln.
