Summer Break Without Schedules: What Happened When We Did Nothing

What happens when you give kids an unscheduled summer break? One mom finds magic in the mess of doing absolutely nothing.

Every summer, parents scramble to fill the calendar with camps, activities, and enrichment programs—anything to keep kids busy and productive. But what if summer break wasn’t meant to be packed with plans? In this excerpt from Why Can’t We Just Play?, Pam Lobley explores what happens when one family ditches the hustle and lets their kids do . . . absolutely nothing. No structured playdates. No science camp. Just pure, old-fashioned free time—like a summer straight out of the fifties—and a surprising look at what kids (and parents) discover when boredom is allowed to breathe.

School’s Out for Summer

“Should we cut down on meat during the hot weather months? Nutritionists tell us the answer is NO!”

—American Meat Institute ad, 1952

“Come ‘n’ get it! The steaks are ready, and are they mellow!”

—Bud, Father Knows Best, “Margaret Goes Dancing,” 1954

“Mom, can I put sugar on my hamburger?”

—Jack, experimenting

Day One

Our first day of summer vacation was great. We slept in; I gave the dog a nice long walk. Sam and Jack stayed in their PJs until we got our bathing suits on to go to the pool around eleven a.m. As I mentioned, I was really counting on the pool. And the minute we got there, Sam sighed and announced that he was bored and the pool was stupid.

Twenty minutes later, Sam was having fun in the stupid pool with his boring friends. Thank goodness. Jack had found some friends, I spotted some of my favorite moms, and I just knew that summer was going to be fabulous. I felt the delicious pleasure of ten pressure-free weeks stretching out before me.

After a couple of hours, thunder sounded and they closed the pool. We went home and some friends came over, but they only stayed an hour because they had a baseball practice. So they left, and Sam was bored again. Was it too late to sign up for camp? Could we go buy a Lego? A new video game?

I knew they would be bored and whiny, but I didn’t think it would happen in the first twenty-four hours.

I suggested that we all have a quiet reading time, like for a half an hour, and the boys howled like I’d stuck them. So I let them turn on the TV, and I read, and then I fell asleep in the chair, and then I woke myself with my own loud snoring. Nice.

After the thunderstorm, Sam went outside and invented a new game: Awning Ball. He batted the Wiffle ball onto the awning over our patio, let it roll down, and then batted it up again. I felt triumphant. The first day of vacation and already his boredom was showing dividends. He was so resourceful! He was so creative! Of course, he kept running back and forth in the same spot and would most likely wear a path in the grass, causing his father to burst a vein, but never mind; he was entertaining himself in a wholesome summertime manner.

Bill came home and wanted to make a special first-day-of-vacation dinner on the grill. I normally would have said no to this because Bill takes three hours to prepare any meal, but since it was vacation and I was trying to be more relaxed, I said OK. We ate dinner at half past eight. After we ate, the kids played Awning Ball. Bill didn’t notice the grass thing. It felt like the 1950s. I had a glowing sense of satisfaction.

It had been a great first day of summer. We didn’t rush; we played outside; we dealt with boredom; we dealt with thunderstorms; we enjoyed each other’s company; we ate healthy food; we didn’t care what time it was. Terrific.

Just seventy-three days of summer left to go.

Day Two

My plan was to get my writing done in the morning and then have the rest of the day free to be the perfect 1950s mom. How telling is that? Though I was committed to being a ’50s housewife, it still did not occur to me to give up working, even for a couple of months. Like many of the women in my generation, I define myself by my profession. This is understandable when you are a doctor, or a teacher, or a businesswoman that makes a good salary. But what if you’re a humor columnist for a local newspaper with a paycheck that doesn’t even cover the grocery bill? Wasn’t I actually a SAHM with a hobby, not a career woman? Yes. Ouch, but yes.

Probably many writers have felt like this at times—that their career was really more of a hobby.

In any case, I love my kids more than my career and always will, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want that career.

I had been working continually since having the boys, but mostly on projects that made little or no money. My daily focus had been on the children, but I was ready now to devote more time and energy to writing and make some real money. We needed the money, as all families do, and I needed to get some positive reinforcement in the form of cash. Giving my children some independence seemed like the right way to get more time for myself. And now I had convinced myself that going back to the 1950s would actually free me up to focus on my writing.

You see, normally my day was a choppy mess of shuffling kids, making meals, “quick” phone calls, last-minute errands, laundry, and trips to the gym to try to stave off middle-age flab. Before I knew it, it would be dinner time and I would have barely written two pages. I don’t think this was how Hemingway got it done.

But, I told myself, this summer would be different. I wouldn’t be flying around in all directions and driving kids to swim team practice or making lunches or picking kids up from camp. I would be able to finish a book and a play and easily produce my bimonthly newspaper columns.

Self-delusion—thy name is Mommy!

What lies we tell ourselves so that we think we can do it all. Needless to say, my writing goals eventually clashed with my 1950s goals and caused a depressing emotional reckoning in August. But in the beginning of the summer, I was blissfully ignorant and had convinced myself that I would be a terrific 1950s mother and break new ground in my career.

While I was ascending to literary greatness in the morning hours, the kids played and watched TV. At some point, they would take out blocks and Legos and start building, all over the living room floor. They created exquisitely detailed structures: prisons, space stations, rockets, boxing rings with trapdoors. By ten a.m., you couldn’t even walk through my living room, but who cared . . . my children were engineering geniuses!

One morning, I was sitting at my desk and Jack came up to give me a little Lego spaceship he had built himself. He had put it together out of spare parts, and it had three different shooters, a place to hold the captured bad guy, and a little section that detached and acted as a jetpack. He made it just for me and was so proud of it. I gave him a big hug and praised all its features two times then set it on my desk and got back to work. A few minutes later, he came back in and said, “Um, Mom? You know that spaceship I just gave you? Could I play with it for a while?”

By late morning, the bickering would start. The boys would get bored with TV and bored with building, and they would decide to spice things up by picking on each other. That’s how I knew it was time to stop writing.

I didn’t have a set time to write each day—I just worked until the fighting got loud.

I summoned the energy to go through their school backpacks, which were loaded down with the year’s detritus. I threw away mountains of stuff—worksheets, drawings, graded tests, colorful projects. It felt good, like a purge, and sad, like a farewell. My gosh, the year went fast. I felt a rush of relief that they were with me all day this summer. It made me feel like they were not growing up too quickly.

I tried to keep this feeling of warmth and closeness when I loaded them into the car to take them with me on errands. Banishing thoughts of “LEE SAR SAY” and “itchy butt crack,” I tried to envision us having a pleasant, productive time as we accomplished small life tasks and spent unhurried time together. The whole point of this summer was for me to take a new approach to parenting. Taken from this vantage point, errands aren’t a roster of chores that we have to finish before we can do something fun together—they ARE the something fun we can do together.

Our first fun errand of the summer was getting the dog vaccinated.

Of course, the kids didn’t want to do this because it meant turning off the TV. But then they realized that watching someone else get a shot might be kind of cool, so we all piled into the car.

Our dog, Oliver, was almost a perfect dog. A poodle/terrier mutt from a shelter, he was extremely affectionate, great with kids and other dogs, and never chewed on anything. He was thoroughly devoted to me. I swear he knew I spent months searching for him on Petfinder.com and hours of marital upheaval convincing Bill that we should get a dog.

We all wanted a dog in the worst way, except Bill. Bill did not want a dog. He knew that once we got a dog, his lawn would be under siege. Forever.

We got the dog, and we all loved him, even Bill. We just had to adapt.

We fenced the yard, and we let Oliver out freely, but only during the winter months when the grass was dormant anyway. I would walk him a couple of times a day to make sure that most of his business was done around the neighborhood, not on our lawn. Once the spring came, it got trickier. During the growing months, April to October, Oliver was not supposed to be unsupervised on the lawn.

If we were all outside having a cookout, or playing, and the dog wandered over to the grass to pee, our family went to DEFCON 2.

First, someone would shout the alert that the dog was sniffing, circling, and would most likely squat at any second. All activity would come to a halt. Someone would run and stand near Oliver and mark the spot. Someone else would retrieve the large bucket of water, which we always have at the ready, to pour over the spot and soak it, thereby hopefully minimizing the damage. If, by some hideous mistake, the bucket was not at the ready, someone would drag the hose out from the patio, shoving innocent dinner guests out of the way as the muddy hose flopped across the grass to the offending area, then another person would turn on the water—“TURN IT ON NOW!”—and saturate the area.

Occasionally, Oliver would squat a long time, his little eyes half closed in a super-relaxed fashion, as he was having an extra-long and really satisfying pee. No amount of water or quick action could save the spot in those cases.

When the dust settled after the watering, we returned to DEFCON 5: Watchful Waiting. Then we would conduct a series of postmortem repercussions like why wasn’t the bucket filled (IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE FILLED), who didn’t walk the dog earlier like they should have so that he wouldn’t have had such a full bladder, is the dog drinking too much water, etc. Then Bill would huff a sigh, because nobody appreciated how hard he worked to keep the lawn nice, and refresh his drink, and the dog would find a nice comfy spot to lie down.

To be a part of our family means to live in deference to the lawn, and Oliver coped well with that.

Like I said, he was almost a perfect dog, except for one thing. He threw up in the car.

We’d tried everything to help him stop puking. We thought it was just nerves and he’d get past it. He didn’t. We tried Dramamine. Didn’t work. The only thing that worked was a tranquilizer, which we would use when we drove someplace that took a long time, like on vacation. Other than that, we packed paper towels.

The vet was the maximum distance the dog could handle before he puked. A short drive to the park was no problem, and the few blocks to the groomer was OK, too. But the vet was a borderline situation, and we all hoped for light traffic.

Having the kids along with me when the dog threw up didn’t really help the situation. Rather than holding the dog or handing me a paper towel, they would just shriek and provide color commentary. “Ewww, it looks just like his breakfast!” “It smells disgusting!” “He’s going to eat it!”

The traffic on this day was light, and we got to the vet just fine. The kids were very helpful and fun to have along. On the way home, we spotted a nice, modern-looking desk at a neighbor’s curb. It had been set out for trash, but it was in perfect condition.

Taking other people’s trash is a major suburban sport; if it doesn’t sound fun to you, then you haven’t tried it.

I pulled over and told Sam we were taking the desk. He loved the idea. It felt like stealing, even though it wasn’t, and that appealed to him.

We sweated and tugged and hoisted and finally got the thing into the back of the minivan. The desk was absurdly heavy, and I could never have done this by myself. I reminded myself that if Sam were in day camp right then, I would not have been able to get this desk. Having a 1950s summer was really paying off.

The desk didn’t fit in the trunk, so we lowered the third row of seats, and then it still didn’t fit, so we lowered the second row, which meant Jack had to sit on the floor next to the dog. We slammed the doors and drove off. The dog puked.

“Gross!” Jack screamed. “It looks like egg yolks!” “Grab his collar,” commanded Sam, “before he tries to eat it again.” “It’s dripping off his chin!” wailed Jack.

I was right! Errands are something fun we can do together!

At home, Sam helped me drag the desk out of the car and up the driveway. Then he and Jack went inside. I cleaned up the dog. I cleaned up the dog puke. I washed off the desk, sweating profusely and getting sloppy water all over my clothes. The kids were relaxing inside watching TV. I stopped. Why was I busting my rear end out here while they simply relaxed in air-conditioned comfort?

Disturbing Realization: My Kids Are Lazy Bums Because I Allow Them to Be

I am embarrassed to admit that my husband and I weren’t making our kids do chores. At the ages of eight and ten, they had never so much as emptied a wastebasket. Sure, they made their beds. They cleaned up, sort of, when we told them to. But all year long, we rushed around so much and they were so busy with homework and activities that it seemed counterproductive to make them do chores, too.

For instance, often Sam would not be done with homework until eight thirty, and he still needed to shower and get to bed. Was I going to make him stay up later to fold his laundry? No. Watching him fold/stuff his T-shirts into a drawer at nine p.m. when I could have just tucked him into bed and then retreated downstairs to watch television would be more of a sacrifice than I could handle. I wanted him to go to bed!

On weekends, my husband and I would mow, weed, tidy, mop, launder, and polish while the kids watched hours of TV or played with friends. We let them watch all that TV because it kept them out of our hair while we were cleaning. Sam and Jack certainly could have done chores if we had simply made it a part of our routine. But Bill never wanted the boys to help in the yard because they wouldn’t do it the way he likes it, and he couldn’t stand that. I didn’t make them dust or vacuum because I did it better and faster than they could.

The obvious answer to these problems would have been to simply teach them to do it the right way. Mmmhmm.

A few months earlier, I had tried to teach Sam how to do laundry. We stood in front of the washing machine while I explained about the knobs . . . cold water, hot water, etc. He nodded as if he understood. I went on to discuss soap, and he started fiddling with all the pens and coins on top of the dryer. He used a pen to draw something on his hand. I took the pen away and began explaining about dark and light colors.

He put a Bounce sheet over his face and said, “Mmm, this smells like my clothes . . .” I pointed out that yes, it did, because those sheets go in the dryer with your clothes, but first we have to wash them. I turned on the water to fill the machine. He leaned into the washer, intrigued by the flat stream of water gushing forth. He stuck his hand in it. He took it out and stuck it in, took it out and stuck it in, watching the water flow change shape with each move of his hand. His sleeve got soaked.

We put the soap in and then the clothes, and I started to show him how to clean the lint from the dryer trap. He took the fuzzy ball we scraped off and rolled it his hand. “This is so soft,” he cooed. Then the soft lint became paste in his wet hand. I told him to go wash his hand. “Then can I watch TV?” he asked.

After that, I kept him away from the laundry room for quite some time. Several years later, when he was going off to be a counselor-in-training at camp, I showed him how to do his own laundry. He did a wonderful job.

At that moment, in the driveway with the recently acquired desk, I realized that my kids should be doing some regular chores, just like kids in the 1950s did. I resolved to start that right away. But not just then, because that whole desk move/dog puke thing had exhausted me. I just wanted to do it myself and get it done.

Day Thirteen—I Think

One afternoon, I was relaxing at the pool, reading a book, when Jack came over to me, fuming and tearful. He had tried to join a stickball game and a kid had told him, “No, you can’t play.” When he asked why not, the kid said to him, “Because you suck like crap.”

At first, I thought this must be some older boy, or a bully. But no, it was a boy Jack’s age, eight, who had been a pretty good friend of Jack’s last summer. I was caught totally off guard. I didn’t know eight-year-olds talked like that. Furthermore, Jack had never played stickball before in his life, so how did that kid know if Jack sucked or not?

Jack was fighting back tears but also piping mad. My first instinct was to march over there to the ball field, give that fresh kid a talking-to, and make sure Jack got to play. But then Jack would get branded as a tattletale and a baby who needs his mama. So then I thought maybe I should find that kid’s mom and talk to her about it. But then the kid would get in trouble, and Jack would still be branded a tattletale and a baby.

I put on my cover-up and marched around to a few of my mom friends to tell my story. I could feel my rear end flapping around under my cover-up as I walked, undermining my dignity. Never mind. I was on a mission. My friends were suitably outraged. Their first reaction, like mine, was to interfere and help Jack out.

What that kid did was wrong, and a grown-up should fix it. Or should we?

I knew that rough talk and playground battles were part of growing up. I couldn’t always make it fair for him. Life is not fair. If this was the 1950s, I would be at home ironing my sheets, not in close enough proximity to solve his problems.

The book I was reading when Jack came over lay open on my chair. I had picked out all kinds of history books, memoirs, and current child-rearing tomes to help guide me through my 1950s summer. I was comparing the two time periods: what was the culture like back then, how did people feel about their lives and their families, and how did parenting today become so suffocating and angst ridden?

Today’s book was A Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano. An editor at Psychology Today magazine, she had noticed a trend in adolescents: increasing anxiety, depression, immaturity, and delayed independence. She posits that invasive parenting has turned our kids into a bunch of wimps. They can’t stand up for themselves or weather setbacks or make decisions. In an effort to make life better for them, we parents have made it too easy for them, and this ultimately makes weak adults.

By now, we all know about snowplow parents. Most of us probably are snowplowers, at least at one time or another.

It goes like this: if a kid doesn’t study for a test and gets a D, snowplow parents might go talk to the teacher and explain that the kid had a playoff game the night before and was really tired and could he please retake the test? In this way, the parents pave the way for their kids, giving them a smooth ride. It would be better to let the kid suffer through the humiliation of the bad grade and learn that he can bounce back. He will need to work extra hard to pull up his grades after that bad test, and if he does so, he will have the pride of accomplishment and the security in knowing he can rebound from failure.

I had seen many parents snowplow, and it bothered me, but it also made me feel pressured to act in the same manner. After all, if every kid has a parent smoothing the way and pushing them forward, what chance would my kid have to get ahead? Wouldn’t I need to smooth and push also?

But I stepped off that merry-go-round, right? I was supposed to be back in the 1950s, when people raised resourceful, resilient kids by letting them handle problems by themselves.

What would I be teaching Jack if I walked over and forced those kids to let him play? I would be teaching him that he is not able to handle his own problems. I would be sending him the message that he is still too young to stand up for himself and that I don’t trust him to bounce back from a difficult situation.

What a huge relief this line of thinking provided. It’s not my problem! I don’t have to do anything . . . in fact, I am supposed to not do anything! I am simply supposed to think of something tasty for dinner! The parents of the 1950s had it so easy.

I couldn’t just do nothing, though. Poor Jack was miserable. It’s one thing to let him handle a problem himself; it’s another to ignore your child when they are crying and in distress. I borrowed a Wiffle ball and bat from a mother and got another young boy, and we got our own game going on the grass. Jack got some good hits, and he cheered up, but I knew something was still not right. This was not at all what a 1950s mother would do.

Now I had failed in both decades. I was not practicing confident, hands-off 1950s parenting nor was I successfully butting in to Jack’s life with a correct and safe contemporary anti-bullying message.

I was in some weird, ineffectual middle ground in which I didn’t stand up for my child, didn’t trust him to sort out his own feelings, and was forced to pitch sweaty Wiffle balls to a couple eight-year-olds when I would have preferred to just read my book, which, in perfect irony, was about parenting. Alrighty then.

After twenty minutes, it was too hot to keep playing, and the kids went swimming. I went back to my chair, uneasy that I didn’t handle that very well, and worried about Jack. If he never got to play baseball, would he have a sports inferiority complex? Was he going to be the kid people picked on? Would I ever escape obsessive parenting compulsions?

At dinner that night, Jack told us that later in the day, the “suck like crap” kid tried to get in on a game of tag Jack was starting. Jack told him no because of his earlier “suck like crap” comment. The kid, probably a bit surprised at being so directly confronted, backpedaled and denied that he had been referring to Jack; he tried to make it sound like he had been referring to some other kid. The kid apologized. Then Jack let him play tag.

So Jack handled it on his own after all. He was more resourceful than I thought. I was surprised and then kind of ashamed.

Why hadn’t I trusted him more? This incident was a clear indication that I could let go and give him more space without worrying.

This was exactly the kind of revelation I was hoping for!

Hooray for me. I had decided to go back to the fifties—we were all enjoying it so far. I had decided not to meddle too much in Jack’s squabble—and he handled it better than I would have. I felt clear and confident—something I hadn’t felt as a parent in a long time.

Discover How to Successfully Plan a Do-Nothing Summer

^{Excerpt from Why Can’t We Just Play? by Pam Lobley.}