Summer is when being a WAHM (Work-At-Home-Mom) has it’s challenges.
Two boys are suddenly home all day and summer camps create odd chauffeuring schedules. The challenge is to keep the focus on work without letting them focus only on iPads or Computers.
I always think back to summers at that age. My mom was a study at home mom for a long time – she was getting a PhD – before she became a work at home in the summer mom as she prepared for her classes in th fall. She was every bit as busy as I am, but (and this could be the wonderful myopia of nostalgia) I don’t remember TV or gadgets being such omnipresent lures in our summertime day.
I remember hopping on bikes and spending all day pedaling miles to visit friends or walking to the pool for the day – sometimes expecting to see our mom in the afternoon. Other days we’d walk home with our friends and spend a quarter at the candy store or at the ice cream truck.
One thing that makes my kids’ summer so different is our location. They have an abundance of nature right outside their door, but we don’t live in the suburbs. We live on a dirt road in the middle of a minor mountain. They ride bikes in the driveway and, even though they’re 6 years apart, they do play together a little. But there aren’t miles of sidewalk-lined paved roads with neighborhoods full of friends to bike to. There’s no walk to the local pool, and sometimes I worry we’re shortchanging them.
But, as I’m ordering a porch swing to retro fit on the swing set that only gets used as a slide and daredevil jumping spot, I’m thinking not only of my home office for the summer. I’m planning an outside place to snuggle with seven-year-old Thing2 as he makes his way through the Harry Potter books this summer and a spot where I can listen to them argue about who’s going into the woods this time to get the baseball. And I’m still determined to make sure they get their summertime memories. And it won’t be with an iPad.