My Mom Guilt is Taking Over Summer

It's the middle of summer and my mom guilt is here to stay. With about a month left until school starts again, I can't help but feel like I haven't spent as much time with my kids as I wanted to! Why can't adults take a summer break too?! Yes, I do work from home while my kids are home, but I'm not here. My two boys are also old enough to be vocal about it.

My husband has two days off during the week to keep all three kids entertained. He's always been awesome at doing different kinds of activities with them and being really present. I also have help from grandparents for a few hours on the other days while I take scheduled meetings and/or give work my undivided attention.

Reasons why it's more stressful to work from home in the summer with school aged kids:

Keeping the kids entertained.

This one is hard. We can only do so much during work hours. They all get bored so easily and it's hard thinking of things to do on the daily. I'm definitely guilty of letting the kids have a lot of screen time when I'm solo parenting, but I try to balance it with other activities that don't require too much of my attention (mostly art, board games, and laying out a mat for them to wrestle in). Honestly, everyday is different because I don't like sticking to a strict schedule. Our schedule is more of a guideline so it can be flexible.

Managing summer schedule.

Summer schedule can be complicated at times. On top of the "home" activities we do, the boys also want to do things outside the house and I'm not talking about in our backyard. Their main sport is competitive gymnastics and it's a year-round sport. It's also every weekday so it's the only constant we have. This means everything revolves around gymnastics practice. The other summer camps that my kids do only last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks and the only times we're available are during my work hours. For those days, I bring work with me while I wait for them. Another activity we try to fit in the schedule are play dates. Believe it or not, this is harder to schedule with other parents and unfortunately has only happened one time for us this summer.

School work books need supervision.

We were lucky enough for our school to send home grade level work books and a few reading books for the summer. We make the boys do them to keep their minds exposed to educational stuff other than whatever they're consuming through screen time. However, educational activities aren't always independent. I mean I have one kid that needs help understanding the directions page by page and the other kid asking what every other word is in his reading book. Sometimes, I'm able to multi-task between work and supervising, but let's get real... I just let them do their best on their own until I have a quick second to look over their work.

More snack breaks.

How much do these kids eat?! My husband and I are finding ourselves making more trips to buy all the snacks this summer. I honestly don't really mind this because the boys are very athletic and they can eat whatever they want (under coach recommendation). This also gave us the opportunity to teach the boys how to prepare most of their own snacks. The stressful part is they get sick of the food we have and they complain about it. They'll eat when they're hungry, right?

You end up working more and/or longer hours.

What I mean by this is instead of working a regular 8a to 5p shift, I sometimes end up working 8a to 8p or even longer. In between those hours, I get to take my kids to and from camp and gymnastics, prepare lunches and snacks, supervise workbook and reading time, throw in a load of laundry, and more. Because my job is more of a task-based work with deadlines, I'm not required to sit in front of my computer every minute. Some tasks require more time than others and I simply just complete my task goals by the end of the day, whatever time that may be.

The time you spend with them is not quality time.

This is the why to my mom guilt. Even though I am in the same house, I'm not really spending undivided time with them. My middle child feels it the most. He's always asking to spend more time as a family and to do more fun things. Unfortunately, sometimes we just can't. It's a hard balance and I haven't figured it out. I just hope that one day, my kids will understand why their parents work hard day in and day out.

A lot of our quality time is spent during the weekends and some days where I can take off the same day as my husband. We try to go on mini day trips, even though most of it are planned last minute. In the past, I've taken time off to just relax or to check some things off of my personal list (appointments, organizing the house, etc). This year, I'm intentionally taking time off to spend more quality time with my kids and it's slowly making a difference!