During the school year, your family probably follows a familiar routine. When school is over and your kids are home all day, your normal routine can go out the window. While it’s fine to give your kids more flexibility during the summer, you don’t want to give them too much freedom.

Why It’s Important to Have a Summer Routine
Structure is important for everyone, but especially for kids. Routines create predictability and stability.

When kids don’t know what to do or what to expect, they’re likely to act out, spend too much or too little time sleeping, eat a lot of unhealthy food and not exercise. A lack of structure during the summer can also make it harder for kids to adjust when it’s time to go back to school.

How to Design a Schedule That’s Right for Your Family
Don’t micromanage and plan every day down to the minute. Your kids are on vacation, after all. You should, however, create a daily and weekly routine so everybody knows what to expect.

Involve your kids in the planning process. They’ll be more likely to stick to a routine if they had a say in creating it. Write down your family’s schedule and post it in a place where your kids can refer to it as needed.

What to Focus on When Designing a Summer Routine
It’s important for kids to have consistent bedtimes and wake up times during the summer. You don’t have to stick to the same schedule that you followed during the school year, but you should make sure that your kids follow a routine and get enough hours of sleep each night.

Have meals and snacks at approximately the same times every day. That will help you avoid complaints and temper tantrums.

Schedule blocks of time for different types of activities, such as playing outdoors, reading and watching TV. Let your children make choices (within reason) so they have a sense of control over their lives and don’t get bored. For example, your kids might want to use their outdoor time to play basketball one day, then the next day they might prefer to ride their bikes or go swimming.

Encourage your kids to keep learning over the summer. Set aside some time every day for reading. Look for other learning opportunities, such as educational apps and trips to local museums.

Find activities that your kids can participate in every week. Playing baseball with friends every Monday or having a standing play date every Thursday can give your kids something to look forward to and make the long stretch of summer vacation seem less monotonous.

Set Individual and Family Goals
Maybe your child was interested in reading about a topic of interest, or perhaps your family wanted to redecorate the living room or clean out the garage, but there wasn’t enough time during the school year. Summer vacation is the perfect opportunity to tackle those types of projects.

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