I made it through my end-of-the-year busy time and now summer is here. After a quickie vacation, we are ready to go. I always find the kids whine a lot the first few days without a schedule. I found myself getting agitated when I realized this always happens the beginning of summer. Sure enough, things have settled down. And now it’s time to add some routine, starting with meals.
Above is my base summer rotation for dinners. I’m keeping it open, as we plan to grill a lot and work on some new dishes. We want to try a few more grilled fish meals as well as some new burger options like bison and possibly another veggie burger. I threw in one steak day even though we don’t cook red meat much. It’ll be good to have an option especially when having people over.
I find Fridays in the summer are often spent at the pool or we do potlucks with our neighbors. I planned for very easy serve-yourself dishes most Fridays that can always be changed last minute. I’m also going to make a new rotation for breakfast and lunches since my kids will be home most of the time. More about that next time.
A summer of learning
As I mentioned in my last rotation, I’m focusing on some key learning goals for the kids since they are out of school. First is food.
I plan to have some fun lessons about different aspects of eating, food and some nutrition, starting with the basics of taste and moving through each of the food groups. The point is to explicitly teach my kids about food and its properties and how meals are thrown together. We will also work on cooking skills. I signed up for Chop Chop’s online cooking school for guidance and recipes to make together. I’ll be sure to blog about our progress.
Last year Little D spent the summer in an intense program at Lindamood Bell because he wasn’t able to learn to read in school. This summer, I’m taking over the role of helping him read along with his regular speech sessions. We will have learning time after breakfast for about an hour. This will include reading books, decoding words, learning new sight words and computer games (Nessy Reading). Big A will also be reading, getting on Khan Academy and learning about illustrations to help me with a future book.
The kids will also go to a couple of camps — one in July and another in August. The challenging part for me is balancing work, exercise and the activities of summer. I will get up early most weekdays to get in 2 hours of writing, and the kids will go with me to the gym. I will also work while kids get screen time.
I just remind myself that summer is the time I back off work a bit and spend more quality time with the kids. School will come soon enough.
What are your plans this summer?
What’s been working
Out of all the things we’ve tried recently to teach our kids responsibility, two have worked pretty well. First is every Saturday morning is “clean your room” and “wash your clothes” day. So after breakfast the kids clean their rooms and then sort their laundry into lights and darks. They wash their clothes with help from us. This has been going well and it’s nice to get their laundry done in one day and not have to worry about it during the week. Big A is almost to the point where she can do the laundry herself. Except folding, we need to work on that.
We also have been doing weekly allowance. We are not always good about remembering but we catch the kids up when we do remember. The rule is if they want something they don’t need, like a toy or game, and it’s not their birthday, Christmas or special occasion, they need to pay for it with their own money (they also get some money for their birthdays in addition to allowance). It’s interesting to see how different they are.
Little D was obsessing about this Hot Wheels track and kept going on about how much he wanted it. We told him he had to pay for it and online it was around 47 dollars. He only had thirty something dollars and we calculated that in a couple of weeks he would have enough for his toy. Little D doesn’t like to wait so this was challenging to say the least. So once it seemed like he had enough money, he was still a couple dollars short. We said we’d cover it for him since he has been so patient (not really but he did wait). Then it came time for him to give us ALL his money, and he just started sobbing.
Him: “I won’t have any money left!”
Us: “Well, you don’t have to buy it. This is how mommy and daddy feel about a new house. If we buy one, we won’t have as much money — and will be spending more every month — so we want to be sure about it.” (Little D thinks we should be able to just buy any house we see.)
Him: “I still want it.”
Big A thought he made a “big mistake” spending all his money and she decided against buying something that she felt would take away a good chunk of her stash. Sure enough, when Little D wanted an X-box game a week later and didn’t have the money, he was sad. We talked about being careful about what you spend your money on, and I think it’s starting to sink in.
I feel in today’s world teaching kids the value of money is so important. We are on our way…
In the news…
Research shows it over and over — commenting on their child’s weight is not the way to go.
Really interesting new research about how responsive feeding in infancy cuts overweight risk in toddlerhood by half. We describe how to feed responsively in Fearless Feeding.
Fat shaming starts in first grade? Time to educate all of our kids about size diversity.
Study shows restrictive diets can result in iodine deficiency in young children. A reminder to be careful when limiting foods without professional guidance.
Sandra Aamodt author of the new book Why Diets Makes Us Fat explains why diets are so problematic in this New York Times opinion piece.
On another note, a graduate student emailed me about her research on Parental Attitudes Towards Healthy Eating. She’s looking for parents to fill out her survey here. It should only take about 15 minutes.
That’s it for now. Have a great summer!
Want to create your own family dinner rotation? My latest book What to Cook for Dinner with Kids helps you step-by-step through the process.