As Sequoia High School students are on spring break this week, this is just a preview of the 10-week summer break they get in just a couple of months.
It is a dilemma to have a teenager at home during the summer. On the one hand, you would like them to relax and decompress from the stress of school/homework/grades and extracurricular activities. On the other hand, you don’t want to have them just lying around the house. It is tempting to fill up their time with chores, cultural and fitness activities.
As adults, we wish we had that 10-week period of free time to catch up on reading, have social activities, and enjoy the outdoors. We usually have to cram all of our “relaxation” into one or two-week vacations that are often hectic with travel plans. Why don’t kids appreciate the long summer break and make better use of their time?
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Of course, some teens have summer jobs, sports commitments, leadership camps, community service, etc. They seem just as busy during the summer as they are during the school year.
But other kids just seem to be wasting time. But is this lazy time of summer really a waste?
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Denise Pope, a Senior Lecturer at Stanford University, has done research on “Stressed-Out Students” and is the co-founder of Challenge Success, a research and intervention project that aims to reduce unhealthy pressure on youth, and champions a broader vision of youth success. She points to research that the number of students being treated for depression has doubled in the past five years to 3.22 million, and kids 9-13 are more stressed by academics than any other stressor (even bullying or family problems).
The website www.challengesuccess.org includes parenting guidelines. Among them is “Maintain play time, down time and family time. Avoid over-scheduling.” This seems like a good starting point for making our summer plans with our teens.
As the summer school break approaches, it is a good time to talk to our teenagers and ask them about ideas and plans for their time off. It may be that they would like to have some scheduled activities, and would appreciate parental help getting signed up for those. But we need to allow them time for recuperation and relaxation. They need private time to be alone with their thoughts and dreams. As parents, we may need to resist the temptation to fill up the summer with responsibilities.
