Getting our summer off on the right foot with three rules and a guideline

School ended mid-June and we didn’t have any particular plans, though lots of potential opportunities for activities and small trips. Our big summer trip is still several weeks away, and the kids and I were looking forward to spending our days until then the way we often have in years past – biking, swimming, walking to the ice cream stand, visiting friends – but when the heat and humidity descended just after the last day of school, I noticed we were acting more irritable with each other than I had hoped.

So rather than feel defeated by my decision (with which the kids had concurred) not to schedule camps and lessons but to just fill the time ourselves, I tried to rally and think about specific areas to target for improvement. I’ve noticed over the years that the kids and I all do well with lists. Past experience has taught me that it doesn’t help to say “We need to stop being irritable with each other and generally discontent and instead start having summer fun together”; I need to identify specific behaviors to change. In other words, we do well with rules. Or guidelines.

So I thought about what was going wrong. The kids were complaining too much. Inevitably, what one child wanted to do inspired the other to complain. And then the roles would reverse. One would make a decision about how we should spend our afternoon and the other complained; we’d do it anyway and then it would be the second child’s turn to make a choice and the first would complain.

Lunch was a source of friction too, at least from my perspective. I feel it sets a very bad tone for the day when they act indifferent or grumpy about lunch choices. I like a cheerful, upbeat lunchtime, which tends to pave the way for an energetic and happy afternoon. But no one seemed able to make a decision about what they wanted for lunch.

And, as vacation began, it seemed that each child was amplifying his or her own respective flaws: Tim kept asking me to do things for him that he’s entirely capable of doing for himself – pour a glass of seltzer, fetch a book he left in the car – and Holly kept coming up with material requests: small, but annoying to me since I don’t like to pass time by spending money. She wanted to go buy stickers; she wanted to buy a snow cone; she wanted to go bowling. And so on.

I was starting to feel overwhelmed, but I remembered the Lists strategy: give them specifically itemized behaviors to avoid. “What are some of the things we can all do or not do to get along better than we have been?” I asked them. We talked about it and came up with three rules and a guideline (not to be confused with that perennial icebreaker game, Three Truths and a Lie): Rule 1. Try not to complain. Rule 2. If you can do something for yourself, do it, whether that’s picking out clothes in the morning or helping yourself to a snack. Rule 3. Try not to ask to buy things when it’s not really necessary. And then the guideline: try to have some idea of what you might like for lunch before Mom asks at noon. In fact, the kids took the guideline one step further by taking the initiative of making a list of four or five lunch choices they always like and promising that if I’d be willing to make something from that list, they wouldn’t complain.

Somehow it seemed to clear the air. The kids understand that these aren’t hard-and-fast rules, more like practices we will all employ to try to make our vacation together more fun. They know I’ll still buy them ice cream or books now and then; they know it’s okay to let out an utterance of protest when one is really displeased with a choice the other kid has made. But by reaching a few concrete points of agreement, I think we all felt a little bit hopeful that we could start having more fun and less dissonance.

The summer is still young and the air is still mighty hot and humid; we’ll see if it works out. But it’s a start, and we’re doing our best to stick with it. My end of the deal? Not to blame them when they slip up and ask me to do something for them or complain a little. I’ll try, because they’re trying, and we’ll all do our best to keep ourselves and each other in line.