Parenting Decoded: Summer Vacations

If there is one word on everyone’s lips nowadays, especially parents’, it is vacations! Summer break has started in most schools. It’s time for children (and parents) to take a break and relax until the next academic year begins. Here are some posts we thought you could use to make summer vacation interesting and memorable for your child.

1. Your child doesn’t have to be confined in the house. She can travel even while sitting at home. Yes, through books. Books take you places! Saranya an academic tutor has shortlisted three books your child should read in her summer vacation. She also tells us why she recommends those.
2. Pack your bags and leave. Your kids deserve a family vacation away from home. Not only them, even you deserve it. Sharon rightly puts it ‘Vacations teach kids many other life values’. Give it a try, take off with your family. You won’t regret it.
3. Diana tells us about her trip back home in summer where her son enjoyed with his cousins and importantly his grandma. Showering him with love and choicest foods, a vacation with grandparents and extended family taught him more than she could ask for.
4. Boredom is important. Yes, you heard it right, it makes you creative and innovative. Unplanned play is the best form of learning they say. Indu tells us why unstructured holidays of our times should come back into our children’s lives.
5. If you’re still wondering how to help your child spend those long summer days, Rashmi’s list may come handy. She lists a half a dozen things that you can encourage your child to do in his summer vacations. And summer camps is not one of them. J
6. Hetal, a playschool teacher lists the reasons parents give for sending children to summer camps. While their intention is good, ‘keeping the child occupied’ is not a good reason she says.
7. After a year full of following schedules and running behind the clock, summer vacations are meant to be a break, says Debolina. Let children eat, play and sleep at their own pace and come back rejuvenated to school in the new academic year.
8. Another post from Debolina where she recounts her summer vacation experiences as a work from home mommy. Juggling summer camps, play time and having her child around while working on her laptop continuously, most work from home mothers will be able to relate to her post right now.
9. But summer camps can be fun too, says Nidhi about her experience with her daughter’s summer camps. Of course, once the camps are over, unopened return gifts, board games stashed away and DIY kits comes to the rescue.
10. Sunita Rajwade, a proud grandmother now reminisces of the summer vacations that were in her times. The way their time was utilised with guidance from their parents, and having loads of fun while doing so. Be it getting proficient with typewriting skills or be it hours of cycling and badminton, it was much simpler than summer vacations of today.
11. Moushumi tells us how she along with other mothers from her son’s class took the kids on a small outing after their final exams were over. Even a day of getting away from routine and enjoying to the fullest can do wonders to your children’s mood!

So tell us, what are you doing this summer? How is your child going to spend the break before school begins again?