Moms and dads—What a year, right? It’s like kids went back to school for a full twenty minutes and now it’s time for summer.

How you feeling about that?

Shock, confusion, denial? It doesn’t have to be this way!

Summer is a perfect opportunity to cultivate the best parts in our kids, and help them grow in the areas that need refining.

It’s an opportunity to help the people we love most in the whole world. Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves. And sometimes we need a little nudge of inspiration from other parents.

In that vein, here are five summer survival tips for moms and dads. Don’t stress, y’all. Fun, bonding and learning awaits!

1. 1. Have your kids set an achievable personal goal. Write it down. Post it on the fridge.
      Ask each child over dinner about a short-term goal they’d love to look back and have mastered. How to do a cartwheel? How to land a flip on the trampoline? Become friends with the neighbor kid? Master the souffle? Land a water bottle flip across the pool? The options are limitless! Encourage your child to devote at least ten to thirty minutes of work every day towards their goal. The outcome of consistency plus time might just blow their minds. If your child achieves his goal quickly, have him set a new goal. Look how much we are capable of!
   2. Backyard Survivor.
      Not including eating snakes and whatever. My ten-year-old son suggested this one. He likes to have a competition with his brother for who can stay outside the longest without needing something inside. Make it more interesting by allowing each child to select one luxury item. No need to vote people out. Sibs create enough drama without that sort of madness. (Also, I trust you are using your discretion when it comes to age appropriate-ness.)
   3. Schedule weekly, roving pool play dates.
      Summer rhythms can easily turn tedious and repetitive. Like listening to “This is the song that never ends.” Scheduling recurring events will instill pacing and mark the time. Plus, pool play dates mean that parents can hang, huddle, and encourage one another through the slog. If you’re hosting, step one is to chill out. Either declare it a brown-bag lunch event, or have a simple lunch potluck. One parent brings Uncrustables, another bagged chips, and another clementines. We are going for easy, not impressive. It’s about the people. Don’t have a pool? Host a sprinkler-run derby. Live in an apartment? Meet at the local splash pad. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
   4. Start a family book club.
      Please, for all that is good and lovely, choose a wonderful, amazing, mind-blowing read aloud. DO NOT choose a boring book. This is critical to book club feeling like a treat and not a punishment. Speaking of treats, bring some of those while you’re at it. Ask the kids to share suggestions for book club snacks. And be cool about it. (Parent hack: even the wiggliest and chattiest kids are quiet listeners if their mouths are full of food while you read. It’s like a law of physics.) For older kids, I recommend trying the book A Long Walk to Water. For younger kids, try My Father’s Dragon.
   5. Host a memory competition.
      For older kids, let them have some input for what they want to memorize over the summer. All fifty states and capitals? The Ten Commandments? All the US presidents in order? The periodic table? Use acronyms, acrostics, mnemonic devices. Teach your little sponge brains good stuff that they’ll be so grateful for later. For your youngest kids, choose something for them to memorize based on your family’s values.

Above all, remember: exactly nobody’s home is perfectly peaceful at every single moment, all summer long. We parents can choose to view our own inevitable setbacks as burdens, or we can rightly see them as opportunities to sharpen our kids and grow in patience and love. We only get eighteen summers with these precious people. Let’s make the most of them, planting seeds and watering.

You got this!

Tell me your favorite summer tips below.

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Download the 5 summer tips plus my other free resources here.

How to have a Screen Smart Summer