Our ‘Poor’ Old Summers

Summer is here and so is the question that tugs at every American parent: What the heck are we going to do with the kids?

[lz_ndn video=30901116]

Perhaps for working parents, a slightly different construction is in order: Ask not what you can do for your children this summer — ask what they can for you (and for themselves).

“My 14-year-old wants me to send him away to camp in New Hampshire this summer because all his friends are going,” one Boston-area mother of three told LifeZette. “I’d love to send him, but his father and I both work, so he will need to help out with his little brothers. There are programs right here in town that he can do. We also try to go to the beach most weekends. Our plan may not be ‘cool,’ but that’s the way it is.”

Perhaps some of this boy’s friends are going to Brant Lake Camp, a boys camp on the shores of Brant Lake in the Adirondacks. If so, the camp costs a hefty $11,650 for the whole summer — or a whopping one-fifth of the median family income in the U.S. in 2014. And that doesn’t include transportation, personal supplies, care packages to your kid while he’s away, or anything else.

“Brant Lake Camp has the usual camp sports, but it prides itself as [being] a place where ‘sports are done right,'” reports Business Insider. “The staff provides a more holistic approach to organized play, realizing that not every camper is a future D1 athlete. Apart from sports, campers can work at the radio station or learn how to sail.”

Sounds positively dreamy. While DJ-ing and sailing and playing holistically are great, these are activities many parents today have never done — and would love to do.

“Please sign me up!” laughed a Medford, Massachusetts, mother of three kids. “I’d love to jump in a bunk in my jammies with a day of sailing and play ahead of me,” she said. “My summers were babysitting and more babysitting, so I could afford movies and music cassettes. I didn’t receive an allowance, so if I wanted it, I earned it. Let’s face it — kids today are spoiled rotten. We have to amuse and entertain them like overgrown court jesters.”

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Smart Summer Options for Children” source=”TwoOfUs.org”]The YMCA offers day camps and specialty camps, and before and after care as well. Some locations also offer overnight options.|Many local colleges and universities offer inexpensive classes and camps.|Research camps in your area by cost by using the “find a camp” database at CampParents.org. Ask about financial assistance.|The IRS allows an income tax credit for dependent care expenses, and this may apply to day camp expenses. Check the Child and Dependent Care tax Credit at www.irs.gov.[/lz_bulleted_list]

Why do parents feel they have to provide gold-star experiences and amenities for their kids during the summer months when they themselves are working themselves to the bone to provide the basics?

“I was working by age 14 in a hardware store in town to contribute to the family’s income,” said one Pennsylvania father of two and grandfather of five. “Believe me, I would have rather done something else. But in those days, the focus was on the family’s survival, not the kids’ happiness. While I believe things have changed for the better generally, and children are able to relax and experience more of life in the summer, I am very glad I developed a work ethic early in life.”

“It’s important that parents today don’t view a teen’s having to work a summer job as a negative, as a sort of a ‘poor you’ situation that gets communicated,” Dr. Shoshana Bennett, a clinical psychologist in Orange County, California, said. “The parents of teens who work should not feel guilty about this scenario.”

Due to changing times and changing neighborhoods, summer no longer looks or feels the same. Kids are still waking up early to catch buses to day camp — and parents are even more stressed in covering childcare outside of the school months. An informal and communal approach to childcare where one mom watched the children outside while others worked or ran errands has just about disappeared.

“We used to have a child-swap. One mom would watch the kids while two or three others had a morning or afternoon off,” California grandmother and great-grandmother Louise Russell said. “It was enough time to work a shift, get errands done, or just take a nap.”

Related: The Great Parenting Network

Now, as The New York Times has reported, parents say they’re spending an average of $958 per child on summer expenses. And the Department of Health and Human Services defines “affordable child care” as being no more than 10 percent of a family’s income — but only the wealthiest families fit that financial description.

Ambre Osborne, a patient care coordinator for a hearing center in Las Vegas, needed summer childcare for her seven-year-old daughter. The city-run camp she wanted to enroll her in cost $100 a week, and filled up in less than a day, she told The Times. She got a spot, but adding the camp fee to the $250 they pay for their two-year-old’s daycare, she and her husband will be spending 23 percent of their weekly income on childcare in the summer months.

If parents who need childcare coverage do their homework, options should be available for at least part of summer.

“My mom told me to stop asking her what I should do with myself, and to go figure it out,” said one mother.

“There is a camp for every budget,” Tom Holland, CEO of the American Camp Association, told Care.com. “Families should inquire directly with camp leadership about pricing, financial aid, and discounts that may be available before they decide they cannot afford a camp experience for their children.”

Childcare needs aside, many parents give in to expensive experiential activities for their kids because they are afraid for that scandalous seven-letter word: boredom.

“Why are we so afraid to let our kids experience boredom?” Linda Hobbis writes in Mother Distracted, her U.K. parenting blog. “For those of us who grew up in the 70s, boredom came with the territory. The summer school holidays seemed truly endless. I’m sure we all irritated our parents beyond measure with the constant, buzzing drone of ‘but what can we do now?’ The response I used to get was, generally, ‘Go and read a book.'”

Sometimes the memories of summer have nothing to do with organized adult-led activities — and everything to do with discoveries that come with independence.

“I remember lying on the lawn on a beach towel reading my first Nancy Drew mystery, and becoming so immersed that I entered a whole new world through those pages,” Baltimore, Maryland, resident Carole Purcell told LifeZette. “I ended up reading every Nancy Drew I could get my hands on. And you know how that experience came about? My mom told me to stop asking her what I should do with myself, and to go figure it out.”