Making the Most of Your Summer

Mandi Ehman of Organizing Your Way

When we think of summer, we often imagine lazy days spent by the pool side or a time to relax and just enjoy life, but any parent of young children will tell you that it’s not usually quite so picturesque. It takes a lot more work to create that picture-perfect afternoon at the pool then just showing up with kids in tow!

Here are five tips to help you make the most of your summer days so that you have more time and energy to enjoy it rather than running yourself ragged in the process:

1. Keep a written calendar.
Camps, special activities, family outings and vacations all compete for our time during the summer months. Add in church events, play dates and sports, and you can easily become overbooked and overwhelmed.

Keep a written calendar of every activity or event you have planned for the summer so that you can see when things start to get a little tight before it’s too late. My two favorite planning tools are the BusyBodyBook, which lets you divide your activities by person/subject in a vertical grid, and the Google calendar, where you can color code your appointments and events and also share your calendar with other people.

2. Keep a pool/park/play date bag packed and ready to go.
Rather than trying to throw everything you need into a bag as you head out the door, keep a bag packed with the basic essentials and ready to go all the time. No two families will have the exact same necessities list, but consider things like sunscreen, towels, swimsuits, a hair brush and ponytails, snacks, water bottles, diapers, changes of clothing, or whatever you need for your favorite destinations.

When you come home, make sure you bring the bag inside with you and restock any items that you’ve used up during your outing so that it will be ready the next time you hit the road!

3. Look for easy to prepare meals and snacks.
Instead of planning meals that involve a lot of preparation time and heat up your kitchen in the process, plan easy menus with a variety of crockpot meals, salads, sandwiches and grilling out. You may also want to spend a few hours one weekend stocking your freezer to make sure you have dinner on hand even on busy days, which is a huge time and money saver.

Keep easy, healthy snacks on hand too. Our favorites on a hot summer day include frozen grapes and blueberries and homemade smoothie popsicles.

4. Plan rainy day activities.
Plan ahead for the days when you’re stuck at home because of the weather or just because you need a chance to unwind and relax after a busy week. Studies show that boredom can be a valuable part of child development because it teaches kids to use their imagination and creativity, but too much boredom can backfire.

For older children, rainy day activities can be as simple as setting a box full of craft supplies on the kitchen table and letting them create their own project. Younger kids may need a little more guidance, and you can put together craft packs in envelopes or sandwich bags ahead of time and simply pull them out as needed. Create an “I’m Bored” jar full of ideas for lazy afternoons or rainy days at home. Include things like reading a chapter book together, baking cookies for the neighbors or building a blanket fort.

5. Remember that it’s okay to say no!
I don’t know about you, but there are so many things I want to pack into our summer – going to a baseball game as a family, picking strawberries, taking my girls fishing, going on vacation, visiting different museums, meeting up with old friends, going on our first camping trip, visiting family, and on and on – that it’s impossible to do it all.

Remember that it’s okay to leave some things for another season or another year, and you don’t have to accept every invitation or opportunity that comes your way. Stuffing too much into your summer can backfire and leave everyone exhausted and unappreciative, so take a step back and evaluate which things will really help create memories and bonds between you and your kids and politely decline the rest!

What’s on your agenda for summer?

Mandi Ehman is a work-at-home mom to four spunky little girls. She believes that organizing only lasts if you do it your way – to fit your needs, your preferences and your lifestyle – and she shares organizing and time management tips at Organizing Your Way.

Summer Vacation Plans – Plan Them Early

Laura Rolands of My Attention Coach

As an ADHD Coach, I enjoy working with my student clients to develop plans for their summer.  Developing plans for your children and your whole family will help everyone have a fun and productive summer, whether ADHD is present or not.  As you probably already know, we need to keep our kids physically and mentally active over the summer to ensure they do not lose the learning they gained during the last school year.  I am happy to share some strategies below to help keep your summer productive.

Teacher Input
First on the agenda is to meet with or at least email your child’s current teachers and/or guidance counselors.  Especially if you son or daughter is going to a new school next year, it is important to gather feedback before the school year ends.  Before plan what you would like to discuss.  I recommend asking which strategies have worked with your child this school year and asking what the current teachers would like to share with next year’s teachers.  They may already communicate this verbally or in a written report, but this is good information for you to have.  You can also ask what activities they suggest for your child over the summer.  Think about how you will consolidate the information you receive and decide how to communicate with next year’s teachers.

Discuss with your Children
Next on the agenda is to sit and talk with each of your children.  There are a few key questions I recommend asking your child – be sure to actively listen to his or her answers.  Start with areas of pride.  What makes your child the most proud as he or she  reflects on the current school year?  Discuss the strengths behind the pride, and help your child discover strengths that they may not realize they have.  What goals do they have for the summer?  There might be more goals than simple relaxation!  How does your son or daughter envision achieving the goals?  Discuss the feedback you received from his or her teachers.  Do you and your child agree with the feedback?  How can it help with planning for the summer and next school year.  What would they like to make sure that their teachers next year know about him or her?  Discuss your expectations and make a plan for how they will keep their brains and bodies active this summer.

You!
Don’t forget to look at your personal and family goals for the summer.  How can you, your spouse and and your children work together on some family goals?  Plan your calendar as a family.  When are vacations, camps and busy work weeks?  Use my Summer Vacation 2010 calendar as a way to look at your summer-at-a-glance.  This can be a great supplement to all the great calendars and planners available here on Families With Purpose!  Taking some time to plan now, before Summer Vacation can help you have a more productive and relaxing vacation.  How will you prepare for Summer this year?  Leave a comment and let us know!

Laura Rolands is the founder of LSR Coaching and Consulting, LLC. She is a coach whose passion is to support, lead and inspire independence and success for people who have either been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or who are facing other attention-related challenges. Her clients include individuals with attention-related challenges and/or their parents. If you have any questions or more suggestions to add, please visit her website at www.MyAttentionCoach.com.

The Power of Consequences

Sandra Huber of The Soulful Parent

I just finished an amazing 3 days of training to become a Scream-Free Certified Leader. What an amazing journey of learning that was! I know that not all of us use screaming as a tool to attempt to discipline our children. Some of us loose our cool in other ways: we withdraw, we humiliate, we punish physically or we simply dismiss the misbehavior. In the end, if I am not putting the responsibility back on my child not only for the behavior but for its consequences, I am not doing a very good job of guiding her into the adult I want her to become.

The most amazing “aha” moment I had this past weekend, was the realization that helping my daughter understand the boundaries of acceptable behavior and the consequences for her behavior is crucial to avoid the meltdowns and power struggles that can otherwise ensue. But that wasn’t the revelation I had. What I discovered was that we have all been sold a big, fat lie: in order for consequences to be effective they need to be painful. They need to be harsh, uncomfortable and even, taken to the extreme, humiliating.

I have sat with this new idea, the one that says that what matters is that the consequences are clear and agreed upon, that they are fair and that they are applied consistently. I don’t want to punish my child: I want to teach her. If I allow the consequences to do the screaming, if step back and respond to her misbehaving with the reminder of what happens then, I don’t have to worry about punishing. The lesson doesn’t have to be that you are your mistakes. That when you behave badly, you are bad. I am choosing to have the lesson be different. You made a mistake, this is the consequence, and I love you still, but will enforce the consequence. End of story. Isn’t that revolutionary?

Last night, my husband and I agreed with our daughter that if we had to tell her more than once it is time to go to bed, for each time we did, she’d have to go to bed 5 minutes earlier the next night. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was motivator enough for our daughter to get going after the first warming. Of course, being the first time we implemented this rule, she decided to test it later on and ended up losing 5 minutes for the next night. Puzzled, she said to me: But mom, you need to pick a harsher punishment. I don’t care if I lose 5 minutes tomorrow. That’s not punishment”. I smiled and responded: “You are right honey, it’s not a punishment. It’s only a consequence”!

Punishment and discipline look at raising our children from two very different perspectives. They both can result in our children doing what we want. The first one, punishment, forces our kids to obey. The second one, discipline, teaches them to do the right thing because it is the right thing. It’s our choice. What would you choose?

Sandra is the “soul” and “coach” behind the Soulful Parent. She has worked in Early Intervention, Special Education and has supported many families in the road to successful parenting. She became a PCI Certified Parent Coach® because she’s deeply passionate about changing the world, one family at a time. Sandra believes that life becomes a more enjoyable journey when you lead from your strengths! She can be contacted Sandra {at} thesoulfulparent(.)com and www.thesoulfulparent.com for more information about seminars, presentations and individual coaching services.

Helping Your Child Make the Right Choices

Susan Heid of The Confident Mom

One of the main ideas that I try to share with the parents I work with in my coaching is the basic fundamental truth that you cannot control your child. Now, usually when a parent comes to me with a parenting concern they are looking for a way to change their child’s behavior – QUICK! Unfortunately I have to pop that bubble of hope and explain that as parents we only really do have control over our own actions and when we realize that and start relating to our children remembering they have a mind and will of their own we can start to move forward.

Most parenting books and resources just offer different forms of manipulation in order to get your child to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it. You use charts, threats, and fear. I often ask parents if they would prefer their child learn to make the “right” choices or just make choices based on getting a reward or because ultimately they are fearful of you? Most often parents see the parallel here and chose the option of allowing their child to make choices and the lesson that teaches them about real life.

One area that most parents struggle with is allowing their child to suffer. Now don’t get the wrong idea – hear me out! Suffering can look many different ways, and I wanted to share with you what I have experienced and what I like to the moms I work with so consider.

I want to highlight two of the biggest fears/struggles that parents work through when trying to incorporate a new style of parenting in their home which allows their child to make more choices and the repercussions of those choices.

Allowing problem solving:

This one is the easiest for parents to grasp and actually put into action. Simply put, when your child has a problem and they come to you asking you to “fix it” for them – do you? This can be as simple as asking you a question. If your child is doing their homework and they ask you how to spell a word, do you stop what you are doing and give them the information or do you help them by showing how they can solve that problem on their own? Instead of just spelling the word for them, why not offer the dictionary or internet as a resource? When your family is getting ready to go out for the day and your child needs to bring along some items (a change of clothes, book, or other similar items) instead of just giving them that information when they come to you asking, why not ask them what they think they may need. They often will surprise you by knowing or at least getting close to what you had in mind – all on their own!

It seems the earlier and more times I started doing this type of questioning back to my children, the less they came asking me to help them solve something or think for them. They soon started figuring things our on their own without my help! Ultimately isn’t that what we want our kids to do, figure out solutions to their own problems? I don’t know about you but when my child leaves home I don’t really want them calling me 42 times a day asking me questions. Yes, that is a humorous way to look at the concept, but ask yourself, when do you start this type of learning experience for your children? Seems to me it makes sense to start is as soon as they are of an age to start solving some things on their own. Your child is an individual and you know them best – you will know the right time!

Allowing the wrong choice:

This experience is more difficult for parents to grasp and follow through on. It is hard to see our children make mistakes or make choices that would not be the best for them. We love our children, we want the best for them and watching them struggle is very difficult. But it is really the most loving thing we can do. When your child is given the opportunity to make a wrong choice and then work through the results of that choice with you as the parent alongside them, there is more learning going on there than just a speech would cover. Unfortunately we learn best when we actually have to walk through a bad choice and deal with the consequences.

An example I recall is what happened with one of our sons. In our home once you have shown that you are responsible to do your homework without our supervision or looking over your shoulder, you are then allowed to do your homework whenever you want. The catch is, if you miss an assignment or have a late paper, you lose that privilege for a period of time. Then we are dictating when homework must be accomplished.

Imagine how much more effective and impactful this becomes when my son realizes he didn’t look through his backpack good enough to realize he has an assignment due in the morning and then has to stay up till 11 PM to complete it OR deal with the consequence of losing his privilege of choosing when he can do his work. As a parent it was difficult to go to bed knowing he was still up, working on that paper. But I can tell you, as painful as it was to allow him to make that choice and then have to watch him solve it on his own, it impacted him in a way that lecturing never would have. There are so many opportunities to let your child have these little life lessons, don’t let them slip by because of your anxiety and fear.

Ultimately we all want to raise responsible and resourceful adults. That is our goal. I challenge you to look at situations that present themselves daily in your home where you can develop these two characteristics in your child. There may be more than you really had noticed when you start truly paying attention!

Susan Heid helps moms get the BIG picture on how their home is functioning and then helps them gain relief with a personalized plan of action to give life changing results.  Susan’s training as a PCI Certified Parent Coach. a Certified Family Manager Coach and a ScreamFree Certified Leader gives her a unique combination to encourage and support busy moms in the art of Home and Family Management.  Empowering Moms and Strengthening Families is her passion.  Are you ready to make positive changes that will impact your family for generations?  You can start by visiting The Confident Mom and requesting her FREE ebook, “Getting Kids to Cooperate and Become Team Players – 10 Essential Strategies and Solutions”.

Radio Show: Making Dreams a Reality

Listen to our recent radio show as we talked about setting goals and making our dreams a reality with Lara Galloway of the MomBizCoach.com.  You can listen online by using the player below, downloading the mp3, or via iTunes.

Education Jobs Fund

Education is so near and dear to our heart here at Families with Purpose which is why we are reaching out for your help. Our children’s quality education is under threat from budget cuts– music and arts programs, bus routes, sports, extracurricular activities, books, crossing guards and foreign programs are all on the cutting block–and teacher layoffs could mean perhaps as many as 35 or 45 students per classroom. Read more

Radio Show: Fit Yummy Mummy

Listen to our recent radio show as we talked with Holly Rigsby of Fit Yummy Mummy and ClubFYM about getting our bodies back after the baby.  The conversation was so good that we ran out of time!  You can listen online by using the player below, downloading the mp3, or via iTunes.

Reduce Paper Clutter & Get Organized with Evernote

This month’s digital tool recommendation is Evernote, an electronic notebook of sorts where parents and families can keep track of ideas, notes, do lists, and thoughts without ever using paper.  This cool tool keeps everything at a busy parent’s fingertips via your smart phone, web browser, or computer desktop.

How Evernote Works

Think of Evernote as a giant electronic notebook for parents to keep track of do lists, goals, routines, family vacation plans, and much more.  Evernote lets parents store and organize items they create themselves or find in magazines, the web, or in stores.  And the best part is parents never need a pencil or paper, all of this can easily be added with the click of a button, upload of a photo, or typing of a note.

Features I Love

Variety of Ways to Store Information – From uploading a photo, to the handy web clipper, Evernote offers many ways of uploading information to your notebooks. Users can add information via mobile devices like your Blackberry or iPhone, text messages, web browsers, computer desktop, Twitter, Microsoft Outlook, scanners, plus a host of third party applications such as Jott.

Search Functionality – Sometimes the problem with filing away all your information and notes, is that you can never remember where you filed them. Not so with Evernote. Evernote lets you search all your notebooks by keywords, titles, and tags. Evernote also makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too

Sharing Feature – Evernote gives you the ability to share some or all of your notebooks with other people such as your spouse, kids, or co-workers. And if you go with the Premium account, the people you share with can also edit and add items to the shared notebooks.

It’s Free! – No really it is, but if you want to upgrade and get some additional space, enhanced sharing capabilities, as well as more versatility you can upgrade to the premium account for $5/month or $45 per year.

How I use Evernote

To Plan Our Family Vacation – My husband and I are planning a big road trip out west this summer, and we have set up an Evernote notebook to help us plan and keep track of everything we need to do for the vacation. To do this, I simply created a Family Vacation notebook, shared it with my husband, and gave him editing rights (a premium feature) and now we do a lot of our collaboration and checking in online.

To Capturing Ideas, Information, or Websites When Away from my Computer – Have you ever been sitting in the doctor’s office reading one of their magazines and run across something like a website or recipe that you want to remember for later, but feel bad about ripping out the page? Now all I do is take a picture of the information I want to save with my cell phone, and then use the Blackberry application to upload it to my Evernote account.

Work – I have found Evernote a GREAT way of keeping track of all my work responsibilities and projects. As well as notes from phone messages and my weekly goals and objectives

Shopping Lists – My husband and I do a pretty good job of sharing the shopping in our home, but not necessarily a good job of keeping the shopping lists updated. To help alleviate this problem, I have created a Shopping List notebook, created 4 different shopping lists for each store we shop at, and now when we think of something we need, we just update the list either via our computer or cell phone. So before I head out to the grocery store, or place an order with Alice, I hop on Evernote to see if my husband has added anything new.

So if you haven’t already tried Evernote, I highly recommend you hop on over to Evernote, open a FREE Account, and explore all the ways you can get more organized and reduce the paper clutter in our home and office.

The Rules of Engagement

Radio Show: Empowered Parenting & Successful Meals

Listen to our recent radio show as we talked with Kathleen Cuneo of Dinner Together and DrCuneo.com about empowered parenting and raising successful eaters.  You can listen by using the player below, downloading the mp3, or via iTunes.  And for the listeners of our show, Kathleen was kind enough to offer the free special report, 6 Steps to Effective, Loving Discipline with Toddlers and Preschoolers.