I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I will look at each other and ask, “Remember when we didn’t have a million activities?” Greg would come home from work, we’d have dinner, we’d play with the kids, we’d give the kids baths (the ones where they had time to play, not just get clean as fast as possible so we can move on to the next thing). We’d have slow Saturday mornings where we would get donuts and watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and just be. Then extra-curriculars happened. It was slow at first. It was just dance once a week for Colleen. Now Colleen has swimming three times a week, piano once a week, and skating once a week. Jensen has swimming once a week, skating once a week, and depending on the season, soccer and hockey. I’m not saying any of that is bad. Our kids love all their activities, and we want to help them find things they’re passionate about and ways to stay healthy and well-rounded.
One thing that keeps us going through the busy school year, though, are school breaks, specifically summer. Oh summer! If I didn’t have to have a schedule, I wouldn’t. Sure, Colleen will still be on the swim team, we will still do a couple of camps, the hockey season will go into the beginning of summer a bit, but the free time (or gray space on the calendar) is where it’s at—the random trips to Bahama Bucks, riding our bikes to the pool, having lunch with Grandma, attaching sprinklers to the trampoline, running around the neighborhood, playing with the hose, catching bunnies, and watching the kids find their own fun (to the detriment of my organized home . . . but still worth it).
I’ll admit, there are perks for planning something every day of the summer. There’s something comforting knowing what your days will look like. The house is easier to keep clean if the kids aren’t there. There are fewer fights to referee. When they’re home, a lot of times it feels like you’re playing camp counselor instead of mom or dad, trying to come up with activities so you don’t hear “I’m bored” a thousand times a day. There’s a sense of accomplishment knowing they completed a certain sports clinic or other enrichment. You know they’re socializing if they’re at camps. There’s also a desire to pack in summer memories with camps, the zoo, the aquarium, Six Flags, bowling, putt-putt, etc. We want to make sure we and our kids have a full summer that they’ll remember and that’s a worthy goal for sure. And then, obviously, you may need childcare while you’re at work. Nothing is wrong with any of this.
But here’s my plug for allowing gray space on your calendar where nothing is planned: We and our kids are so busy, we need time to rest.
Rest is a good gift from God. We even read about God resting after creation in Genesis. Jesus would retreat to the wilderness to be alone and pray (Luke 5:16 is just one example). If it’s good enough for God, then it might be worth doing for ourselves. If you love to have a full schedule and it makes you feel better, you can put “rest” or “free day” on the calendar, rather than leaving it blank. No matter how you approach it, it’s so helpful to make room for rest.
When you Google rest day, you’ll get the benefits of a rest day in the context of working out, but as I was reading, I realized the benefits could easily apply to rest days in general. The benefits of a rest day between workouts on the Healthline website are:
- Allows time for recovery.
- Prevents muscle fatigue.
- Reduces risk of injury.
- Improves performance.
- Supports healthy sleep.
Looking at those through the lens of general rest puts a new spin on those benefits, but they’re still accurate. Rest allows us to recover and be stronger to go on the next day, prevents burn out, helps us get better, and improves sleep.
In addition to rest, that gray space on the calendar gives us freedom. Rest days don’t have to mean you do nothing. Maybe that’s how it looks sometimes—a day of reading, talking, relaxing, baking—but maybe it’s a spontaneous outing. A fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants day can be so fun! Our kids have their whole future to have jobs, a full calendar, and to-do lists. There’s such a short window for sleeping in, eating popsicles, jumping on the trampoline, collecting rocks, being with friends, walking around the mall, and just being. Remember the song Cat’s In The Cradle by Harry Chapin? It gets me every time, because time is such a thief, and it’s all going by so fast!
We don’t get to decide what time with our kids will be quality time. It’s important to plan dates with our kids (we love doing this) and special time with them, but there’s no guarantee that’s when the big connections will happen. Our best shot for those meaningful moments and conversations is to have a lot of time with our kids whenever we can get it—time to throw a ball, look at their newest collection of rocks or ladybugs, walk the dog as a family, make dinner together, etc. What better time than summer for those moments?
