July 7, 2007
by David B. Stein, Ph.D.
Stop and reflect for a moment. What are some of your best childhood memories? I’ll bet you immediately start recalling marvelous summers, when you were free to be nothing more than a kid. Perhaps you were on a swim team, which required daily practice laps in early morning freezing water? You met with all your childhood chums, who were also on the team. The rest of the day was spent being with friends and having carefree days, peppered with occasional arguments and make-ups. Maybe you played baseball? Maybe you went to soccer camp, or basketball camp, or whatever for a week or two. But, most of each day was spent hanging out and just being a kid. Nothing tasted better than a daily dose of ice cream perhaps eaten after polishing down several slices of healthy pizza and soda. Hardly any of the children were fat, in large measure because each day meant running, climbing, swimming, kicking a ball around, and so forth. If we as adults lived this same lifestyle we’d need less cardiologists and psychologists.
We now live in perhaps the most stress-ridden society that has ever existed. Schools have become military camps where kids have to sit like soldiers and memorize boring stuff in order to make the schools’ standard of learning tests, SOLs, look good for the administration. Parents are requested to have their children tutored in this and that in order to improve their skill deficits, which by the way do not work in the long run! Reading lists are assigned for the summers that are inundated with boring books designed to exercise the mechanics of reading and word attach skills, which destroys developing a love for reading. Summers are slowly being eroded by a neurotic concern that the rest of the world will pass us academically. The reality is that if we remove the test scores from the lower socioeconomic areas, and consider only the scores of middle class kids, we are actually far ahead of most countries and our neurotic worries are for naught. What then is best for our children when we consider summer activities? I have a few simple rules for great summers:
1. Free play: Social skills are mostly learned by trial and error. If we let our children stay at the pool all day and leave them under the supervision of the counselors they will squabble, play, chase, make up games, run, climb, exercise, and mostly hone their social skills. All this can be done best when the parents leave them alone and avoid micromanaging them. In addition, they are getting exercise, exercise, and more exercise, without even realizing it because to kids, it is fun, fun, and more fun.
2. Fun reading: Avoid tutors and the torture of trying to accelerate their learning skills. It does not work, and there is the hidden backlash of contributing to children hating learning. All that is necessary is to have some fun reading time. After dinner and after perhaps a couple of extra hours of play with the neighbors’ kids before it gets dark have your child come home for a bath and thirty minutes of family reading time. Help them to select easy books by choosing books that are at, or lower than, their reported reading levels. Let them read for an extra half hour after bedtime, if they are not sleepy. Have a bedtime ritual of a ten minute chat, when they tell about their day, followed by prayer, and then followed by the bedtime reading. This is where and when bedtime reading habits should begin. If you find your child under the covers reading in the dark with a flashlight, back out and smile. This is exactly what you want. You want them to be unable to put a book down because the story content has captivated them and they can’t wait to find out what will happen next. They have learned to love reading! Both you and they win.
3. Emphasize one athletic skill: Don’t overload your children with your neurotic desire to make them champions of many athletic skills. One skill is enough, such as swimming, diving, or baseball. Mostly, let them play and have fun.
What I wouldn’t give to go back to my childhood and relive the summer days I had at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York. The world was much safer then, so my cousins and I were free to play all day. Oh, how delicious it was to come home, take a hot bath, and place my head on the pillow for the deepest sleep imaginable.
There is one important part of this formula. In order for kids to have this type of wonderful summer, at least one parent will have to be there to make certain that all of this unfolds for their children. I do not approve of sending kids off to three month sleep away camps. One or two week camps are fine, but not all summer. That is fulfilling the parents’ needs to be rid of them and not the children’s needs of having the safety of a parent nearby.
About Dr. Dave: Dr. David B. Stein is a Professor at Virginia State University, in Virginia. He is the author of Ritalin Is Not the Answer; The Ritalin Is Not the Answer Action Guide; Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco: Successful Parenting Without Drugs; Stop Medicating, Start Parenting; and Controlling the Difficult Adolescent.
