I have an unconventional view about kids and summer that I’ve been reluctant to share because I imagine most will disagree. Some might consider my point of view irresponsible. But since both of my teenage daughters have recently offered their unsolicited corroboration, I’m taking the plunge. My kids have great instincts, and if they have conviction in something it must be worth sharing.
My 15-year-old middle daughter, a sage old soul, expressed this idea brilliantly during a recent exchange with her 10-year-old brother. He has a character trait that’s admirable but baffling to all of us. He’s intensely conscientious about his school work and completes assignments well in advance of their due date. Who does that? If he shares an urgent concern about finishing a school assignment, you can bet he doesn’t need to turn it in for several weeks. Needless to say, he didn’t get this from me. This is DNA from an alien species.
Occasionally this summer, my boy’s been stressing about the optional math review packet due when school starts, especially because we’ve had some technical difficulties downloading it for him. When he recently shared his worries, his sister retorted, “You don’t need to do it. They’ll review all the material anyway.”
“But the teacher said I’ll forget everything!”
“It’s summer. You’re supposed to forget everything,” she commanded.
I couldn’t have said it better. I believe in letting our kids’ brains turn to mush over the summer. Kids need to relax their minds, forget there is such a thing as school work, vegetate and assimilate. They need these months to shuffle and reshuffle the deck, disassemble and reorganize, and access latent areas of their minds. They need to lose all track of time. Often. Children do this best when we respect their choices, especially when we honor their choice to do nothing at all.
(The obvious exception to this laissez-faire approach is passive entertainment and screen time. TV and video games might always be “first choice” and need our monitoring.)
“I don’t want to learn anything in the summer,” was my eldest daughter’s pronouncement at age 7, and s
he’s stuck to her definition of that. Now 19 and entering her sophomore year at a highly respected university, she’s managed throughout her life to avoid anything she perceived as academic summer enrichment. She’s chosen Girl Scout camp, sports and ocean camps, and a Christian choral camp. She’s remodeled houses for low-income Native Americans, had a couple of internships, hung out with friends, and worked at the local juice bar, but noooo “learning” for her, or at least nothing that felt like learning. Just play and adventures. 
I see summer as one long extracurricular activity, and my belief about all extracurricular activities is that they belong solely to the person engaging in them. Many have asked me how the RIE approach translates to parenting older children. My answer is to trust kids to choose. This is the way older children continue to benefit from self-directed play and is essential for encouraging and nurturing intrinsic motivation. 
Why wouldn’t we trust our children to know what they need to do to balance the brain work that is required of them during the school year? Only our children can know this. Just like when they were babies, our kids intuitively know what areas of “self” they need to develop. Our validation of these choices is immensely empowering.
One of my most memorable moments this summer was about forgetting. I was lying on the beach next to my 19-year-old daughter. My son was floating on his back in the tranquil sea. After spending several minutes in that stillness, he stepped out of the water and made a little sand castle. I closed my eyes and forgot. I forgot I was a teacher and a blogger. I even forgot I was a mom and wife. I was just me.
(Photos were taken by my daughter during the many summers she learned nothing at all.)
Holidays are definitely their time to recharge and have fun. My children have not learnt a thing! They have ‘not’ learnt about visiting a different country, how to build a wonderful stick fort or to follow the instructions on a Lego creation (on their own). They have ‘not’ learnt how to swim better and put their heads under water in our beautiful river or reconnect with old friends that they do not normally play with at school. They haven’t learnt how to read off of the menu at our favourite restaurant, play new card cames or climb the biggest trees (I have a few new gray hairs). My children have had the most wonderfully fun and carefree summer and they haven’t ‘learnt’ one single thing, which is just the way we like it!
The funny thing is, the kids are probably learning and retaining more from their summer and they just don’t even realize it!!! Kids need to be kids!!!
I agree! They may not be “learning” over the summer in a structured way, but I feel like my little guys have been learning SO much: picking edibles from the garden, camping for the first time, etc.
i am wondering what your thoughts are on trusting older kids to fchoose their own activities if that consists of video games and TV all day. If I had had the opportunity, I probably would have spent the majority of my summer hours engaged in these activities.
In retrospect, do you wish you could have done that? For me, it would depend on the child and his or her age. I was very careful about limiting my children’s exposure to screens in the early years (the most sensitive for the development of learning skills) and they have all three been excellent, motivated students, so I have found that I could totally trust them to find balance as teens. My limits at that point have been around appropriateness of the material. For example, many of my children’s friends have had free rein to see PG-13 movies at age 9 and younger, and R movies at 10 or 13 or younger. I might make the rare exception for an otherwise wonderful film, but I generally say a firm no to allowing my kids to be exposed to material I don’t consider developmentally appropriate for them. I’ve had to be unpopular at times. 😉
Yes! I couldn’t agree more! Summer is for being bored, forgetting, daydreaming & the like. Thank you for this post, Janet.
Love this so much, Janet. Agree completely and I’m so glad my three children (now aged 30, 27 and 25) spent their summers fiddle faddling around.
I love your post & whole heartedly agree! But…what to do about all the holiday homework!
I don’t make my kids do it. In their school it’s voluntary, not mandatory, and I mirror their interest and encourage if they want to, but don’t push them or remind them if they don’t remember it first themselves.
Even if it was mandatory I’d figure out how to ‘forget’ to do it.
You might speak to the teacher about your family’s values around holidays and that filling time with homework doesn’t fit for your family. It would be interesting to see if your wishes are respected.
I don’t disagree with your view. There is nothing to disagree. I like how your kids seem to know what they want and how with it they are. I sent my kids to summer school. 7,9,14 yrs old. Kumon tue & thur. Karate and camp. City excursions. Did we do too much? After reading your article, i’m rethinking
That would be too much for me, and I definitely wouldn’t have my kids do anything they weren’t eager to do. I consider this their time, not mine.
But are you typically off work all summer ? I would like to let them just ‘be’ but we live in a country that does not get good warm summers like the US and although I do take as much leave as an can it doesn’t cover the full 8 weeks. I get so confused when I read posts like this – are the kids not on a summer scheme etc. ? If you are able to be home with them all summer that is fantastic but I think you need to make that clear in the post
I have had countless arguments with teachers over holiday homework. I feel they shod not be expected to do it and when handed it I have given it straight back. I’ve been told that I will undermine their progress at school, their development etc, etc. My answer has always been, show me th we work you will be doing during the holidays. Strangely they never do and to date none of my four have completed any holiday home works at all. It’s interesting to note that they all function/ed above the expected age level within school. Summer for us is a time to do what you want, wear pj’s all day, eat cereal for lunch, sleep late, hang out with friends and just be a kid doing kids stuff. You only get one chance, I think you should grab it while you can x
I’ma teacher and agree that mandatory summer homework isn’t a good idea (for a LOT of reasons that go well beyond what’s in this article), but I just wanted to point out that teachers actually do a lot of work overall the summer, and ALL of it is unpaid. I kind of hate that no teacher ever took you up on that and they all just allowed you to believe that we don’t do any work. It’s sure nowhere near close to 40 hour weeks, but it’s probably at least as much time as they’re asking of their students. We can discuss the issues with summer homework without having to bring teachers’ lives into this at all.
Yes – totally agree – ex primary school teacher here and I always worked in the holidays (and weekends).
I love this in theory but – this is to some extent a class based issue. YOur kids probably can do fine turning their brains off for the summer, because they are challeneged in so many other non-academic ways. Probably that’s true for many of the poeple that read your blog. That said, higher SES students do comparatively better than lower SES students over the summers. I’ve read that the differences in high school achievement between lower and higher SES students can largely be attributed to gaps in achievement over the summers that never go away. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/opinion/28smink.html
I came to the comments to share this very thought. While I do love this advice overall, there are many, many families that don’t have the option of offering so much choice to their children; and many teachers who find themselves facing down immense learning loss in the fall for kids who haven’t picked up a book or been read to all summer (as one example.) It’s a slippery slope. I appreciate this guidance, but it’s skewed heavily for privilege that is elusive to many.
A wonderful article that supports, as RIE does, home education. School and “learning only when taught” is NOT respectful to children. Those whose eyes have been opened to the truth of RIE should never blindly follow the masses in relation to anything mainstream. Our children deserve more. x x Thank you.
I love that we found a camp that has no structure other than lunchtime and an end of the day gathering. They have plenty of activities kids can chose to do, on their own time, throughout the day like bread baking, song (karaoke) studio, dance studio, playground, water games, sports, sewing studio, even coding. I feel this is the best alternative for my only child, a few days a week while I work. The best part is they don’t have sessions or weeks you have to sign up for so you can drop your kids any day you need. Even get reimbursed for days you do not use! Thanks for your post!
That sounds amazing. I do not understand why more places do not offer that flexibility. The programs around me are so strict and ridged. My son hated them. His words were ” there are so many kids here we cannot have fun because there are so many rules.” That was the last time he went there.
A suggestion I would recommend changing “Native Americans” to “low-income Native Americans”. It reads to me like all Native Americans are grouped in the “needs help” category. I hope that’s not your intention, but it is important to be clear and explicit and avoid further stereotyping minority communities. With love, an ever faulty always trying mom
Thanks for your feedback. I’ll make that change immediately.
Yes, and the idea that the brain is turning to “mush” when one is engaging in nature and play-based learning at any age has been disproven completely and repeatedly. I also think this has become a huge class issue in our culture. The young parents I know who did not go to college will have none of this and are so drawn to the “kiddie colleges” for earliest childhood that involve involve desks and worksheets. They’ve been convinced by our competitive, marketplace educational culture that this is the road to success. So the challenge is to keep holistic education from becoming (remaining?) the domain of the elite.
This is how I remember my childhood summers. Lots of free, unstructured play time. Now, in my second summer as a single mom, my young children are in full-time care in the summer while I work. They have a lot of structure to their days, and I can get the “mom-guilt” when I remember my more carefree summer. However, they do get lots of free time outside on playgrounds and in the swimming pool. And when we are home together, I try to let them direct their activities as much as possible. Thanks for this – I am appreciating your posts about older children as mine have grown out of the baby stage.
By respecting our children’s choices, shouldn’t that include allowing them to make the decision to complete academic work? Without making them feel silly for wanting to do that task?
Reading was a part of those lovely summers for me. I traveled to different worlds that had absolutely no relation to school while curled up in a tree, on a blanket in the sun, in a lawn swing, in a spring chair on my grandma’s shady porch, in my bed at night with the cool evening breeze flowing in the open window.
Most days we used our imaginations to create whole new worlds in our own backyard, creating structures with clotheslines and blankets and scripting and acting out the stories we created. We rode our bikes into new adventures, visited elderly neighbors and received delicious cookies, made forts in fields full of tall weeds, went on secret missions, collected pop bottles and sold them for penny candy at the neighborhood store, and played in our pool with its patched up vinyl lining. My mom would pour bleach in every day until it finally had to be drained. We splashed and “swam” and floated on our backs and looked at the clouds, making up stories about the odd ones. Mom would bring out Kool-aid and peanut butter and honey on crackers which we devoured before jumping in for more. We shot baskets at the goal on the front of Dad’s workshop and sometimes he and mom would take us on in a game. There were neighborhood baseball games where the “big boys” grudgingly let us play to make the numbers and I learned I could outpitch the boys. Summer nights were for chasing lightning bugs, watching sunsets, roasting marshmallows, and playing hide and seek or tag in the dusk, or badminton by the porch light. I honestly don’t remember being bored. There were just too many things to do and see. When I talk to my students today and all they are looking forward to is Fortnite or other gaming marathons, texting nonstop, taking selfies, and all of the electronic addictions they hold dear, or those with heavily scheduled activities, practices, and social events, I feel very sad for them. Those summers were some of the most glorious times of my life and when school started, I was ready to see all my friends and start learning again. I made sure my kids got to have those kinds of summers too. Maybe without as much freedom to roam, but with the means to create, relax, and enjoy being themselves.
Yes! Totally agree. Plus if they don’t develop the skills to switch off when they are kids, it can be a tricky skill to master when you’re adulting.
Yes, and…as a teacher at the school my son attends, I was aware of how stressed he was by school and academics (first grade) so while theoretically I agree with this post…our reality was that helping him develop and encouraging him is what he needs. We are doing a little bit each day and it gives him structure and confidence and he’s making progress with tricky topics.
I’m surprised you think this view would be unpopular…especially among your readership. I wholeheartedly agree. For our family, summer is a time to be spontaneous, take advantage of so much daylight, get outside, and break all of our school-night rules. We pause karate and soccer so that we have no activity obligations and can do all of the free concerts, park picnics, outdoor movie nights, etc that so many towns offer in summer. We do need daytime care for our elementary kiddos, so we line up various camp options that they choose. This year was a pottery camp, mountain-science camp, several outdoor adventure camps (kayaking, biking, hiking), and their Montessori school puts on 6-weeks of camp that includes lots of arts, crafts, storytime, and water play. They love seeing some of their school-year friends at summer camp and it builds incredible community at the school – so many cross-classroom friendships. All this just to say YES! Thank you for writing this down!
I grieve when i read this article. I wish i had a childhood like that. During summer holiday, My parents never let me play outside, never took my brother and I out for some fun. They bought us textbooks for next year and asked us to study them all. Every single day i dreaded. I hated summer time. It felt like being in prison. There was one time when i came back to school after the long holiday, i forgot how to do maths, and i got scolded for not studying during the break. So i really appreciate what you said.. ‘a summer to forget’..I hope to do differently with my own kids. Thanks for sharing Janet!
I WISH I could have my child (10yrs) do nothing. That would be so freeing for me. But when you have a child with certain needs, things may not work the same way.
I’ve given my child the freedom to do nothing. To choose his activities. As a single child, he WILL pick screens on waking and go all day. He will forego eating until his stomach cramps in pain. He will not even get up to use the washroom. He will not go to sleep and at 2:00a.m I have to step in and insist.
The next day he will do it all again. Except now he is miserable and disregulated. He will scream and shout at the slightest thing. And this will go on.
The funny thing is he LOVES reading, sports, etc. But, he doesn’t want to and I understand can’t do most alone. Tennis, volleyball, badminton, baseball are not things you can really do by yourself. So, yes, I can let him continue to choose, but our lives after as a result and so do the neighbours.
Any direction on this would be appreciated. He does have a brain based spectrum disorder.
Wow, we are in New Zealand and the thought of kids doing anything academic over the summer just had not even occurred to me!! No one does this here. Aside from private tutoring, I don’t think there are even any options.
I think the whole year needs a piece of what I’ve coined: “organic learning” normals play and everyday tasks are the most important part of learning. Not just summer time but all year long.
Thank you for reposting this link in your email newsletter. Please continue to do so! Reading these pieces on your website has consistently been my primary way of accessing your content and I appreciate it very much. I don’t listen to your podcasts and I’m not on social media-your website and newsletter are how I connect with RIE and I value what you share immensely. I love the idea of forgetting during a season, regularly, trusting ourselves and our children. Please keep sharing these gems, your kind encouragement has changed the trajectory of my life and my children’s, in beautiful ways. Thanks again!
Thank you so much for all your encouragement, Melissa! I plan to keep sharing. I appreciate you taking the time to comment and support me.
This feels out of reach for families in which two parents work full time. I have to insist my kids go to camp every day, which is often not their choice, because both my husband and I work, and they’re not old enough to stay home on their own.
Can the camp be relaxed with mostly open-ended activities?
Can the camp be relaxed with mostly open-ended activities? My kids went to camps, too, as you can see in this piece.