Six years into this parenting gig, and I’m still blinded by that sneaky, special week in August when summer camps have ended and school hasn’t started yet – also known as the “childcare dead zone.”
This year, however, we Frankensteined a plan at the last minute with two other families to split the weeklong break at the end of the summer. We survived, and we couldn’t have done so without a little homegrown ingenuity and the courage of modern parents.
I got together with two friends to go over our schedules
To put together a plan, two of mine mom friends and I looked at each of our households’ work and activity schedules for the week and went from there. Our first conversations went something like this: “Hey, I’m getting calls all Monday morning, can my child come to your house? The next morning we can switch and your child can come to our house from 9 a.m. to noon. How does that sound?”
And so this shift began and shifting childcare around work visits, doctor’s appointments and deadlines. In the afternoon, when our workdays slowed down, we’d meet at a local playground to let our kids run wild—with snacks, water bottles, and relief from mumbling through another day in a country that doesn’t support working families as it should.
We got more done and our kids bonded
While our six-year-olds were playing in musical houses, they became involved in a barrage of… imaginative play – building towers with blocks, building inventive marble runs, creating sidewalk art with chalk, painting with water, drawing, putting on costumes and gushing about newly formed inside jokes. We, parents, usually followed a laissez faire approach – interrupt only to offer a healthy, balanced snack platter of vegetables, fruit, protein and carbohydrates or to suggest a bathroom break.
There was no need to provide screens as the children were engrossed in unstructured play. During our reflections, the adults agreed that if the children were home alone, at some point we would have relied on technological entertainment to help them pass the time and allow us to fulfill our work responsibilities. We managed to curb the need with our own piecemeal programming, and it worked out great. Our kids had a great time, and so did we, catching up and laughing in the silly moments between pick-up and drop-off.
Through our example, our rambunctious runamuckers saw in real time how adults work together to solve a problem, while also getting the chance to develop the same skills themselves – together – in their own space. Every day I saw their faces light up as they greeted each other. Their bond deepened by doing different household activities and thinking about what to do when a friend doesn’t want to do the same as you.
Our hands-off approach worked extremely well
The adults mostly stayed out of the way, allowing the children to solve their own problems. As a parent it is sometimes difficult to do that take a step back and refuse to intervene when conflict arises between our children, but I have learned that if we trust our children and give them the skills they need to deal with various challenges – and make the best use of the learning opportunities – they are more than capable of handling their own difficult situations with friends.
I suppose the internet would call this approach ’90s-style parenting’, but I like to think of it as a revival of that era: taking the good of our ’90s childhood experience (promoting independence, loosening boundaries, encouraging innovation) and taking it with the good of today, with a more informed approach to our children’s developmental needs.
Ultimately, our inevitable week turned from the “childcare dead zone” to a “childcare LIVE zone,” because as human beings we worked together, saw each other in our struggles, acted, and said “yes” to lending a helping hand. Nowadays we often hear the question: “Where is the village???” We finally found ours.
