Summer Freedom: Boarding All Rows

Image credit: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/photo_5045037_top-view-of-a-sweet-little-girl-relaxing-on-the-grass.html'>logos / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

When you’re a mom, summer represents freedom from arrival and departure times. There are few “gotta be heres, gotta be theres.”

My friend Lindsay told her children prior to attending our school’s reading night at our local Barnes & Noble, “If you want to go, we’ll go. If you don’t, that’s fine, we don’t have to.” We don’t have to. Lindsay was all about allowing her kids to opt out. Freedom to attend was up to them.

Choice. Why can’t our kids always live like they have one? It seems that children have fewer choices when it comes to how they are going to spend their time. The school year for one is like a permanent umbrella over their heads. Activities and responsibilities drop down like rain against the vinyl covering– not hitting too hard yet distracting enough to steal away focus and attention from things we truly value, and the ability to decide that we are going to do something we want with our time because we can.  (Not that engaging in activities is wrong, there is just sometimes such an abundance of them that there can be little space for anything else.)  We live by the schedule of the school year that can make us weary and drive us to fatigue faster than we can drive our kids to their next class or club.

I love seeing my kids just be and you are probably no different.  They were excited this evening knowing they didn’t have to wake up early tomorrow, and baking a Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie when they would have otherwise been getting ready for bed had it been any month between August and June, took on a different level of excitement in the kitchen.

And I know that Lindsay was packing up to go to Disneyland the following day — a “gotta be there” that I am sure her children didn’t mind the pressure of having.

No hurries. No worries.

It’s summer. Fun and freedom have been extended with no plans of landing nor pulling up to a gate. (Until August). Enjoy!

Which freedoms do you enjoy most about summer?