Creating a Balance Between Youth Sports and Summertime

As the country continues to get back into youth sports in a variety of ways, it’s important to remember that it IS summertime.

With schools closed and the majority of parents working from home during the spring, it sort of felt like other than not going to the beach, that was our summer break.

But when you think about it … it really wasn’t.

Summertime is about kids staying up later than usual, sleeping in, and then spending their days hanging with friends on the playgrounds, at the pools, or wherever they can just be kids – with no schoolwork of any kind involved.

While kids might have spent the spring entrenched in their summer sleeping habits, most playgrounds, pools and other popular kid hangouts were closed or off-limits. And don’t forget, school was in session – in a very different way.

So now, what we have to be careful about, as parents, is to make sure our kids still have their summertime.

July and August are the official months of summer. They are the only two months of the year when, for most families, there’s no school. There’s just a smattering of youth sports commitments and a whole lot of family time. Just because we are coming off a unique spring that included all of the above in some way, it doesn’t mean we should steal the real summer break from our kids.