You Don't Have to Run the Summer Show

Instead of setting up activities, create the conditions for play and step back.

When my kids were little, I spent a lot of summers in Massachusetts, at the beach with them, solo-parenting while my husband stayed home in NJ with our dog and an office to report to. The drive was too long for weekend visits, so we’d see him over July 4th weekend and one precious week in August. Sometimes my in-laws would be with us. It was their home where we were staying. But most of the time, it was just my three little kids, me, and nine weeks of long summer days stretched ahead of us. It was a lot of work. My friends thought I was nuts, but I loved it.

I remember one particular late-spring afternoon, standing in the Whole Foods checkout line, my youngest, a toddler, in the carrier on my back, bare little toes dangling by my hips. My middle sitting in the cart in her favorite neon pink dress, two messy buns sitting lopsided on her little head, and my oldest making both girls squirm and laugh with his silly faces and antics.

I stood in the line examining something on the end cap. It was one of those little tins with illustrated activity cards, probably printed on recycled paper with vegetable-dyed ink. “50 activities for kids to beat boredom!” Right there next to the “healthy gum” and the overpriced granola bars that I was for sure going to buy, just to keep the kids from whining while we waited.

I bought the tin. I'd already grabbed an activity book at Target next door. Three posts saved on Instagram about sensory bins and backyard obstacle courses. I was collecting plans that felt like insurance.

I was new-ish to motherhood still, swimming in ideas, and wanting to feel like I was doing it right.

And then summer would start, and the tin would be forgotten in a drawer by week one, the book never even opened.

Here’s what I finally understand now, after almost two decades of parenting:

Those kits were not designed for kids. They were designed for parents.

They made me feel like I had a plan. But every single activity inside still required me to read the instructions, gather the materials, explain the steps, and manage the whole thing from start to finish. I was still the cruise director. My kids were just the passengers.

And that’s the problem with most summer activity ideas. They hand all the creative work right back to you, the adult.

When it comes to play, your job is not to be the director.

When your child says, “You be the monster, and I’ll be the kitty cat,” don’t take over the role. Ask: What does the monster do? Where does he go? What does he say?

Let her direct you. Your job is stage crew.

Think about what the stage crew does. They’re the people you never see, the ones moving furniture between scenes, building sets, placing props, managing lighting cues. Their entire job is to make the conditions right for the performance to happen. When the curtain goes up, they disappear. Invisible by design.

The stage crew doesn’t decide what the play is about. They don’t rewrite the lines or redirect the actors. They read what the production needs and serve that. They are responsive, not generative.

That’s what I’m asking you to be.

And here’s something I want parents to really hear: what I’m describing is not less work. It’s a different and more disciplined kind of work. It requires you to hold back when every instinct is telling you to jump in and fix it or run it.

When you’re the director, you’re always in charge. You’re the one with the ideas and the how-to. And every time you do it, you’re teaching your kids, without meaning to, that play is something that happens to them. Not something they make happen.

When you’re in the crew, you put the right things in the right places. You set the stage. And then you step back.

That’s it. And once I saw it that way, I couldn’t unsee it.

Here’s what this can look like at your house this summer. None of this is complicated or expensive. You can use what you have on hand. None of it needs instructions.

Chalk outside next to a bucket of water and a few random tools. A bucket, some chalk, maybe a sponge or a paintbrush or an old measuring cup. You don’t need to explain or demonstrate.

Kids figure out the rest: washing chalk off the driveway, mixing colors, making what I can only describe as extremely murky potions. I’ve seen this go twenty minutes and I’ve seen it go two hours.

If you’re thinking, I put stuff out, and my kids just ignore it… This is the part you might be missing.

(The rest is for my paid subs…)