Summer Vacation

I often get asked by parents what I recommend as activities for their child during the summer break. This can be a great time for children to learn and be challenged by activities that relate to their own personal interest and provide challenges in a way school cannot. The real issue for parents is to understand first what your child’s needs are before determining a summer plan. Secondly, summer should be a time of renewal and fun for children. Play can be a positive learning experience for children and a great way to develop social skills.

If your child is struggling in school, it is important for parents to provide learning opportunities in the summer months. Your child could attend summer school or go to a summer camp. In any case, you should provide your child with opportunities for review of the skills they worked on in school. This is especially important in the area of reading. You should continue to have your child read and to read to your child during the summer. Language development is strongly enhanced by exposure to language and the written word. While in the car traveling to your destination, ask your child questions about what is around you and have him/her read the signs to you. Challenge your child to find the letters of the alphabet in the car license plates.

If your child is doing well in school, then you should use this time to help your son/daughter develop an area of interest. Have them attend a summer camp that focuses on your child’s interest, visit museums or the zoo with your child, or take a family vacation to an area where you can explore some of the topics covered in the social studies curriculum. You can offer them suggestions on what to do, but it is more important to give them the control and allow them to choose the direction the activities will take. All of these activities can be very educational, but remember all children should continue to read during the summer.

When developing your child’s interest, keep the following in mind. If your child, for example, has an interest in being a star baseball player or a concert pianist, the research is very strong that the amount of practice a child completes correlates very highly to the amount of success a child will experience. The researchers tell us that it takes ten years of intense practice to master a field. There have been articles, for example, of very young Chinese divers who have mastered the art of diving by age thirteen. The researchers have documented these students have put in more practice in a shorter amount of time than their older competitors, allowing them to bypass the ten-year rule by squeezing ten years of practice in less years. What this tells us is practice does make perfect, but it has to be practice that the child is driven to do. This level of commitment to practice cannot be forced. This is why it is important for parents to expose their children to all types of activities, hoping to help them find the one activity that excites and motivates them to put in a lot of time to develop their talents. I am not saying, however, that every child should pursue some area to the extreme, only that every child should be given this opportunity. Summer is a great time to provide this chance.

One final thought is to be careful of the amount of time you let your child watch TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV for children younger than two, and no more than two hours daily of high-quality TV or video for older children. There are some studies that suggest children younger than two years old who have watched a lot of television are more likely to develop Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) due to the fast pace of TV programs, which is much faster than what young minds are able to appropriately process. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. I know at my age I have difficulty watching MTV because the images in the videos are so rapid that my mind cannot keep up or understand what is going on. If you get comfortable with this type of pace, the pace in school can become rather difficult to manage. TV can be a wonderful learning tool and a great form of recreation, but children need to have it in moderation and need to be directed to more physical and mentally challenging activities for most of the day.

In conclusion, my best advice to parents is to be sure your child enjoys summer by letting them play, relax, read, and make some choices. Be sure they read every day for as long as they seem motivated and be sure they practice something, in whatever area they seem motivated. Don’t allow your child to become a couch potato or a video game junkie. These activities are fine in moderation, but they should not consume the majority of your child’s time. Try to give them a healthy balance, one in which you can feel comfortable that quality learning is taking place, and one where they can feel their voice has been heard. This way both you and your child can feel good about the summer vacation.