What is a “good summer” for kids with learning disabilities?

For kids with learning disabilities, summer break doesn’t need to be all about learning or just about fun. A healthy summer includes a mix of both.

In this episode, Julian Saavedra breaks down what makes a good summer for kids with learning differences. Find out why rest is important for kids. And learn simple activities to help kids stay active and involved during the break.

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at opportunitygap@understood.org.

Related resources

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• Summer guide for families

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Episode transcript

Julian: Summer often comes with the pressure of constant activity, camps, tutoring, daily reading. But for kids with learning and thinking differences, this can be more harmful than helpful.

What is going on, family? Welcome to the "Opportunity Gap." I'm your host, Julian. Today, we're diving into what makes a good summer for kids with learning and thinking differences. Today, I'm going to bust the myth of the lazy summer. I'm gonna explain why rest is actually super important. And I'll share some fun summer activities that aren't gonna break the bank. All right, let's dive in.

So, first and foremost, the lazy summer myth. I'm sure you've heard of this before, where there's this idea you might have seen it on Instagram a lot, where people think that if you don't have your kids doing something every single second of the summer, that you're not doing it correctly. Like people have these curated beautiful situations where their children are doing these amazing activities all summer long, and that if you're not doing that, then you're wasting your summer.

Well, guess what? That mindset can be really tough for our kids, especially our kids with learning and thinking differences. Let me explain why. First and foremost, the lazy summer myth, it adds a lot of unnecessary pressure. It's pressure on you as a parent, it's pressure your kids as the child experiencing it. It might even be pressure on your friends and family. And it's just not helping anybody. It also fuels burnout. That kids are probably already experiencing. Like they're already dealing with this from the time they were in school. So, now they have this pressure to keep doing all this stuff over the summer break.

And the idea of summer break is that you're supposed to be having a relaxing time. And it ignores how challenging the school year probably already was. Remember, if I have learning and thinking differences, my school year is pretty tough. It's been nine months of trying to figure out how I can be a great student. And especially for our kids with learning and thinking differences, all day, every day could be a challenge. And so, you finally have summer break. You finally are out of school. You don't have to go back for a little bit. And if you know that your summer is going to be structured and you're not gonna get a break, it's gonna cause a lot more stress.

As an administrator, I'm going to tell you the most important thing I say to all of the families I work with, have your child rest. Rest, rest, rest. Rest is recovery for your children, but rest is also recovery for you. It's important to take a break. Take a step back. Rest like actually sleep. I know that I have to get up at five o'clock in the morning every day. I'm tired of that. I might wake up a little bit later. And your children might want to do the same. So, it's OK to let them rest a little bit physically. It's also allowing them to recharge and replenish their creativity, to recharge their energy, but also to help them with their emotional and social well-being.

One thing that we make sure to do is to really go heavy on having lots of books available and making a point of giving ourselves a couple of hours every day during the summer where we just sit and we go to our separate spaces and we just say, "read." And if we wanna read for a couple of hours, cool. If we wanna for 30 minutes, cool, but it gives us a chance to just take a breather.

Another thing that we do, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this at the end, we try to have a walk happen at some point every single day, just to get outside together and to walk around and just talk a bit about our day. All right, now I'm gonna talk a little bit about burnout. All right, burnout, it's not just for adults. It is a word that a lot of us hear about, but I wanna make sure that we understand exactly what it is and how it might present itself with our children. Now they might not say to you, "Dad, I am burnt out." If you have teenagers, they might, but most of them might not, they're not gonna say that. But their behavior is definitely gonna tell you that they are burnt out.

First of all, what is burnout? Burnout is defined as the state of exhaustion that comes from nonstop stress. It is a state of being where you are physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually exhausted. And for kids who learn and think differently, stress throughout the year is constant. As I mentioned earlier, in the school year, uh, it's really hard for kids who have learning and thinking differences to keep it together. Like they have to work harder to make sure that they're fitting into the mold of what they're being asked to do in school. And so, if you are doing this every single day for 180 days, it gets really difficult. And so at some point, they might just be done with all of it.

Then you wonder, well, what does this look like if my kid is experiencing burnout? So here's three ways that you might notice this is happening. Number one, ask yourself: is my child a little bit more easily annoyed at things that are very small? Are they getting frustrated pretty quickly? If I ask them, "Hey, what do you want to eat tonight?" "I don't care." "Would you like Nutella or peanut butter?" "It doesn't matter to me." I'm like, well, "I'm just asking you if you want peanut butter and Nutella." And so, if you get these short answers or you get this tone of voice that's a little bit different than what you're used to, your child might be experiencing burnout.

Secondly, but ask yourself, is there something that your child absolutely loved when they started, and now they're not loving it so much? I'll give you an example. Maybe your child made the soccer team, and they finally were able to become the goalie. And so they're playing their spring soccer league. They're really excited. They might make the playoffs, but you notice that after a couple of months, your child isn't wanting to do that anymore. They used to have all their stuff ready. They used to be fully dressed to go to practice. And we know for children with ADHD, being fully prepared and ready to go, that's a tough thing to do.

But after a couple of months, they start saying, I don't feel so good. Can we skip practice tonight? I don't really want to go to the game. Can you tell the coach that I'm not feeling it? And if they start avoiding things that they absolutely love to do, that's a sign that your child might be burnt out. And lastly, anxiety. And anxiety can take a number of different forms, but one that can be really telling is anxiety around anything related to school.

If your child is crying at nighttime, if your child wakes up in the morning and doesn't wanna get out of bed because they're nervous about what's gonna happen at school, if anytime you mention something related to school and their body language is changing a little bit or they crunch up or they just change their entire demeanor and that's a sign your child might be burnt out. And so, I say all of that because these are reasons why it's so important. If you have the opportunity to allow the summer to be relaxed and not over structured, it's a great way to give our kids some balance and provide some rest and really good opportunities for rest, but also to allow some activities that are led by their interest to create fun activities during their summer break.

So, what does a good summer look like? Good summer. Let's be real. Summer is really difficult for a lot of our parents. I know a lot our families have to work. And so, maybe your summer might be going to camp. Or maybe your is summer is sending them to your parents' house. Or maybe you're summer is having them be in different programs. And maybe you have to figure out, what am I gonna do about childcare? How am I going to take care of these kids? How am I gonna make sure that they're fed? Lunch is gone now, you've got to figure that out too. And this can stress you out.

And so, in some cases, you have to leave your kids to their own devices. Sometimes they have to be on their own. Sometimes, you, as mom and dad, cannot watch every single move that they're making. And so, I want to really talk a little bit about how you can make sure you're giving your kids unstructured time in a way that really is structured. First of all, what is unstructured time? It's exactly what it is. It's not giving them exactly step by step what they have to do. It's giving them time where it's open, and they're left to do something that you're not creating.

Mom and dad are not telling you exactly what to do, they're not telling when to do it, they're giving you a little bit of time to just be free. And those of you that grew up in the same time I did, I had a lot of this when I was growing up. My grandmother would open the door and say, "You got to be outside and don't come back until lunchtime." And then we eat lunch and then she'd say, "All right, go back outside." And we would have to come back in by the time the streetlights came on. That's a lot of time outside. Now, was she following me everywhere? No, not at all. My siblings, my friends, all of us were out, having a good time, and most of it was unstructured.

And so, why is this important? Because it allows your children to experience an idea of creativity, to develop self-regulation skills, but also to help them with their emotional development. And so, getting them outside or getting them in a place where they are in an unstructured environment, it allows our children to create experiences for themselves, but it also allows you as the parent to curate this experience for them in a way where they're taking calculated risks.

Now what do I mean by calculated risk? I mean that you're giving them a chance to do something on their own where they feel like they can be autonomous or on their on, in a way where they're creating this space for themselves where they have to figure it out. And they feel good about it and it gives them confidence that they can do things on their. Now listen, I grew up in a city and I know a lot of our listeners live in the city and I lived in a neighborhood that wasn't so nice. You know, there are great things about it, but in some cases, the neighborhood didn't have everything that it should have had. And so, my mom and my grandmother had to be really careful about how we moved around the neighborhood.

So, they made sure to show us how to get from point A to point B, how to navigate the bus or how to. Walking through the neighborhood, and then they let us do it on our own. And that means that they trusted us to figure it out. And so, those of you that live in a city, I would encourage you to walk through the different parts of your neighborhood or find different spots in your neighborhood that you can give your children a chance to really be on their own so that they can develop some of that autonomy and self-regulation skills without you doing it all for them.

So, the question is, "Well, Julian, I got to make sure my kids are fed all summer long, and we know that summer prices are pretty high. Camp is already breaking the bank. What can I do to create these foundational experiences for my kids without spending a whole bunch of money? Well, here's what you can do. If you're like me, you might have a great relationship with Amazon.

Amazon shows up at our door every day and when Amazon is coming, you normally have boxes that are still left over so what we do in our household is we'll give kids, their friends, my kids, their friends "Here's a whole bunch of boxes, here's some glue, here's some scissors, here's some markers, some crayons, your mission is to take the next hour and make something special You can make a fort You can make a tool, you can make some building blocks, you can do whatever you want, but I want you to make something special for us."

And sometimes we'll make it into a competition. Sometimes we'll it into an Amazon art show, whatever you decide, it gives the kids a chance to just literally be creative and figure out what to do on their own. And guess what? It costs zero money. Here's another way you can do this. My daughter absolutely loves to cook. She is working with me on learning all the different recipes. And so, when you're cooking, if you know your child needs to work on math, especially fractions and percentages, cooking and baking are great ways to practice.

So, she and I love to make cornbread and not just the fancy cornbread. We take old school and break out the Jiffy cornbread in the blue and white box. And on that box, you need to make sure you follow the directions. If you put too much water into the cornbread mixture, it comes out dry, and nobody wants that. Dry cornbread is the worst. So, you have your baby practice the different fractions that go along with making great cornbread. If I need one quarter cup of vegetable oil, how many teaspoons would this be? What's the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon? And allow your children to make that happen.

And last but not least, I talked a little bit about taking walks. We love to take walks around the neighborhood. We love get on the bus and just take a walk around Philly. And in some cases, we might just say, "All right, we're gonna do a scavenger hunt where we find different things that we see as we're walking. It's a great chance to get into the area you live, have your children practice, noticing everything in their surroundings, and especially for our kids with ADHD who are hyperactive. It's a great way for them to channel their energy into something that's focused, but also something that is really fun."

A good summer is not about overscheduling, it's not about expensive programs, it's about fancy camps, it's all about understanding your child's needs. It's about giving them space to recharge and space to rest and relax. And it's also a space for them to celebrate themselves. It's been a hard school year. Let's celebrate all those small moments of joy. Think back to your summers. What was most memorable? Ask your parents, what did they do? Ask your grandparents, ask your aunties, ask your uncles, ask anybody of a certain age. What did they to make your summer magical?

I know for me, some of my favorite times were just sitting on the stoop and playing Uno. And I still remember that to this day. Now, my children and I play spades. And it's a great way for them to remember. And it's way more important than all the fancy, beautiful trips, it's about having memories that they're going to experience for the rest of their lives.

Parents, give yourselves grace, give yourselves time, give yourself rest, and guess what? It's OK to have the devices. If you need a break, use it, and don't feel bad about it. You're working hard. You can do it too.

Understood.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give. The "Opportunity Gap" is produced by Tara Drinks and Cody Nelson. Video is produced Calvin Knie and edited by Nico Rothenberg. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, Seth Melnick, and Jordan Davidson. Thanks again for listening.