Skywalker: I don’t want to go to camp next week.

Dad: No? Really?

Skywalker: No. I want to have camp at home with Mommy.

Mom: You’re going to have lots of days at home with Mommy later in the summer. What’s wrong? You’re not enjoying camp?

Skywalker: I like the swimming, but we can do that at our pool in the neighborhood.

Mom: That’s true, but…

Skywalker: And I like archery, but you guys bought me that little boy and arrow I can shoot in the backyard.

Dad: Isn’t there anything else at camp you would miss?

Mom: Like your friends?

Skywalker: We can have my friends over for camp.

Both parents: Ummm…

Skywalker: It’s perfect! Now all we need is a pony!

***************

Little Skywalker is doing his first few weeks of big kid day camp this summer: the kind where they swim twice a day, do archery, rock climbing, horseback riding… basically non-stop action and outdoorsy stuff, which has been wonderful. He comes home all sweaty and salty and tired and happy. Skywalker is one of the younger rising Kindergarteners, though, and sometimes the long hot days in the North Georgia sun are a little wearing on him. If you’ve ever had young kids you know that whatever wears on them, wears triple on you. We’ve had some tantrums lately that are both maddening and pitiful in their obvious roots of exhaustion. And the early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule leaves him with less time than he would like to just play with his own toys at the house. I can’t say I blame him.

Times like this make you question yourself as a parent. The camp structure I so carefully crafted this spring to meet everyone’s needs this summer is harder than any of us thought it would be – or at least it’s starting out that way.  Is this a great learning opportunity for all of us as we muscle through it and get stronger together? Or do I acknowledge that my “ideal” structure for the summer may not be working as well as I’d hoped and try to find a way to back down from it somehow? (This camp doesn’t do partial days, but dropping a single week later in the summer could be possible — if we go that direction I’ll have to find out what all the cancellation and refund policies are). But he loves the camp…. Ugh!

Wrapped up in all of this are my own desire to slow down, my urgency to make progress on the novel I’m working on, all my childhood memories of summer (which involved more hanging around the neighborhood and going to the library than structured camps), my desire/need to have a professional life for part of the summer while still giving my kids everything they need, and of course the insane mommy guilt that plagues me no matter what my kids are doing or how happy they are because I will never, ever give them a perfect childhood experience and all it takes is ten minutes on any social network where moms hang out for me to realize that I’m doing about seventy different things that are not as good as they could be, or as good as they were in the old days or the way they should be now or the way people remember them being but they really weren’t. WHEW. I’m exhausted just from trying to figure out if I should be exhausted or not.

Enough second-guessing, right? I hate the sense I so often have these days that I can orchestrate our family life and my kids’ lives the same way I can control the fates of characters in my novels. If people are tired or bored or hungry or overscheduled or understimulated, why does that mean I need to re-evaluate my entire life philosophy? Can’t we just fix the immediate need, learn something, love everyone, and move on?

I don’t have to re-create my childhood for my kids (there are many parts of my childhood I’m trying desperately to avoid creating for them – and me having my own mental health space is part of that). This summer is ours. And it’s been a terrific summer so far. It’s going to continue to be an amazing summer, or an average summer, or a pretty decent summer. It will be the summer it is, and all will be fine.

Hopefully.

Please tell me I’m not alone in this – does anyone else feel this crazy pressure to make summer perfect, or at least to meet some unattainable standard of activity, or relaxation? Do you feel hyper-responsible for how your kids spend their summer hours? If you don’t have kids, is there pressure to have the most amazing vacation or make the most of every weekend?

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I’m M.J. (Manda) Pullen, an author and mom in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I blog about writing, publishing, motherhood, health, psychology and whatever else strikes me in the moment. I went to a Christian summer camp with a friend for a week one summer and I still remember all the songs.

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My current roster of books includes The Marriage Pact series, a trilogy of Contemporary Romance/Women’s Fiction novels. You can find them for all eBook formats and in paperback here.

MJ Pullen

M.J. Pullen is a distracted writer and the mom of two boys in Roswell, Georgia, where she is absolutely late for something important right now. Her books include quirky romantic comedies and playful women's fiction. She blogs erratically with writing advice, random observations, and reflections on raising very loud kids and dogs. Join her Distracted Readers newsletter list for updates, free content, giveaways and more.