Vacation time is coming!!! Exciting times…except for many social media managers who have to balance client calls and creating social media posts while their kids are on school vacation!
What are your tips? Do you hire a babysitter/nanny? Do you only work certain hours? Do you send them to camp? What are the expectations you set with your clients? How do you (and your children) survive?
Summer 2020 was the first summer I did not have a full-time babysitter for my children and it was a nice way to force me to test out if I could work with them at home (they were 7 and 9 at the time and I was a university professor and could work from home in the summer). Now they are 9 and 11 and I work from home full time. I give them a chore list every day and we also have plenty of camps to keep them busy!
Summer used to be really hectic and scary because I was trying to juggle with less childcare. However, having lived through 2020-2021 with my kids doing remote learning (and basically facilitating kindergarten for my then-5 year old) while also working, I feel like this summer will be MUCH easier. Mine are 7 and 13, so I have the added bonus of a built-in sitter. Our summers typically look like this:
Summer school (3ish weeks)
Assorted & varied camps for both (the scheduling of these is what is the hardest!)
Supplementing times w/my 13 year old watching the 7 year old
Sending them to the grandparents when they are able (this used to happen more, but my parents are older now).
One hundred percent! If I don’t have to write a social media strategy or, more difficultly, help a nonprofit navigate 100s of canceled events and volunteer hours whilst also teaching kindergarten, I’ve got it fairly easy.
The struggle is real! I’ve gotten used to my daughter being gone at school all day and I’m a little worried about productivity (and mom guilt) when she’s home during the summer. I did book her into a couple summer camps so that’ll help a little bit. I’ll also plan to have my nanny help out with at least one half day every week to buy me a break. But let’s face it, there will definitely be more ipad time than we have now