The last day of school arrives, and for about forty-eight hours, everyone’s excited. The kids are thrilled, you’re relieved, and summer feels full of possibility. Then day three hits and someone’s already bored, someone else is crying, the house looks like a car boot sale, and you’ve still got five and a half weeks to go.
Summer with kids is chaos. That’s not a failure on your part — it’s just what it is. The schools shut for six weeks and the structure that holds your days together disappears overnight. The survival tactics that actually work aren’t about filling every day with activities or hitting some imaginary standard of good parenting. They’re about adjusting what you expect from yourself and the kids, and getting through it without losing your mind.
Here’s what works.
Drop the screen time rules
During term time, you probably have limits on screens — an hour, maybe two, no devices after a certain time. In summer, loosen them. Not completely, not forever, but enough to stop fighting about it every single day for six weeks.
Screens are not the enemy. A film on a rainy Tuesday afternoon is not rotting their brains — it’s keeping everyone calm while you get something done, or just get a break. The summer holidays are long, and you cannot be on all the time. Using the TV or the tablet as a tool isn’t lazy parenting; it’s practical parenting. Let it do some of the work.
Lower your standards
The house is going to get messier than usual. Meals are going to be more chaotic. Bedtimes are going to slip. That’s fine. The summer holidays are not the time to hold the same line you hold during term time — the context is completely different, and trying to maintain term-time standards across six unstructured weeks is a fast track to burning out by week two.
Decide what the non-negotiables are — the things that genuinely matter to you — and let the rest go for now. If the kids stay up a bit later because it’s light outside and everyone’s more relaxed, that’s okay. If lunch is sandwiches and crisps more often than it should be, that’s okay too. You can reset in September.
Let them choose what they do
One of the fastest ways to make the summer holidays harder than they need to be is to spend all your time trying to entertain children who didn’t ask to be entertained. Kids are actually quite good at finding things to do when you step back and let them.
Ask them what they want to do and if it’s safe and vaguely possible, say yes. Get them to write a list at the start of the holiday — things they want to do, places they want to go, stuff they want to make or watch or try. Stick it on the fridge and work through it as you go. It gives them ownership of their own summer, takes the pressure off you to constantly generate ideas, and means less negotiating about what to do each day because they’ve already decided.
When kids choose their own activities, they’re also more likely to stick with them. Boredom is fine too — some of the best stuff happens when they’ve got nothing planned and have to figure it out themselves.
Keep some kind of schedule
Complete freedom sounds good in theory. In practice, with kids, it tends to unravel quickly. Without any structure at all the days blur into each other, everyone gets overtired and grumpy, and the “I’m bored” starts earlier and earlier each morning.
You don’t need a timetable — you just need some anchors. Something that happens at roughly the same time each day: breakfast together, out of the house by a certain point, a loose wind-down before bed. It doesn’t have to be rigid or detailed. Just enough that the kids know broadly what to expect and you’re not winging every single hour from scratch.
A rough schedule also makes it easier to fit in the things that need doing — work, errands, everything that doesn’t stop just because school’s out. When the kids know that mornings are free time and afternoons are when you might go somewhere or do something together, it creates a shape to the day that works for everyone.
Work with what you’ve got
Not everyone has six weeks of annual leave to match the school holidays. Not everyone has family nearby or money for activities every other day. Working with your actual situation — rather than the summer holiday you think you should be having — makes the whole thing a lot more manageable.
Free activities go further than people think. Parks, libraries, bike rides, paddling pools in the garden, letting them loose with cardboard boxes and sellotape — none of it costs anything and kids will often rate these days just as highly as the expensive ones. Local councils and libraries run free or cheap holiday programmes most summers, and it’s worth checking what’s on near you.
If you’re working through the summer, be straight with the kids about it. They can handle more than you think. “I need to work until 2pm and then we’ll do something” is a completely reasonable thing to say. It’s honest, it sets expectations, and it gives everyone something to look forward to.
The summer holidays are survivable. Not always comfortable, not always the golden montage of fun that it looks like on social media — but survivable. Lower the bar a bit, let some things go, and get to September in one piece. That’s the goal.