My Love/Hate Relationship With Summer Vacation

Last updated on: August 31, 2015 at 10:13 pm by Rebecca Frech

My Love/Hate Relationship With Summer Vacation 2015-08-31T22:13:07-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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We need Summer Break. We need it for our mental health and to have time to just be together as a family. We need it to let brains rest after months of non-stop learning. We need it to keep me from selling the children, or at least trading one of the teenagers away for a Golden Retriever puppy. We need it, and I love it.

Right up until the first day back to school – which was today.

Today I hate Summer Vacation. It gives children the opportunity to forget every single thing they’ve learned in the past year.

Math. They forget math.

I always look towards the first day back while nervously holding my breath in anticipation of the back-slide. How bad will it be this year? How much will they have completely forgotten? How many hours will we have to spend on math drills in order to bring them back up to speed?

The answer to all those questions it “way too much.”

I mentioned it to a teacher friend of mine and she said they dread the same thing except times 20+, so I’ll count my blessings that it’s only three really that have forgotten stuff. (Math)

I can see that the kids are frustrated too, and I wonder again (as I do every year) if maybe we’d be better off with shorter breaks but more of them, and if year-round school is right for us. Then I think back to the hellacious year that we tried it, and how I was weeping from mental fatigue by the time we got to our long winter break. I remember how that long winter break was the worst thing ever because the weather was too cold to do anything or go anywhere. It was just dreary and the boredom seeped into our bones. I remember that I swore I’d never do that again, and my husband hugged me and said “Thank you.”

We tried doing math three mornings a week this year, and it lasted until mid-June when we went to the pool instead of working on math facts, and then never opened those books up again until this morning.

I’m out of brilliant solutions, and hoping that someone else has one to share. I also want you to know that if you cracked open those new books and realized that your 5th grader had completely forgotten how to multiply by 7, you’re not alone. It’s us and the regular teachers all sighing at the uphill climb we have in the next few weeks just to get back to where we were in May.

Don’t worry. It will come back to them.

At last that’s what I keep telling myself.

How are you coping with the back-slide? Or have you managed to avoid it?

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