Ep171: What If Summer Had Just Enough Structure?

Summer doesn’t need to be a “go with the flow” free-for-all to be fun. I’m Dr. Beth Trammell, and I’m sharing a simple, therapy-informed way to plan a season that actually matches your life: your work schedule, your home projects, your relationships, and the kind of rest you want to feel when fall arrives.

We start with practical goal setting that works. If your goals sound like “work out more” or “drink more water,” they’re probably too vague to stick. I talk through how to make goals specific, how to keep them realistic based on where you’re starting, and why aiming too high often leads to quitting two weeks later. We also get honest about setbacks. Summer is full of obstacles, from parties and family reunions to ice cream stops and buffet tables, so we plan strategies before temptation shows up.

Then we shift to parenting and summer routines for kids. Summer has a different rhythm than the school year, but kids still benefit from structure, clear expectations, and simple routines. I share a real example from my own home, including a daily checklist with creativity time, reading, thinking time, movement, together time, and hydration. We wrap with an important topic that can save you a lot of stress later: maintaining a consistent sleep-wake cycle so the return to school doesn’t become a painful reset.

If you want a calmer, more intentional summer without overplanning it, listen now. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review so more people can find the show. **Replay from 2024

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Transcript

Welcome And Summer Intentions

0:12

Hello, listener. I am Dr. Beth Tremell, and this is Things You Learn in Therapy. I am an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I'm also the director of the Masters in Mental Health Counseling program. And I'm excited about summer. And today's first episode of the summer season is really about exploring intentional ways that you can kind of plan for the summer, right? And so I want to start by having you think about what it is that you want the summer to look like, right? Whether that's uh with your kids or with your work schedule or your home schedule or projects you want to get done that you have been kind of putting off until a different season has come.

Goals That Are Specific And Realistic

0:57

So I want to talk a little bit about goal setting. Um, I actually talk a lot about goal setting in both my, you know, therapeutic practice, but also in working with students and other people, right? That goal setting is something that while we kind of think, hey, yeah, I know how to do goal setting. Um, and then you don't achieve your goal, and then you're like, well, what just happened there? So I find that most of the time folks who set goals don't have a specific, the goal isn't specific enough. And so we're saying, like, I want to work out more, I want to drink more water, I want to spend more time with friends. It's usually like a more statement, but we don't actually talk about what more looks like. If you are uh wanting to work out more over the summer, uh, then you have to establish where are you now and what is realistic to move to um achieve your goal, right? So if you're working out once a week and you say, Well, I'm gonna work out five times a week, is that actually realistic for you? Being specific is one thing, but then also being realistic about your goal is another potential pitfall that people fall into that they shoot for the moon. And then it's like, well, actually, two weeks later you give up on your goal. And so I want to encourage you to think about kind of two things within goal setting, being specific about what you want that to look like and trying to be realistic. And so maybe it's about traveling, maybe it's about your health, maybe it's about some sort of social goal, whatever that looks like for you. Try to be really specific about that, particularly as we think about the next couple of months of summer.

Planning For Obstacles And Setbacks

2:48

And one um kind of final thing I'll say about goal setting is that we have to be prepared for setbacks or obstacles to achieving our goal. For example, if I'm trying to lose a few pounds over the summer, I need to be prepared for uh, you know, all of the sugary treats that may come, ice cream stops or, you know, celebrations uh with friends or uh family reunions, things like that. I have to think and be intentional about what I am planning to do when those obstacles come. So when there's a buffet of food out and I'm trying to lose weight, I need to prepare myself for a strategy of what that's gonna look like. So maybe I'll say I'm allowed to have one dessert when we are at the buffet of food with my family, but not, you know, 12 bites of every dessert, which is kind of my MO if I'm being honest. So think about intentional summer goals that you want to achieve this summer. You know, sometimes people see goals and they think about doing a summer bucket list, which I think is great. So thinking about what uh are maybe bigger things that you want to achieve that you want to put on a bucket list, I encourage you to write those things down, post them in your house somewhere, tell a friend. We have lots of good evidence to say that if you post it or if you tell someone else about your idea, your goal, your dream, you're more likely to achieve it because you got people in your life who are gonna try to hold you accountable to that. So, what are things that are on your bucket list? Maybe you have five things over the summer that would be on your bucket list and you can start to check them off in an intentional way. I'm

Summer Structure For Kids That Works

4:32

gonna talk a little bit about kids and summer uh specifically here. And so if you're not a parent, maybe you still listen in uh as a person who might just be interested in this, but specifically for parents, I want to think about what do chores and responsibilities look like over the summer for our kids? So I think summer definitely takes on a different rhythm uh than the school year. And that's great. You know, I think our kids need us to rest, which we're gonna talk about in another episode. Um, how do we do rest well? So tune in for that. But it doesn't mean that summer should be without structure, it should be without any kind of responsibility around the house. And so while you are allowing some space for kids to have rest and relaxation over the summer, I always encourage parents to maintain some version of a routine or structure. And so for me, structure means clear expectations and effective routines. When we have those routines that we want them to get into, it doesn't mean they have to wake up at seven or eight in the morning, but it does mean that, hey, here is a checklist of these five things that um I'm expecting you to do every day for the summer. So, you know, that might include, you know, chores around the house that are age appropriate, which by the way, kids as young as kindergarten could be doing chores every day. There are some great chore lists for age-appropriate types of chores. Getting your kids in the habit of doing things every day is great. What I did with my own kids this year is sort of created a checklist of things that they go through, but allowed some variety. And so uh one of their options or one of their requirements is to be creative every day for 20 minutes. And so I gave them a list of a few ideas for what being creative could look like. So I want them to paint or draw or color, or they could go outside and um kind of be creative in nature. Um, they can build something, they could do Legos, but anything that keeps them in this kind of creative mindset for 20 minutes. They have to read for 20 minutes, they have to have what I'm calling thinking time for 20 minutes. And that would include kind of word puzzles or uh a jigsaw puzzle or sudoku or word search or things like that where they're just kind of thinking. They have to move their body and be together. And um, I actually added hydration for my kids this summer, which has been kind of a unique challenge for them because I think as adults, we tend to focus more on drinking uh enough water for your body. But um I realized last summer that they played outside a lot, they were at the pool a lot, and so encouraging good hydration for the kids was something that I included on their list. So that's just an example of what I'm doing in my um my own life. And if you would like a copy of that list, I'm happy to share it with you. You can just email me and I'm I'll I'll share it with you as a template. Um, it's actually very simple, just a simple word document, but there's some ideas for you. The short story is having some sort of routine that works for you and your family is something that um would be good to keep them in even over the summer. So I um think about my friend um and uh fellow guest on the show. She's actually coming back again to talk about some court things. Tara Egan, I always come back to something she said on an episode on how do we kind of balance social media with our teenagers in in particular. And she said, you know, the important thing is that kids show up for their lives every day. And so I think about what that what that looks like for you and your kids. How will they show up in their lives today? And what do you want them to do to show up in their lives today?

Protecting Sleep Routines All Summer

8:29

The last thing I want to talk about is sleep and um making sleep routines still an important part of the summer. Not all of you are gonna love me for this, and that that's that's okay. But um, our kids really need to maintain a consistent sleep-wake cycle throughout the year. And that doesn't mean that, you know, they have to go to bed, you know, while it's still light out for some of us, 8 or 8:30. But it does mean, you know, letting them stay up till two or three in the morning and then trying to get their bodies back into the swing of school in a couple of months is just not necessarily advised. So you may just be kind of asking for more trouble later. That doesn't mean you have a day or two over the summer or a day or two a month where, you know, they're staying up late because they have a sleepover or whatever that looks like, right? I'm not talking about never doing this. Don't uh not necessarily a black and white kind of thinker, but maybe trying to keep their bedtime at 10 and their wake up time at eight. You know, if it pushes back an hour, you're probably gonna be okay when we come back to August and you have to retrain their bodies to wake up uh much earlier and go to bed much earlier. But if they are extending their bedtime or their sleep wake cycle by several hours, then it's just gonna be harder to kind of wait, you know, get things back on track. So think about ways that you can maybe maintain a constant sleep uh cycle or at least a similar sleep wake cycle for your kids. Might be easier later in the summer when we're um talking about getting ready for the school year to start, which will be an episode that I share with you later in the summer. So

Keep It Intentional Not Overplanned

10:13

just a few thoughts as we are stepping into summer. And I just want to encourage you that intentional planning will make you feel more successful, but don't go overboard. You know, summertime is about uh a different rhythm of life. And so my encouragement for you today is just to envision what that looks like and then take some intentional steps to make that happen. So thanks for listening today. Next week, we are going to talk about how do we engage with teams? That is part of what we are going to talk about next week. So tune in for that one. And until next time, stay safe and stay well.