School Holidays! Hurray or Huh?
School can sometimes take a lot out of your kids. You support the emotional regulation, carry the mental load, keep family life moving, and somehow keep your business going, too. Then the school holidays arrive, and the routine you’ve all been relying on disappears. School holidays are roughly thirteen weeks a year. If you’re employed, you get five-ish weeks of annual leave, and if you’re freelance, when you don’t work, you don’t get paid!
We see you; we’re walking the path together, so let’s look at it through a neurodivergent business lens.
The actual bundle-everyone-in-the-car/plane/ferry holiday can be dysregulating in itself. You can read more about what that entails for ND people and how Sycamore can support you to take a proper break from your work in THIS blog. But let’s be real, the actual slog, the graft of working and parenting/caring over the summer holidays can be, frankly, nightmarish.
But why?
Neurodivergent parents often (Shock! Horror!) have neurodivergent kids! As much as the younglings rely on steady routine, expectation management, low-demand lifestyles, and the regulation of safe spaces and people, so do their parents!
The sun streams through the window from seemingly 3 am and is still up at 10 pm, so straight away, everyone’s sleep is up the Khyber; add to the soupy humidity that is British summertime, and you’re even more off-kilter before the day has even begun. If your melatonin-taking child is anything like mine, they become almost entirely nocturnal every school holiday due to taking necessary meds breaks, which is sub-optimal for everyone’s energy levels during the day.
You miss the regular punctuation points during the day. No getting up for school, no packed lunches, no uniforms, no school runs. Those everyday moments often act as reminders for some of the other things we need to do. If your executive function is not executively functioning at the best of times, without those markers throughout the day, it’s much easier for things to slip through the cracks.
Couple that with the guilt. The big, bad, achy chest pangs of guilt that you’re not ‘making magical memories’, crafting crafts, building dams and all-purpose behaving like you’re in an Enid Blyton novel, because your kiddo is propped up with a tablet and seventy-billion hours straight of Bluey (is Bluey still a thing? I have no idea) whilst you’re on a call.
“Oh, but there are activity clubs! Summer Camps! Grandparents?”
If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, many summer activities aren’t accessible for neurodivergent children; specialist provision is often limited, expensive, or only runs for a small part of the holidays, and not every family has a support network they can rely on. Sending your child somewhere they don’t feel comfortable isn’t much of a solution if you’re spending the whole day worrying about how they’re coping.
“So, what’s the solution?”
Not everything needs a big solution. Sometimes, a few small changes can make the school holidays feel more manageable.
The aim isn’t to recreate the perfect summer or squeeze every minute out of the day. It’s to reduce pressure, protect your energy, and accept that this season may look different from the rest of the year.
Here are a few ideas that might help:
- Lower your expectations. This probably isn’t the time to launch a new service, overhaul your website or say yes to every opportunity. Focus on what genuinely needs your attention and let the rest wait.
- Work with your family’s rhythms. If your children are more settled in the morning, use that time differently than if they’re happiest in the evening. There isn’t a “right” way to structure your days.
- Make peace with screens. If a tablet, gaming console or favourite film gives everyone an hour of calm so you can finish an important task, that’s okay. You’re meeting a need, not taking a shortcut.
- Protect time to rest. You don’t need to fill every day with Instagrammable activities to make the holidays meaningful. Rest, familiar routines and low-demand days are just as valuable as days out.
- Build in flexibility. Some days will go to plan. Others won’t. Having a list of “must do”, “should do” and “could do” tasks can make it easier to adapt without feeling like you’ve failed.
Above all, be kind to yourself. Without straying into Utopian vision territory, there isn’t one perfect solution to the school holidays. The answer is finding your own way, making peace with what needs to be done to keep everyone sane, and accepting that progress over the summer may look very different. And that’s perfectly okay.
What else works?
Sycamore can also, as mentioned above, help you take a holiday without worry. What we can’t do is look after your kids- sorry about that -, but we can:
- Provide touchpoints/reminders throughout the weeks to help keep you on track
- Create tailored/bespoke admin systems and processes that require less of you
- Help you create, for example, an activity timetable to ensure you have quality time set aside for your family.
- Take some of the mental load by researching activities, planning days out, or organising the logistics.
- Empathise – quite often. We’re living it too!
If the thought of juggling work and the school holidays feels overwhelming, you don’t have to do it alone. Whether you need practical admin support, help planning, or simply someone to take some of the mental load off your shoulders, we’re here to help.
Get in touch to find out how Sycamore can support you this summer.
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