Planning a summer vacation right for children and parents

As vacation starts, set right expectations for the weeks that lie ahead. They could be golden provided they’re planned right. Talk to your children, and don’t be afraid to adjust their hopes.

It’s vacation time. But, the first important think to acknowledge is that it is definitely not vacation time for us, parents. Once we set this expectation right, we have started on the right note.

Vintage cars displayed at Heritage Transport Museum at Tawru, in Gurugram. There are some very good museums in the city that the children can explore during their summer vacations. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

One of the beautiful things, work has taught me is, the importance of setting expectations right and even understanding expectations. So I ask my son, on first day of his vacation: “What is the most exciting part about the summer vacation?” Though his immediate answer leaned somewhere close to “extra gadget time”, I chose to ignore it or go past it and further questioned him to understand what makes vacations special for him? The answers narrowed down to spending more time with family.

So, travelling or not, let us remember, one of the expectations from the offspring who is raring to have a blast this summer is that s/he will get to spend some quality time with us—the parents.

The soaring mercury in Gurugram restricts our ability to step out and move around, especially during the peak hours of the heat. If you can brave the heat and step out, there are some very good museums in Gurugram. There is lot of learning for children and adults, alike. While I don’t mind the arcades and indoor play areas, I feel there are only so many times you can go here. The few times I go there, my husband and I ensure, we play a few games against our son. That excitement on his face is so precious.

I also see the summer vacation as the best time to help them further explore their interests and passions.

While choosing right summer camp or classes can be a good idea, these days we have some fabulous unconventional options too. My son taught himself digital animation and a colleague’s daughter taught herself to sketch. Thanks to technology, there is plethora of online workshops and tutorials.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of inculcating good reading habits in children and what better time to do this than the summer vacation. Please sit with your child and create a summer reading list. There are several lending libraries in Gurugram now. If your child is young, you can read and bond over it. My 11-year- old enjoys discussing whatever he reads.

It may be a good idea to see this as a time to have fun chat sessions not dominated by words like ‘project, homework and studying’. A mom blogger explains such interactions beautifully. She looks at summer as a time to get reacquainted with the people her kids have become since last summer.

Choose an activity that you and your child(ren) enjoy doing together. For the longest time, for us, it was playing Chinese Checkers. Now, it is spotting a recipe, sourcing the ingredients and cooking it together. One of the moms had posted in a mom community, how she and her child took up a 31-day gardening challenge and posted before-and-after pictures. They not only looked spectacular, the child’s face beamed with pride in them.

In all this fun, let us not forget the reality. After a month or two of vacation, they will eventually have to go back to school. Create a timetable, so homework gets accommodated in all this fun. Let us not turn the last few days into a nightmare, scrambling around trying to finish all the schoolwork.

Have a fun-filled family vacation. Remember, children grow up soon. Make the most of this time. Happy summer!

(An advocate of women’s rights, Neela Kaushik started a Facebook community called Gurgaon Moms to create a local support network for mothers in the city. Today, it has more than 25,000 members.)