By Lucie | Leave A Comment
For many blended families, summer time is a big deal. It’s often the longest period of time you get to spend with your kids if you don’t have primary custody, or, alternatively, the longest time spent away.
For us, summer time is like the sun our planet revolves around. Our two oldest boys (ages 8 and 10) live too far away for us to have them every other weekend during the school year (one day, I plan to make the kind of money where the idea of them flying isn’t laughable). It is painfully easy to count up the amount of time my partner spends with his oldest two: a week after Christmas, spring break, maybe a long weekend, and then the summer, between four and seven weeks. Any parent can tell you that’s not nearly enough time.
To make the most of the time you have, you gotta plan.
- Set your priorities. . . We have a tendency to plan an impossible amount of activities and trips during the summer. Or, we don’t plan ahead of time so we end up not having all the kids for things like family reunions. This year, we discussed having the boys in July for the family reunion in February. That’s the most important thing we want to do with them this summer, so we set our weeks around that event.
- . . . and plan early. See above, planning for July in February. If we wait until May, their mom might have already made her own family vacation plans over the same dates. To keep an easy record of the plans, we discuss the summer in emails. That way, it’s right there in writing for everyone to see.
- Get involved. If you are on good terms with your partner’s ex, and if it’s okay with your partner, don’t be afraid to bring up summer planning. I sent the boys’ mom an email asking her about having them for the family reunion, and copied her husband and my partner on the email. Now it’s set, everyone knows, and everyone has it in writing.
For us, the hands down hardest thing about being a blended family is not having enough time together, as a family. When we actively plan our summers early, we get quality even if the quantity is lacking.
ABOUT Lucie
Lucie is "my mama" to one fiesty toddler and "my Lucie" to two wonderful soon-to-be-stepsons, ages e{read more}
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I wish you all had more time together, but it’s awesome to know you make the most of what you have. And I don’t think it’s laughable to plan to have more time with your boys.
Thanks Anissa! What can I say, I feel a little “type a” but the planning really helps . . .
Lucie.. Congrats on the Bliss post… that’s awesome! You rock!
oh.. and we don’t get summer here till summer here in Wisconsin until mid June.. and then fall again in mid July! argh!
Lucie, you are so on target with this post! Communication and advance planning is crucial to blended families working it out. It feels really silly sometimes to have to start in February for July, but when you are arranging at least 4 adult’s schedules if not more, it takes a lot of cooperation. My children go to their dad’s for 6-8 weeks in the summer for the same reasons yours come to you….but sometimes we have to alter dates due to sports season’s ending so children don’t miss the end product of a season, or a special youth group trip and if we plan well, we are all there for their important events and we simply adjust how long they stay….great post!