5 things to STOP 🛑 doing this summer

Read this before you start feeling guilty this season

In June 2021 and again in July 2023, I published a post answering a subscriber’s question: what’s “good enough” when it comes to raising a reader?

It’s a topic that seems to resonate — I think for those of us who care deeply about fostering a love of books and reading in our children, it’s easy to fall into a trap of convincing ourselves that our efforts are inadequate in some way or another, at various ages and stages and during different seasons of life.

What I took away from this post last year, though, were the following comments, specific to summer:

“My new guilt point is about teaching my children to read during summer break. Can't seem to carve out any time for that since they’re at camp all day while we work. But we do read to them all the time.”

“I’ve been grappling with this in all facets of my life this summer and feeling like none of it is ‘good enough’ (whatever that means). We are traveling too much / not enough. We aren't reading enough. My kids are attending too many camps. My kids don’t have enough free time. It's maddening (especially since it is self-imposed).”

We carry so much guilt and anxiety as parents and caregivers, whether it’s about reading or eight million other things (and if there’s not enough things, we will find something, am I right?)

Today I want to share with you five things you can stop doing this summer, so you can assuage those heavy feelings of not-enough-ness and so you don’t forget what matters the most: loving on and enjoying your children. (With a few books and a little reading thrown in on the side.)

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This summer:

STOP being hard on yourself and your kids

Give everyone a break — your children. You. I specifically mean as it pertains to reading, but really, apply this liberally to all aspects of your life.

Are there things to work on? Yes. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Is everything perfect? Absolutely not.

But I can tell you that the one thing that is not going to help in any way — much less effectively and efficiently solve your problems or support you and your family in changing and working to be better — is being hard on yourself and your kids.

Take a look at what you’re doing right — whatever it is, no matter how small — and focus on that. Cling to it, if you have to.

(Are you reading every other day, for ten minutes? Great! When you get in the car to go somewhere, do you turn on an audiobook once or twice a week? Fabulous. Are you strewing books around your house, or offering a variety of reading materials on a front-facing bookshelf or a coffee table or even on the couch cushions? Rocking it.)

Do not discount the little things just because they are little. And: ease up.

STOP not reading at all because “it’s not enough”

Which leads me to my next point: it all adds up.

Sometimes we get this image in our head of, like, sitting on a picnic blanket surrounded by tranquil children enjoying a gentle breeze, quietly listening while we read aloud from Great Expectations or Yeats, when reality is that everyone under 4 feet tall is fighting, someone is crying, someone else is whining, it’s hot AF, there are biting ants on the blanket, and no one is listening while we read a book that lost its momentum two days ago.

Listen to me: do what you can — and don’t fall into the trap of doing nothing because “it’s not enough to do just a little.”

Five minutes is better than zero. Every three days is better than none. Reading aloud even though it’s a straight disaster is better than not doing it at all.

Voltaire famously said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Dude was right. We let “perfect” mess up “good” all the time. But we don’t have to let this be the truth for us.

(And if you find it’s true for you, guess what? You can begin again, on any day, at any moment, even at 11:59pm. Ask me how I know.)

STOP being fussy about format or genre

Summer is an excellent time to get over your snobby attitude about whatever your kids are reading.

I’ve said it many times before and I’m just going to keep saying it over and over: choice is the right of every reader. Choice is the right of every reader. Choice is the right! of every! reader!

Audiobooks count as reading. (They do. I will fight anyone who says otherwise.)

So does poetry.

So do graphic novels and comics.

(I need to repeat that one, because on a recent survey it became abundantly clear how many of you are trying to get your kids “off” graphic novels, my reaction to which is: WHY? Graphic novels are real reading. They “count!”)

So do magazines.

So do ebooks.

So does whatever terrible books you’d rather your children not read.

Your goal is to raise readers, right? Stop being fussy. Get out of the way.

STOP trying to teach them to read (or anything else)

I have always maintained that it’s my children’s teachers’ job to teach them to read; it’s my job to keep the love of reading alive, and even now, after they can both read, that remains true. My role isn’t to enforce 20 minutes of reading a day, even over the summer; it’s to help them enjoy books and reading enough that they will want to read on their own.

(If you have a hard time letting go in this way — and I understand that — there are gentle, fun things you can do to prevent massive amounts of learning from flying out of your kids’ heads over the summer months, especially when it comes to reading. Read my recent post about preventing summer slide.)

STOP looking at each day

This is my trick as a full-time, work-outside-the-house mom with a spouse, two young children, a home, a personal life, hobbies, and this newsletter: if my to-do list was contained to one day, I would die.

Sure, there are some things that have to happen on specific dates and some things that can only be done on a particular day of the week, but most of it — the vast majority of it — can simply be put on a list for the whole week. Some days, when I have the energy of, say, a 6yo at bedtime, I am extremely productive and other days, not so much. This is also how I approach what we eat — I strive for us to have fruits or vegetables at every meal but on the off chance we forgo those sometimes, it’s not a big deal, because I know we ate broccoli last night and we’re going to eat plums tomorrow, or whatever.

Adopt this for your summer reading life. Instead of looking at each day (and beating yourself if you “fail” that day), look at the whole week instead.

Sarah Mackenzie of Read-Aloud Revival has talked for years about how ten minutes of reading aloud every other day adds up to some insane number of hours each year — the point of which is, mostly, that you can do a lot more with a little than you think, and also, if your goal is to build a culture of reading in your home but you get overly attached to the dailiness of it, you’re losing sight of the bigger picture.

Proceed back to my first point: stop being hard on yourself and your kids. Look at your whole week. If even the whole week looks terrible, okay — use that information. What can you do next week to tweak things? Where are your pockets of time and how can you use them?

Alternate assignment, if thinking about an entire week doesn’t work: get a calendar* and mark off every day you read in a month, even if it’s only for a minute, even if your child gets up and walks away halfway through one board book — count it. At the end of the month, look at how many days you’ve marked. Use that information to let yourself off the hook, or commit to forming a habit that will work for you. (You are NOT, under any circumstances, to use it to beat yourself up further).

*Did you know I have a free download, the Build a Habit Reading calendar, just for this purpose? (Start where you are — on any day of any month — and remember that you don’t have to do something perfectly, every single day without fail, to successfully develop a habit!)

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I know it’s hard to let go of guilt, especially when we know we have the capacity to do better, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor to try, if only for your own peace of mind.

And also — I say this all the time, but that’s because it’s true — you are doing so much better than you think you are. I encourage you to stop doing these things this summer and instead enjoy this season, with these children, in this life, because we only get one shot at all of it. This is all we have.

Sarah