Summer living ain’t easy for parents juggling keiki activities

Summertime is almost upon us and while the kids celebrate a break from routine, I dread it.

Summer vacation for a kid is all about freedom, a chance to engage in their interests more intently and to explore their world in the extended daylight hours. But someone has to plan all that.

When we were kids the summer meant barely supervised days of play.

Each day we’d wake up and start knocking on friends’ doors to gather our group. We’d wander our cul-de-sac until parents leaned out their screen doors and called us to come home for dinner.

We’d decide on our own if we were going to go roller- skating, ride our bikes, bake cookies, create a make- believe world in the backyard, dress our dolls, start a neighborhood newspaper, shoot some hoops, play video games on the neighbor’s Atari or any of the other distractions that filled those long sun-filled summers.

These days, none of those things would happen without a parent planning for them and setting up a play date. OK, the video games still happen spontaneously.

I struggle to engineer the logistics of shuttling two kids to age-appropriate activities that inspire their creativity or enrich their learning, and still get to work on time.

Some years are relatively easy, with both kids at the same place for the bulk of the summer. But even then, there are different travel routes and traffic patterns to contend with. There are the individual requirements of each program to remember (daily home lunch, shoes on Mondays, swimwear on Fridays, etc.).

And then there are the years that we’ve signed up the kids for separate pursuits, say math classes for one and nature day camp for the other. Or worse yet, the years when I’ve tiled together a series of different weeklong programs in the attempt to keep summer interesting for the kids and affordable for the parents. (With most kids programs costing $200-$350 a week, the price tag for summer child care can add up quickly.)

One week studying animals at the Honolulu Zoo, one week of Maker Academy learning 3D printing and laser cutting at the high school, one week of Lego engineering day camp, one week of painting class at Rainbow Art School and one week as a junior animal trainer at Sea Life Park, each program with different sign-up deadlines and drop-off and pick-up times, all add up to one frazzled mom.

It leaves me missing the easy routine of school days when there is school lunch provided and the demands of each day remain relatively fixed.

Or even more, it leaves me missing those seemingly endless summers of my youth where imagination was free and I never knew what each day would bring. There were no scheduled pick-up times; there were no schedules. And we were always within shouting distance of home.

“She Speaks” is a weekly column by the women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.