As any stay-at-home parent, and many non stay-at-home parents will tell you, the end of the school year brings a whole slew of extra activities, such as but not limited to: Graduation Ceremonies (these are also called "Promotion Ceremonies" by the more modern, hip schools), Open House, Class Party, Finals, Dance Recitals, Spring Sing, Talent Show, the inevitably poorly timed Birthday Party of Mandatory Attendance, Llama Fights, Class Plays and more. Add this to the regular juggle of keeping them fed, clothed, doing their homework/studying, and trying to not go insane and it ends up being quite A Challenge.
Thus I have dubbed it The End of the School Year Push.
The Push is something that caught me a little off guard this year, most likely because I am still a low level Domestic Engineer, despite my clear and obvious knack for such things Domestic. Next year I vow to not plan anything else beside handling The Push during this one month period. Of course, just to make things fun, this is also exactly when my birthday is as well. Oh well, we'll just include that as part of the "Inevitably-Poorly-Time-Birthday-of-Mandatory-Attendance" I referenced above, and call it all good.
Well, I ran the gauntlet, got Indigo to all her rehearsals, Promotions, graduations, llama fights, and even baked cupcakes and lemon bars for all of the above as well. Now it was time for Summer! I at least had the wear with all to realize I needed to get ahead of Summer before it hit me in the face. Specifically what I was worried about was having my girls hit their first unstructured day and think:
"Wow, a whole day with absolutely nothing to do! This must mean there are no rules, and I can sleep in til noon, then get up and watch youtube all day!"
So, I gave them both cupcakes (reference Management Tip #1 from previous posts) and sat them down and asked them what our rules for Summer should be, notably before it was actually Summer. The rules we came up with, with only minimal nudging on my part, were as follows:
- Get up by 8:00
- No media until:
- After lunch
- After your 'Work' is compelted
- Whichever of the above is more restrictive
- Breakfast
- Family Walk
- That's right, walk with Dad! Make sure to complain!
- 'Work' from 9:00 to 12:00
- Lunch
- Free Time
- Media is now allowed
- Dinner
- Evening Family Time
- Bed time
- Slightly later than normal, but not super late. 10:00ish
I liked these rules. The basic plan is to have the girls do some responsible self-improvement 'work' for the morning, the exact same time I should be writing or working on narration. My work. Each girl was given a Summer Journal to write their ideas for their work in, as well as track their progress. This is where the magic happened.
At our first Sprint Planning meeting for the Summer, just last night in fact, my daughter Indigo hit upon a wonderful idea. What if the girls planned their weeks in their own journals, just like Daddy plans the two week Sprints in the Family Journal? OMG! She came up with it on her own, and I couldn't be more proud. If I had tried to force this on them, I don't think there would be a Snowman's Chance In Summer of it working. However, since it was their idea, I think we stand a chance.
As a result, we are now having the Family Journal be the master task list (think of it as the primary JIRA/Rapid board), with each daughter having their specific boards to track tasks individual to them.
So, overall I am thrilled. I will report back as to how much progress we make, and what other adjustments I have had to do in order to take into account Summer, but I feel that for once, I have managed to get out ahead of it slightly. I am sure this means I must be missing something BIG.
Talk soon!
~~Your Humble Domestic Engineer
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