KAREN NAZOR HILL: It’s the time of year when parents have to decide how their children will effectively occupy their time during summer vacation. It’s a challenge for every parent, especially for working parents. I started working when the youngest of my four children was 3 and the oldest 13. Fortunately, they stayed with my mother, but it was up to me to set their schedules. My children were competitive swimmers throughout their childhoods and had to be at the pool every morning at 8 a.m. For some of the years, it was a problem because I didn’t want my children at the pool without me or my mom. My mother and I worked out a schedule where we took turns. Fortunately, the newspaper let me make up the time. Looking back, I wonder how I made it work. It was a challenge during the weeks when there wasn’t swim team practice. How are you making it work for your family, Mark?
MARK KENNEDY: My wife is a schoolteacher, which helps us manage our two boys, ages 8 and 3, in the summer. Still we try to provide enrichment experiences for the boys, too. Our older son attends two or three sports camps each year. Our younger son will be in daycare some this summer, as my wife works on transitioning to a new school next fall.
We like to take day trips in the summer. One of our favorites is the River Gorge Explorer boat trip, featured by the Tennessee Aquarium. Structured play days with friends is also one of our strategies for keeping the boys occupied, along with overnight trips to visit relatives in the region.
KAREN: My children rarely went to camps. The girls went to Girl Scout camp when they were in elementary school, and I don’t recall my boys, the youngest of the four, going to camp (though they did go with us to Girl Scout camp since I was a troop leader). Swimming is an all-consuming sport, especially when you do it year-round. It left little time to do anything else. It’s a sport you can’t force your children to do, they have to enjoy it.
In addition to their morning swims, they also swam at night. During the summer, there were two meets each week in the summer swimming league and additional meets, typically in other cities, for the year-round teams. I used most of my vacation days from work to go to out-of-town summer meets. But we did make it an adventure. We visited zoos, went to museums and theaters. Though our summer trips were tied to swimming, it did make our summers fun. By the way, my children who now range in ages 28-37, are still swimming. In fact, my youngest daughter just started an open-water swim team in Chattanooga. I suppose our summers were well spent.