A special-education teacher and parent of neurodivergent kids shares concrete strategies for summer transitions: shared calendars and visual timelines help kids track time, consistent routines with visual cue cards reduce anxiety, and flexible meal-choice boards ease mealtime stress. Setting clear expectations early about sleep and screen time prevents summer chaos.
I cannot believe summer is finally here, but with summer comes its own set of challenges. And I'm coming to you today from my kitchen because normally I am in my classroom and I share with you tips and tricks and strategies for my self-contained autism class. But with summer around the corner, I'm going to be sharing my perspective as a mom. Not only do I teach an autism classroom, but I have two neurodivergent children, one on the autism spectrum. And I'm not gonna lie, Summer is hard, and especially when my kids were little. They're teenagers now, so we kind of have a really good routine and we've figured some things out along the way. But when they were little, it was so hard because the end of school meant the end of structure. So I'm going to share with you some of my favorite things that I did when my kids were little and some things that are working now as they're teenagers and expressing all of that independence, and share some of those with you today. As a mom especially, I find myself managing everybody's schedule and everybody's calendar. But one thing that I did when our kids were little is I shared a calendar with my kids, and this just gave a highlight of the day, let them know if they had practice or if we were on vacation or if summer school was going to be that day. It's really, really simple. It can be visual, it can be Words. Um, if you've got older teenagers, now we share a Google Family Calendar. There's all kinds of ways to do it, but don't underestimate this for kids, especially littles, because little kids, well, they struggle with knowing time, right? They can't manage that very well. They don't know how long a day is. They don't know how long 2 or 3 days is. So it's really important that we give them a concept of time. So Here's one of my favorite things to do for littles: use Post-it notes. Let me show you. I am no artist, but the pictures really make this work. So in this weekly schedule, I just give the child something that's happening every day so they know the passage of time. This works really well if you've got something that you're looking forward to, like a new movie. So for example, here we've got t-ball practice, we've got the dentist, we've got library day. Pool day. If your child is looking forward to something, they need to know how long until it's coming. And so this strategy kind of helps the day move forward, but also in a way that's really easy to manage. You don't have to draw pictures. You can actually put Post-it notes through your printer. Makes life so easy. But this strategy was a lifesaver when my kids were little. Then we moved to something like this, to where it's just got a monthly schedule and it's got the main highlight of what we're doing that day. So it's until summer school starts. Maybe there's no school one day because of a holiday, you know, baseball practice, pool, whatever that is. And then also the visuals for no school and Father's Day. All of this really helps move things along and we can help kids check things off as they go. Something else that was incredibly helpful was having a set morning and a set evening routine. So every morning at this time, we start our day and every evening at this time, we start winding down. We have some great visuals over at The Autism Helper for that. Let me show them to you. Having visuals in the home is so important. We do this all the time at school, and it helps to make our kids so successful and so independent. And so it's important that we carry those into our home as well. And this is one of the things that I send home with every student that I have, um, for the summer, and they're visuals and schedules for the home. I love this because it has a set morning routine. Now here is my tip for you. Give your kids as much leeway as they can for putting these in the order that they want. If lunches and dinners are a struggle because you've got picky eaters, or you're trying to expand horizons, or maybe you just need to offer 3 safe choices, these lunch and dinner choice boards are a great option. Sometimes our kids get stuck in a rut. We as parents get stuck in a rut. We forget what we have, we forget what's in the freezer, um, and this kind of helps us be able to offer different things and maybe offer some healthier choices or some safe choices for kids who might be picky or limited on what they like. If you didn't want to offer one of these, you could easily black it out. You could cut out the ones that you wanted to offer. There's so many options in using this, but even having this like hung up on the fridge or near the fridge— hey, what do you want for lunch? This now gives choices, right? It's not like this is an abysmal question of like, okay, now I need you to think of something and come up with something. It's like here are your choices, here's your menu, what is it that you want? And don't forget that expectations can just be different in the summer. They can be different from parents, they can be different from kids, and your kid might be thinking, hey, I'm gonna sleep in every day and I'm gonna stay up half the night and I'm gonna be on my computer all day long. And if that's not your expectation as a parent, you should have that conversation before that habit starts, because the earlier you have the conversation and the more you can agree upon those terms for the summer, everyone's going to be happy. That is a lesson I learned the hard way for my teenagers. However, your child may not be able to make those cognitive decisions and have those conversations with you, and so it's really up to you to help support the changes that are happening in the summer with those visuals like we talked about, those routine changes, those calendars. They are going to be what helps get your child through and kind of ease change into summer. Let me know some of the other ways that you help ease the transition into summer and make your summer a successful one in the comments. I love learning from you guys. You guys teach me so much. I have been teaching for 20 years and I've been a parent for 20 years, so I feel like I learn something new every day, and a lot of it is because you guys share your great strategies and ideas. So I can't wait to hear from you.
