Kids During the Summer with Lara Neves from Overstuffed — PCP 041

What are some tips and tricks for managing kids during the summer? How do you manage snacks, free time and more!

Today’s guest is one of my blogging BFF’s, Lara Neves from Overstuffed. You can also find her on Instagram @overstuffedmom

This episode was inspired by my MANY posts on summer learning. I love using summer as a time for enrichment!

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This post is sponsored by Family Routines — if you’re looking to get into a routine and help your kids have a bit more stability this summer — THIS is the course for you:

In this Episode:

• How to make sure each kid gets what they need
• How to handle snacks during the summer
• Why we NEED summer
• Summer kick-off party ideas (love this!!!)

Items Mentioned:

• Lara’s Summer Reading List (I LOVE this idea)

Other Things Things that Might Interest You:

• The Child Whisperer (great to see what your kids need)
• Using the library
• Having fun as a MOM during the summer

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out my other parenting podcasts:

Check out all my podcasts:

Transcrip:

Hilary Erickson 0:00
Welcome back to The Pulling Curls Podcast! Today we are talking about summer. Now, I have to be honest we’re recording this during the Coronavirus quarantine and I was like “nobody even wants to think about summer right now. That’s just gonna be more of kids being home.” But I want to give you ideas and I am bringing on my oldest blog friend to talk about it with me. Let’s untangle it.

Welcome to the pulling girls podcast where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting, home routines, even some family travel. Because, heavens knows, our lives are tangled. I’m your host Hilary Erickson.

Hey guys, before we jump in, I want to remind you guys that I have a summer schedule that’s going to be available for download. It has all sorts of things to include it comes from a post that inspired this podcast, so definitely check it out in the show notes. This is Episode 041 and you can find it pullingcurls.com under Podcasts and before we get too far into it, please leave us a review. It really means a lot when people leave a review and it helps more people get us in their ear holes. Today, I want to welcome my guest Laura Neves. She has been my blog friend for forever. So Pulling Curls was started in 2005 and she started her blog Overstuffed Life in 2005. We met each other on a scrapbooking message board and the rest is history. I want to welcome to today’s show my friend Laura Neves from Overstuffed Life.

This episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines: How to Automate your Housewife Life. Ever wish life was more like you pictured it would be before you had kids? Being able to spend less time with the mundane tasks and more time teaching kids the fun and valuable life skills you know they need? Family Routines teaches families to simplify daily tasks into routines that help them feel more peace and joy. Save 15% with the coupon code UNTANGLED. You can find it at pullingcurls.com in the menu under Courses or in this episode’s show notes.

Hey, Lara, welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast.

Lara Neves 1:57
Hi Hilary.

Hilary Erickson 1:58
Yeah. So Laura and I have known each other forever, right, since our kids were just starting kindergarten and they’re in college now.

Lara Neves 2:04
Yeah, that’s basically forever… an eternity.

Hilary Erickson 2:08
It’s nice to be here with Laura.We are actually recording this during the quarantine. So even though this podcast is on dealing with your kids during the summer, it’s different because right now we’re all kind of stuck at home. Right?

Lara Neves 2:19
Right.

Hilary Erickson 2:20
I was thinking about that because some of the things I’m doing are like summer but we can’t go places right now or be with friends or things that we would normally do so it’s definitely different. Yeah. What’s the best part of the quarantine for you, Laura?

Lara Neves 2:33
I think the best part is just being able to slow down a little bit and you know not be “Go, go, go!” with the kids getting them here and there. And we’ve had definitely had a lot more family time than we’ve had in a long time. With teenagers it’s hard to find that family time and so now we have forced family time and sometimes we have to have forced everybody go into your room and leave everyone else alone time but the family time has been really nice.

Hilary Erickson 2:56
Yeah, I we have learned like so many skills like we made love The other day we have a lemon tree in our backyard. We’ve never made lemonade. I was like, let’s just go pick some lemons.

Lara Neves 3:06
Okay, that’s a good one. I don’t have a lemon tree though. So, yeah.

Hilary Erickson 3:09
Lara’s in Michigan, so no lemons at her house.

Lara Neves 3:12
A lot of snow. Maybe I can learn to make… Well, we already know how to make snow ice cream, but maybe we can figure something else out with the snow.

Hilary Erickson 3:18
Alright, so how old are your kids now? Laura?

Lara Neves 3:21
My kids now are 19, 17 and almost 14.

Hilary Erickson 3:26
Okay, so older kids, but we’ve known each other forever since we both just had to write when we started. Yeah, right. Yeah. So what are your three best tips for handling kids during the summer?

Lara Neves 3:38
So I think that we have to recognize their ages. We have to recognize their personalities. And we have to recognize just, you know, what each each kid needs, and then do summer based on that. So like, I have a kid …my oldest is a hermit, she will be a hermit, doesn’t matter. That’s just her. She doesn’t have you know, she’s just totally introverted –happy to be alone all day. My youngest child is the exact opposite of a hermit. Whatever that is, you know, she likes to live the Huckleberry Finn life in summer. So sometimes I have to reel her back. Sometimes I have to, I had to make sure my oldest maybe got a little bit different time so that she didn’t become such a recluse, and actually come out of her room sometimes. But I really think that the main thing is just to make sure that around their personalities that you are doing things that enrich them, keep them happy, and, and productive. I know screens are always a concern for parents nowadays. And it’s something that our parents never had to deal with. I mean, our parents didn’t have to deal with it really not in the same way we do. Although I do recall watching a lot of TV as a kid in the summer, but just to keep that balance, and I think that’s the most important thing.

Hilary Erickson 4:46
Yeah. I think that’s hard when you have many kids with the on the spectrum of intro extroverts, right? Yes, yeah, definitely. Because as a mom, you kind of have… you’re only one of you.

Lara Neves 4:56
Yes, yeah. And my middle child is somewhere on the Maybe I would call her an ambivert. But yeah, that’s the best way to be I guess, right?

Hilary Erickson 5:05
Yeah.

Lara Neves 5:05
Yeah. Like both ways.

Hilary Erickson 5:07
Yeah. So what’s the hardest part of summer for you?

Lara Neves 5:09
The hardest part for me is just keeping everybody productive. Where I don’t look at everyone and being feel like, “oh, gosh, we’re just turning into the laziest people around.” I don’t mind a little laziness in the summer. I think that’s why we have it, but I don’t want to I don’t want them sleeping till 3pm. This, this, of course, is a teenager issue more now. But they didn’t do that when they were younger. So I think that’s my biggest issue now as a teenage mom, but when they were littler, I just wanted to make sure well, just that they had enrichment and that they were doing something because otherwise you know, they just eat everything and sit around and complain that they’re bored.

Hilary Erickson 5:45
Yeah. What do you have any tips for eating everything because we’re having that problem here. Now I feel like I’m giving them a ration card sometimes but what do you do

Lara Neves 5:55
So when they’re younger, and I still actually I did this last summer even so and it because it helps it makes difference. I make summer snack bins. So they each have a bin with their name on it. And when I go grocery shopping, I divvy out the whatever the granola bars and the chips and the snacky stuff and they put it in their snack bins, and that’s theirs. That’s what they get. And if they choose to eat all of their snacks in two days, then great if that’s what they want to do. But the next five days, they are without snacks and they cannot steal from their sisters. And so that has that has been really nice because they do learn a little bit of self discipline that way and learn how to well you know, to decide whether they really need to eat something right then I tried to buy a lot of fruit and just fruit is a free for all whatever but we usually run out of it before the end of the week because of that, but I try to buy a lot of fruit in the summer vegetables to my pay. Well. They don’t go for that as easily.

Yeah, nobody just pulls a head of romaine out of the fridge and chops down on that one.

Maybe some carrots but yeah, fruit and then their snack bins and that’s helped.

Hilary Erickson 6:58
Yeah, I think it’s hard. As an adult and as a kid to realize that you’re bored, and that shouldn’t be filled with food, so yeah.

Lara Neves 7:05
Yeah. And I mean, as spring breaks, I always notice you know, it’s like, gosh, they’re like little termites in the kitchen. They just gravitate toward the kitchen if we have a school vacation of any sort, and I my grocery bills always higher during school breaks. So yeah, yeah. And right now, in this room I’m in… I have a whole bunch of foods stashed away because of the quarantine that big so they won’t just eat it. And yesterday, my youngest wanted something that she knew was in here and so I made her do sit ups and push ups and all this stuff before she could get it. So there you go. Yeah, that’s me. And what’s your favorite thing about summer? My favorite thing about summer is that we just don’t have as much structure. So Isn’t that funny though, because I want them to have still some structure and but I don’t but like I like I said before, we have summer for a reason.

We need the break. We all need the break. So it’s, it’s fine. They have a little bit of structure. We I think one of my favorite things that I do With my kids for summer is we have a summer kickoff party on the day after School’s out so the first day of summer we have a big breakfast in the morning we make a big huge breakfast and I give them each their summer bins and their summer bins are not their snack bin but there’s summer bins I fill with a bunch of books that I would like them to read or that I think that they would like and you know just a few other like when they were little had their workbooks and stuff I don’t make them do workbooks now as teenagers but you know, when they were little I have little workbooks for them to do or those sorts of things.

And they love this. They love getting their book been usually now now that they’re teens, it’s really just books. I try to you know, set aside money. My husband always gives me like gift cards for various things he does at work. So a lot of times we just save those for like the big book buy for the summer. And yeah, they love it. I don’t make them read every book in their bed. It’s up to them. But we do have reading time every day. And they can I mean we have hundreds of books in my house so they can choose whatever they want to read. They also go to the library. We have one of those in town, so got kids Kindle readers. Sophia had a Kindle for a while, but it broke. And she did read on it a lot. But no, you know, I have a Kindle. If I have a book that’s on Kindle that they want to read, then I’ll hand it over, but not really.

Hilary Erickson 9:11
Yeah. With our library being closed right now I’m kind of like we should probably get on Scribd together, kids, but so far it hasn’t really gone anywhere.

Lara Neves 9:19
Yeah, I mean, I feel like they both have books. They were in the middle of that they have not finished yet in quarantine. So we’ll see what we are when Yeah, when there’s nothing else to read. I’m sure there’s plenty in house dream.

Hilary Erickson 9:29
Yeah. I feel like my kids just end up liking the the actual paper books. I don’t know why.

Lara Neves 9:34
Yeah, I think so too. Because I think, I don’t know, I think they get distracted on the Kindle. Well, my daughter’s was a Kindle Fire. So it was easy to get distracted.

Hilary Erickson 9:41
I get distracted on my Kindle Fire. Because all my email notifications go there. Right stuff comes up. All right. Well, I think it’s important. I think it’s gonna be interesting as we head into summer when this one shows up on people’s in people’s ear holes, making a differentiation between the corn teen and summer so I think we’re all gonna have to navigate that on our own. I think sociality is going to be really important seeing their friends that they may not have seen during the school year. Right, right. It’s gonna be crazy, right anyway, to my future self in your future. earholes I give you a high five. All right, thanks for coming on, Laura.

Lara Neves 10:15
No problem.

Hilary Erickson 10:16
Okay, guys, I really liked that episode, because I don’t know if you’ve read me or listen to me long, but I really like to have kind of like a standard of care which all of my children abide by. And I really like how Laura mentioned that each child is different, and you’re gonna have to flex and adjust for each child. And I know you’re saying Hillary, you’re really stupid if you haven’t already figured that out. And I’m getting better at it. But I’m not awesome at it. My kids all kind of had a same routine and stuff like that. So it’s so awesome to think that each kid kind of needs their own thing and their own way to deal with summer. Be sure and check out that summer schedule in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today. And big thanks to my friend Laura for coming on. It was nice to talk to her during these crazy Corona times. If you like today’s episode, we’d love it if you would share, subscribe and review it really makes a difference. We drop an episode every Monday and until then I hope you have a tangle free day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai