Last Summer Almost Broke Me: What I’m Doing Differently This Year

Follow the show:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Everywhere else 

 

Today, I’m pulling back the curtain on one of the hardest summers I've ever had as a working mom and how I’m doing it differently this year. I’m sharing the real mindset traps that made last summer feel like a chaotic mess, the big mistakes I made trying to make everyone happy, and the intentional shifts I’m making to create a summer that's actually fun, fulfilling, and calm. If summer usually feels like a stress marathon for you, you do not want to miss this one.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why last summer nearly broke me—and the mindset traps behind it 

  • The "summer camp scramble" reality for working parents 

  • The 4 big mistakes I made (and what I'm doing differently this year) 

  • How to define your version of a successful summer 

  • Practical strategies to plan a calm, fulfilling summer (for you and your kids)

Show Notes & References:

Enjoying the podcast?

Transcript

Intro

Working moms, let's be real. Summer for us is not just sunshine and smoothies, right? It's scheduling stress. It's mom guilt. It's calendar Tetris. It's praying that your kids don't hate the camp you spent three hours frantically signing them up for. I've lived it. 

Last summer, it nearly broke me. And this year I'm doing things differently. 

In today's episode, I'm sharing my very own story of last year's summer meltdown. What made it so terrible and chaotic? The mindset traps that I didn't even realize I was stuck in. 

Plus, I'll walk you through how I'm preparing for this summer so that I don't repeat what happened before. 

If you've ever felt like summer is just another season to survive and you're dealing with the summer camp scramble like so many other working parents in America, this one is for you. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

Hello. Hello, working moms. I cannot say how perfect the timing is of this episode because we are gonna be talking all about the summer scramble, the challenges that we face as working parents and summer schedules. And I'm writing this episode when I am literally taking a walk in 80 degree weather and it just feels like summer is approaching. 

And I know for so many working moms, the summer brings a whole cocktail of emotions. 

There's feelings of pressure, like you really wanna make sure your kids are happy. There's feelings of dread because of all of the planning and schedule changes and childcare problems. And there's feelings of excitement because a lot of times we take vacations during the summer. 

So we're gonna talk all about summer, the challenges that we face as working moms, particularly around the issue of childcare and summer camps and what to do. 

I'm gonna share a lot of my own story from last year from 2024, which was by far the worst summer experience I have had as a working parent. 

So I'm gonna talk to you all about that and I'm also gonna offer some strategies for what you can do this year to make sure your summer is exactly what you want it to be filled with fun, filled with family time, filled with productivity, all the things you want to cultivate intentionality this summer.

And it's the perfect time to talk about summer too, because today the doors have opened for the summer cohort of ambitious and balanced. I'm so excited. 

If you are not on my email list or you're new to this podcast, you may be hearing this for the very first time. 

Ambitious & Balanced Group Coaching

So let me share. Ambitious and balanced is a small group coaching program that takes all of the strategies that we talk about right here on this podcast and in this community and puts them into action. 

It is literally a program that I designed to coincide with this podcast so that as you learn the principles and strategies that we talk about, you actually have a place to implement those strategies in a coaching format if that feels like the right next step. 

Now, I only take 10 women into each cohort, and to be honest, this might be the last time I take 10. I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that the fall cohort, I'm actually gonna increase that a little bit. I'm not committing right now, but that is possible. 

So if you've been really craving a small group experience where you learn once and for all how to actually implement sustainable work, life balance strategies with the cohort of other amazing working moms that are going through the process just like you, keeping each other accountable, journeying together through the process, then this is the cohort to join. 

The doors have officially opened, but three of my spots have already been taken. So there are only seven spots left in this cohort. 

I've mapped out all the details, all the dates of my program on the website. You can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitious and balanced.

The worst summer ever.

Okay, so to kick off this conversation around what I call the summer scramble, I actually want to share a lot of my story from last year. 

And we can kind of draw out the principles and the mistakes that I really made last year so that we can analyze that and then make sure that this year things happen differently, and I'm gonna walk you through what happened last year. 

I'm gonna talk about what I'm doing differently this year and give you some tools and strategies to make sure that this summer is not a scramble at all, but filled with fun and success just like you want. 

Now, a lot of the challenges that I am gonna talk about here have to do with having school aged kids. And some of you, I know, have kids that are a little bit older. I Know, some have kids that are younger, a lot of you do that are in preschool or are in daycare. And so your summer rhythm doesn't really change much. 

But for kids that are in school, that are school aged kids, you know, the summer rhythm makes a huge shift for the family. And all of a sudden you have to find childcare, generally speaking, all summer. And so we're going to talk a lot about that because it, it's a big piece of the scramble that I know happens for so many working parents. 

But if you don't have kids that are school aged yet, you're gonna want to hear this because it's gonna prepare you for when your kids do become school age. 

And we're also going to talk a lot about the mindsets behind some of these challenges and you're gonna relate to those things as well. 

So stick with me. So last year was 2024 and my daughter Lillian was 9 turning 10 and my son Emerson had just turned 7. And you may remember that my family moved about 30 minutes away to a little town called Beicia, California just a couple of years ago. And we moved from the Berkeley area. 

The summer camp sign up struggle. 

And in the Berkeley area summer camp signups happen February 1st. That means you have to know exactly when your vacations are taking place this summer, what dates you are going to be gone. You'll have to do all of this research like just after Christmas, all through January, you're figuring out your summer camp options, you're making plans for your vacations. You're figuring out how you're going to come up with thousands of dollars to pay for camps out of pocket. And of course the best camps, the best, like childcare options, are super competitive.

I remember one February 1st, both my husband and I sitting on our laptops in the living room. It was like 8:50 in the morning because camp registration started at 9:00. He had stayed home from work like a couple hours or so just so he can be a part of this whole summer camp scramble. And we were both handling registration for one kid. 

You know, I think I had Lily in an EEE at Emerson or something like that. And we had never done this summer camp before and we were told though that it sells out in a matter of moments. 

And so let me tell you, 9am sharp, we are ready to go. We are logged in and I was able to get Lillian in in the first couple of seconds. And Emerson went on a waitlist. That was how competitive it is. 

That's craziness to think about. How so Many parents are just trying to find good childcare for their kids over the summer. 

Now, thankfully, a spot on the waitlist did open up for Emerson. He was able to go. All was good, but that is what the summer camp experience, the summer camp vibe, the summer camps scramble really is like for working parents, at least in this area of California. 

But now in Beicia, just 30 minutes away from that sign ups don't happen quite that, early. They happen sort of in mid April, which is kind of stressful in and of itself because to be honest, school gets out in like less than six weeks. And I have nine weeks that I got to figure out childcare for my kids. And there's nothing that's open yet. Nobody's open registration for anything. And so you're just kind of hoping that you're going to get into a camp that you want to get into. Otherwise you're kind of scrambling to figure out what to do with your kids over the summer. 

The summer camp scramble. 

And I was just talking to a client in the ambitious and balanced program who mentioned that this was her first year of signing up her son for summer camps. And there was this zoo camp that she really wanted to get him into and found it extremely competitive. And I think she ended up getting on a waitist forum. 

The point being, the summer camp scramble, or just the summer scramble, generally is like really challenging and stressful for working parents across the country. 

“Why do you have to work all summer?”

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I were talking about summer camps as we were preparing for this year's registration of summer camps. And she said, why do you have to work during the summer anyway? 

And I was like, hold on Lillian, that's the wrong question to be asking. The real question is, why don't you have school year round? Why isn't there care for kids nine weeks out of the summer? She just sort of shrugged her shoulders and I just kind of giggled to myself because of the child care crisis that we have in America. 

It really comes to light over the summer for working parents who may or may not have family that can help out, that may or may not have the funds to spend thousands of dollars on summer camps over the summer, let alone to usually have to pay out of pocket. 

Like a lot of these places don't have payment plans that you could do. So you're just literally spending thousands of dollars at one moment, one click of a button, and it highlights how off working parent schedules are to the offerings of child care out there. 

So last year we really struggled, and not just during the summer. We were actually struggling a lot with child care during the school year as well. 

My kids were signed up for an after school program at the community center and neither one of them liked it. And it was a struggle all year long. Like literally every day before school they would complain. 

My daughter was like particularly adamant, like refusing. I'm not gonna go. I'm just gonna walk home. You can't make me. It was a daily battle. 

But this same program really had a robust summer camp program as well. Kids would have all sorts of activities to do, from crafts to dodgeball, big games like that. 

They would go on a walk to the park, they would walk the kids to the pool where they could spend hours in the pool every single day. 

Like it totally felt like a win this program. And on top of that, last year I signed the kids up for a farm camp that is nearby. But of course that camp was only from like 9 to 1. And all of the other cool other camps that were out there in town, like the ceramics camp that only went from like 11am to 12pm. Soccer camp, 9am to 3, veterinarian camp. I mean how cool would that be? It goes from 9pm to noon, right?

The summer schedule does not match what working parents need. And this was one of the reasons why I gravitated to these, to the all day city camps that my kids weren't liking so much during the school year. 

But I was really hoping that they would like it during the summer because they actually offered camp from 7am to like 6pm. now of course I wasn't gonna send my kids there that long, but I had the option of actually working a full day at this camp. 

It's the only one around that actually offers that. So you can imagine it's a little bit competitive to get into. 

So my goal over the summer last year was to find camps that were all day, as much as possible, as many hours during the day as possible so I can get some uninterrupted work time in. And I wasn't interrupted in my work schedule. I wanted them to be at least somewhat affordable. And lastly, I was really hoping that the camp itself would be fun. Like it was of interest to my children and they would actually have a really fun summer. 

The registration rush 

And I actually remember the weeks leading up to city summer camp registration. It was like one of those mornings again. I'm like there at 8:15 in the morning ready to log on to sign up my kid for camps. I had like, I had favorited all the ones I wanted to be on. I had made sure I had the swim lessons I wanted to get my kids into. And so that as soon as it opens, I could be right in there. I can make sure that I get the camps that I need again. Because if I don't, what am I gonna do with my kids all summer? 

The anxiety and nerves of it all. 

But I remember the weeks prior to this, my heart rate was elevated. I had this pit in my stomach of anxiety. I probably talked to both kids 10 times about what their summer camps were, mapping them out. Are they trying to get their buy in? Is this going to be okay? I was all the time feeling really, really nervous about it. I was nervous that we weren't going to get into the summer camp and then I would have to adjust my work hours or figure something else out to accommodate them being home with me, which is very difficult to work. And I was really nervous that they were just going to be unhappy. 

We had just spent a whole year of them kind of fighting tooth and nail about going to after school program. And I didn't want to have that same experience over the summer. 

You know, we carry a lot of our kids happiness around with us as working moms. Like at the end of the day, we just really want our kids to be happy, right? 

We want to smile on their face. We want them to feel like they're living their best life. And having just gone through an entire year of them complaining and whining and meltdowns and pushing back and begging for them to stay home, I just did not want any of that over the summer. 

Now, you may have caught some of the problems with the way I was thinking about the summer planning. Right. And I want to highlight them for you because we don't want to, I'm not repeating these this year and I don't want you to be repeating these for you in this upcoming year. 

It’s not your job to make your kids happy.

Number one, it is not my job to make my kids happy. I do believe it's my job to keep them safe, physically, emotionally, mentally. But I actually never have any control over whether they choose to be happy or not. So happiness is not my responsibility as their parents. 

So that was mistake number one. I was putting too much expectations on myself to make sure my kids had a happy summer. That was filling me with pressure. 

It was filling me with anxiety, literally. I haven't felt so anxious probably ever before in my life, except at this experience last summer kind of leading up to the summer camps. And then I'll share more about what actually happened during the summer. 

Carrying the mental load. 

Another mistake you may have clued into Is the absence of not involving my husband in this process. I mean, sure, I would say, hey, what do you think about this schedule? Do you think he would really like this? Should we do it this way? But he would have some opinions. 

But really all of the pressure was on me. I was carrying the mental load of the summer schedule for the family and trying to make sure, everyone was happy. Right. I could have delegated that to him. I could have let him take one kid and me take another kid. So many things I could have done that I didn’t. I was choosing that mental load.

I was also the one thinking about all the logistics of it. Who's doing the pickup? Who's doing the drop off? Do the timings work out? You know, my husband could have been involved in many of those conversations, and I just wasn't asking for that kind of help. 

Too many expectations. 

Another mistake was the expectations that I have. You know how in construction they tell you that you have to choose two? You can either have quality, low cost, or it could be done in a short period of time. You could only have two of those things, right? That's like some kind of golden rule in construction, right? 

So you have to choose between quality, cost and time for summer. I was attempting to achieve all three. Right. I wanted the timing to fit perfectly in my schedule so that I wasn't, like, put out in my work schedule. 

I wanted it to be inexpensive so that it didn't hit my pocketbook too much. 

And I wanted the kids to love it. But the reality is I was setting my expectations up too high. And as a result of these mistakes, I had sleepless nights leading up to registration day. 

Sleepless nights 

I remember waking up, like, in a panic in the middle of the night, my heart frantically racing. I remember kind of going around to all my friends going, where are you signing up? Where are you signing up? Trying to get, like, put this puzzle together. 

So my kids had friends at these different camps, which I was just praying would make sure that they weren't gonna be unhappy over the summer. Right. I was just dreading this summer rhythm, feeling resentful to the system that is the system for working parents right now. 

And my daughter in particular was extremely difficult during this time. She didn't like any of the summer camps that she ended up choosing. I actually I chose some of them, but I got her buy into it. She didn't like any of them in the end. 

She would wake up in defiance every day. It was like a battle to get her into the car every day. And she'd come home angry. She threatened to run away. She yelled at us countless times, like screaming matches that would go on seemingly for like hours. 

She was 9, but she kind of had this like, attitude, of a 16 year old was like, I don't care what you say, I don't care what the consequences. I'm going to do what I want to do and forget you. Right. 

I felt anxious the whole summer. I didn't know how to help her. I didn't know what to do. I cried a lot. I didn't know how to fix the summer problems that we were having. 

I need to make a change. 

And the moment I realized that this wasn't working, I needed to make a change. And it took me really into the last couple of weeks of summer to eventually cancel all the rest of the summer camps and put them with a trusted nanny. 

She was way more expensive. She didn't do Fridays. She had like strict end times of when she could watch the kids. But as soon as I made that decision, things started to calm down. Right. Me not being adaptable was a mistake. 

So let's go through these mistakes again. I was holding the belief that my kids happiness was my job. It was my job to make the summer feel memory filled, to fill it with fun adventures, to make sure that they got to the end of the summer and they just were overwhelmed with the amount of joy that they experienced during the summer. So I was holding the belief that that was my job. 

I was also holding the belief that I was the one that had to figure it out. Right. My husband couldn't do it. He wasn't gonna be able to. It was just easier for me to do it than it was to try to delegate to them. 

I also held really unrealistic expectations of what was possible over the summer in terms of happiness, cost and time. 

I lacked a vision of success. 

And my last mistake is I wasn't really being adaptable. I was being almost obstinate in the situation. What I lacked was a vision, a vision of success that I was completely in control of my kids. 

Happiness can't be how I define success because I'm never actually in control of that. Sure, I can influence their happiness. I can set them up in circumstances to give them the potential to be happy. But ultimately that's on them. 

Define what a successful summer looks like to you. 

And so the first step for you and to have a really successful summer is to define what that means for you. When you get to the end of summer, what do you want to look back on? What do you want your memories to be that you created? How do you want to feel at the end of the summer. 

Clarity is always the first step. 

I always say this is the first step of almost any process. It's clarity. Because your brain, if your brain doesn't have clear direction on what success even looks like, if it doesn't know what a successful summer even means to you and how it would feel, then it has a really difficult time trying to make decisions to create that. 

So what does a successful summer schedule look like to you, Starts with answering that question. So that’s step number one.

Number two, in terms of clarity, what schedule is actually going to set you up for success? It could be maintaining a 9 to 5 schedule, or it could be adapting. 

That was one of the things that I didn't do very well. I didn't take a step back and say, hey, this really isn't gonna work for our family. This isn't what I want out of our summer. This kind of fight that we're gonna have all summer. Maybe there's something I could do about this to ensure that this doesn't happen. Is there a way I can adjust my schedule so the kids get a little bit more time at home? Something that they were really craving, the rest that they desired instead of, you know, sending them to camps basically all summer. 

And if summer care, maybe for you, doesn't start till later, a lot of camps around here don't start till 9 o'clock. That's an hour past what I would normally work. How do you wanna adapt for that? Are there any vacations that would be a part of your successful summer are the rhythms that you wanna put in place for you? 

Because it's not just about the kids, right? It's just as much about, if not more really about you and about your happiness this summer. 

Showing up as your best self. 

Because when you make time for yourself and you begin to actually show up as the best mom and the best wife and the best employee. 

So as you start to think about setting up your schedule in a way that allows for your vision of the summer to come to life, it starts with you and deciding what you want. 

Confidence in yourself and your value. 

If the first step of the process is clarity, I'd say the second one is this. It's confidence, right? And what I mean by that is like belief in your own worthiness and value. Because so often as working parents, we put ourselves last, particularly over something like the summer where we feel obligated to make sure our kids have a good summer. Right? 

Put yourself first. 

I want you to choose to put yourself at the top of the list. This isn't just about the kids. It's about You. And when you start to see yourself as being valuable and worthy of your own time and resources, that's when the vision of your summer is going to get a whole lot easier. 

Maybe you want to take more evening strolls this summer. You want to read some books this summer. You want to go with your girlfriends on a couple of trips. Like what is it going to take to fill your cup? 

I got to the end of last summer feeling exhausted. Literally just emotionally spent. I wasn't feeling connected to my kids. I was irritated, I was yelling way more than I wanted to. I would wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, like literally feeling almost panic anxiety attacks that I had never experienced before. I just wasn't taking care of myself. 

My version of what a fun happy summer for me was at the bottom of the list. 

But not this year. This year I'm doing half day Fridays and either doing fun things with the kids if they're if they happen to be home with me on a Friday, or if they are in a fun summer camp, I might just take that time for myself. 

We bought an outdoor movie projector screen that I plan to use summerime several times over the summer because I love outdoor movies. 

I have a wine trip planned with some girlfriends in the early summer. 

I plan to prioritize some time with my closest girlfriends when I go to Seattle when I'm visiting family. 

Taking care of yourself and filling your cup. 

I am making sure I take care of myself because I matter and I want to get to the end of the summer and not just have memories with my kids. But I want to feel like my cup is overflowing and full. 

I've asked my husband to help out more with the summer planning so I don't feel like I'm carrying all of that this summer. 

I'm leaning a bit more into my family, just asking for what I need, getting support as needed. 

I am opting out this year of trying to make everyone happy. 

And my kids not being bored and me trying to have the perfect schedule where nothing feels too inconvenient to my husband or anyone else. 

I am literally opting out and I'm giving you permission to do the same. 

Summer doesn't have to feel like a scramble. 

Yes, there are some embedded challenges and being working parents and depending on where you live, your options could be very limited or very expensive. 

Taking ownership of your summer. 

Yes, there are challenges and yet you don't have to fight against the system. This is about taking ownership over the summer that you want to have. 

I truly cannot think of a better time for you to join Ambitious and Balanced right now. If you're lacking that kind of clarity and the tools to ensure that you have a successful summer, not only will you have accountability for your summer, so you prioritize yourself and your own rest and your own fun, you'll also be setting yourself up for a really successful fall and holiday season, which for most people tends to be the busiest time of year. 

If you've already started to think, just got to get through the summer and we're only, we're still a couple of months away from it and if you're already having this kind of like push through mentality, I got to gear up for a big summer, I gotta have a lot of energy. This is the group for you. 

And it's the perfect time to join. Ambitious and balance teaches a proven process to create a priority first life. Focusing on four key priorities that are the foundation of sustainable work life balance. It's me, time off, work time, family time and uninterrupted work time. 

So I teach you a process on how to get crystal clear on those four priorities. But not just that, how do you actually keep to them? Right? 

No matter what season in life you are in, the tools and the strategies that you're gonna learn are meant to be sustainable. They're meant to be able to be used no matter what your circumstances are. 

The group kicks off in the middle of May with a virtual retreat on a Friday night to Saturday morning. And then we meet weekly for three months. 

Like I said, this is a small group of women. I only take 10 into the program. This might just be the last time I do that. The investment is $2,000. You can make that in monthly payments if that is easier for you. 

Truly working moms, I want you to have a fun filled summer and I also want you to feel productive and successful at work. I know going in and out of vacations and in and out of different childcare swapping and options, it could feel like a big scramble. And I don't know any other program quite like this that's gonna teach you how to stay level headed, stay calm, not feel overwhelmed and anxious, not just try to grit and bear it all the way through. 

The most amazing summer is waiting for you. 

You can have the most amazing summer this year with your kids, lots of memories, not feel emotionally spent at the end of it and truly, truly enjoy your life. 

Book a call to learn more. 

To learn more about the program or to book a 30 minute consultation call with me, you can simply go to my website, www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced. 

All right, working moms, until next week let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson