Back-to-School Self-Care for Moms: How to Keep the Summer Joy Going

Your Favorite Summer Habits Don't Have to Retire in September

Just as I finally settle into summer ease, the back-to-school countdown starts creeping back in. In the finale of the Sane Mom Summer series, I ask the question that matters most as fall approaches: does the joy have to end just because summer does? (Spoiler: duh, no.)

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Who Should Listen

• Moms who feel that familiar anxiety creeping back in as summer winds down
• Parents who tend to let self-care slide the second the school year starts
• Moms looking for a simple, doable way to protect the good parts of summer through fall
• Anyone who's followed the Sane Mom Summer series and wants the wrap-up

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What You'll Get

• Why summer joy tends to disappear the second school starts
• Heather Moulder's self-care equation, and why "self-care" belongs above the to-do list instead of buried at the bottom of it
• A simple exercise: naming three specific things from summer that genuinely made you feel like yourself
• How to actually protect that time with one bigger, calendar-worthy ritual and one small, recurring one
• The throughline for the whole Sane Mom Summer series: you get to notice what works for you and build around it

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Your Host

Caitlin Kindred is the host of Not Quite Grownup, a podcast for moms navigating the gap between who they're "supposed" to be and the messy, real version of adulthood.

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Sources & Mentions

• Heather Moulder's self-care equation (work + family + chores + other — with "other" including self-care), referenced as the framework for prioritizing self-care in the epsiode 
  • How To Stop Feeling Guilty About Taking Care Of Yourself | Heather Moulder
  • How To Say No Without Feeling Guilt (Step-By-Step Instructions) | Heather Moulder
• Sane Mom Summer series: 
  • Episode 205: Lowering the standard for a less “picture perfect” summer
  • Episode 206: Confidence
  • Episode 207: Not letting the internet dictate your summer
  • Episode 208: ADHD in summer mode
  • Episode 209: Making the B2S transition more manageable

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Transcript

E210_Sane Mom Summer | Summer Joy During the School Year

Caitlin Kindred 0:23

I spent the first few weeks of summer trying to just relax. And I feel like I finally settled into it. I've taken my own advice for a change and let my anxiety and compulsion to control everything just kind of fall away. And I've settled into a summer routine that has allowed me to feel more relaxed with my boys at home. I'm laughing more freely and easily. All the things that you want summer to be. And now that school is about to start, I am starting to feel that anxiety build back up again. I'm a little nervous. I feel like the reason that I finally relaxed is because, in a lot of ways, summer frees up so much bandwidth for parents. But with the school year starting soon, that means I feel like I'm gonna be more stretched again. Like the bandwidth is is gonna disappear. Like there's less time for relaxing and feeling easy breezy again. And I think that's really common. As summer ends, we all sort of collectively agree to put those vibes on the shelf, and you know, summer personalities go away, and it's back to lunches and practices and email notifications and app notifications and homework and stricter bedtimes, and trying to remember what that one thing is that's missing that you you know you didn't do something, but you need to do something. Somewhere in all of that chaos and all of those responsibilities, the stuff that made summer feel really good, like those slower evenings and little adventures, random popsicles on a Tuesday afternoon, that fun sort of feeling just kind of goes away. But I really don't think it has to. And this year I'm actively looking for ways to keep those good summer vibes going into the school year.

Welcome

Caitlin Kindred 2:39

Welcome back to Not Quite Grown Up. This is the podcast for moms who are just trying to keep it all together. Hopefully, your melted iced coffee is kicked in and you're feeling pretty good. This is the final episode in my Sane Mom Summer series. And just to recap, we've started this series talking about lowering the bar, making summer more livable, less pressure. We talked about confidence and protecting our attention online and supporting ADHD brains when routines go, you know, sideways. And then last week we talked about, or last time, we talked about making the transition back to school a little bit more manageable, less chaotic. But we have to talk about what happens after that transition because I don't want to enter the school year believing that summer joy is just over once the school year starts. It was just this cute little side quest thing, and now we have to get serious and return to our regularly scheduled stressful programming. I want to really keep that summer energy and positivity alive this fall. There

What made summer feel good

Caitlin Kindred 3:59

are things about summer that just feel different, though, right? Like the days are still busy, but they just feel a little bit less rigid. There's later dinners and more walks and more time outside, unless you live in Texas with beer melting. More random opportunities to say, yeah, sure, let's go ahead, let's do it. And even if summer was loud and sweaty and chaotic and expensive, because, you know, summer camp is not cheap. There have probably been some little moments that just kind of made you feel more like yourself. Maybe you were reading more. Maybe you sat outside after dinner. Again, probably not in Texas, but maybe. Maybe you took your kids to the pool, or you went on more walks, or you saw your friends more often. Or you found a summer cocktail, you you returned to Aperol Spritz Life. Or there was a playlist that just made you feel like all the vibes of summer. Maybe there was a little Friday night ritual that your family had. Pizza on the patio. I don't know. But it just made the week feel less like a list of obligations and more just fun and joyful. But then when the school year starts, all of that free time that you maybe had fills up, right? The mornings speed up. The evenings are shorter. You don't have as much time together in the evening. Practices take up that time. Work takes up that time. And before you know it, you're back into the routine of the school year, but maybe you're not enjoying things as much as you'd like to.

Why the school year feels "less good"

Caitlin Kindred 5:48

And I think the real issue here is not that the school year isn't joyful, right? There's a lot that is joyful about the school year, watching your kids learn, watching them have those aha moments, seeing them make connections and, you know, deal with conflict and just kind of grow up over the school year. There's a lot of joy in that. But when life gets busy, we protect responsibilities first. We assume that the things that make us feel good can happen when there's time left over. But there's literally no time ever left over, right? There's always another email or a form to sign. There's always going to be laundry, regardless of the season. There's lunches to pack and practices to attend, appointments, permission slips, meals to figure out a room that needs cleaning. If Joy has to wait until all of those important things are done, it's never gonna happen. It's gonna get bumped forever because you're trying to fit all of the things that restore you into the scraps of time that remain after everyone else's needs have been handled.

What I'm doing to make sure the school year feels good, too

Caitlin Kindred 7:18

So this year I'm being intentional about my school year mindset. I am refusing to choose between being responsible mom during the school year and having a life that feels good at the same time. I am going to build that summer joy into the structure of school year life. And I'm gonna come back to this thing that I've talked about many, many times on this show. If you're a longtime listener of this show, thank you very much. And you you know what I'm gonna say when it comes to this phrase self-care. My definition of self-care is the things that you do for yourself that help you feel like yourself. The purpose of that self-care is to be able to give your best to tasks and to others when it's needed most. Like you have a huge work project or your kid is sick all night because let's face it, school year starting, someone's gonna get sick. And I've put this together from this person I found online. Her name is Heather Mulder. She has this equation that you're probably using when it comes to self-care. Work plus family plus chores plus other. Other includes that self-care. And when self-care comes at the bottom of that equation, it becomes the first thing you push off when you're busy. But you have to move self-care, move that other before the equation even comes into play. It shouldn't even be a part of that equation. It should be prioritized above all else, including your to-do list. Because the purpose of self-care is to be able to give your best to tasks and to others when it counts. So if you really think about it, neglecting your self-care is actually kind of selfish. So that means if we look at this in the context of summer joy and the school year, it means that you need to look at what made summer feel good and decide which parts are worth keeping to add into your self-care routine. Maybe summer felt good because it reminded you that your family likes being outside after dinner. And you so you started taking walks. Maybe it reminded you that you feel better when you see your friends, or your kids were easier to be around when they had unstructured time. Or you were happier when you had something small to look forward to every week. Those nice summer memories you have are clues about what helps you and your family feel more connected, more human, and more like yourself.

Practical tips to keep the summer joy going into the school year

Caitlin Kindred 10:31

So as we move into the school year, I am going to try to find ways to bring those little summer memories into my self-care routine. So I actually have a list here next to me of three things from summer that I genuinely want to keep doing because they made me feel good. So mine are evening crochet time. I didn't do it every day, but I did do it as often as possible. Lying in bed with my two boys and our dog and the cats would come around eventually and we would watch movies before bedtime. And my husband and I started having one fancy cocktail per week, like a fancy one, like a like one of those ones that you know you spend $14 on and it's small. One of those. Those three things. That's what I wrote down right off the bat. And I'm gonna encourage you to do the same thing. Maybe those things could become a family ritual. Maybe it's just for you. It could be tiny or huge, it doesn't matter. Just write them down. I'm going to choose one of the bigger, like needs-to-be-scheduled things and put it on the family calendar this week. So the the reminder, order the fancy cocktails, is going to actually go on my family calendar. So my husband and I both see it. And that will give me something to look forward to. And then I'm going to choose the smaller one, like the crochet time. And that was just like the damn, this feels so good to do thing. And I'm just going to put it on my personal calendar for like two nights this week with an alert. And it's going to be a recurring appointment. But I'm going to put it on there with an alert so that I see the reminder and I don't forget to do it. Because if I want this school year to feel more joyful, I need to be intentional about bringing the things that made summer joyful for me into the school year. And I'm going to encourage you to do that same thing. Put them on your calendar or whatever works for you. If that means writing it down and putting it on a post-it so that everyone in your family sees, like, this is my solo Saturday morning coffee and library time, whatever it is, just put it on the calendar to make sure that you get that time.

Closing and takeaways

Caitlin Kindred 13:04

So as I wrap up this Sane Mom Summer Series, I hope that the biggest takeaway you have from this whole thing is that you get to notice what works for you and your family. You get to choose the things that make you feel more present, more connected, more energized, more like yourself. And then you can build around them. Summer might be ending, but the parts of it that made you feel good are not supposed to end with it. Like if that summer playlist that you love so much makes you feel really good, keep playing it into the fall. It doesn't have to stop playing just because it says summer playlist on it. Keep that Friday night patio pizza time. Keep the walk that you took by yourself for 10 minutes with the dog after dinner. Protect the things that make an ordinary week feel more like the summer fun that you had. Because the school year shouldn't be all routines and responsibilities. You can shape it to include all the summer joy that you want. And if you ask me, that seems like the best way to keep yourself sane during the school year. Love you, mean it. Talk to you soon. Bye.