I Said Screw Camps and Let My Kids Have a ‘Nothing Summer’

After a move from NYC to rural Connecticut, a mom decides not to conform to societal parenting pressures.

We’re all crammed into the living room—grandparents, my husband, and me—a makeshift theater of dining chairs and sofa cushions, eagerly awaiting the world premiere of “Boy’s Best Friend.” Two months of summer boredom had led to this: my three kids, in a burst of unexpected brilliance, had made a movie. After a full red carpet event—complete with a homemade step-and-repeat, awards, and heartfelt speeches—I realized that perhaps parenting isn’t about meticulous planning but giving our kids the space to surprise us.

For eight parenting years (25 real-life years), my husband, James, a teacher, and I lived in New York City, where “Dad Summer” was a tradition. In 2019, we moved to Connecticut to be closer to family, and James traded in his teaching gig for a cushy museum job at a school that rhymes with “kale.” Summers would have meant camps and care if it wasn’t for COVID and a torn meniscus—leaving James home for a few more dad summers.

But now, with a seven, nine, and 12-year-old (a split that makes it increasingly difficult to meet all their interests) and James back working from June to August, we needed a new summer strategy. 

By February, when the moms at school started asking, “What are your summer plans?” I could feel the anxiety creeping in. Camp felt complicated and expensive. By March, I was adjusting the summer budget while half-heartedly Googling nearby camps. At a birthday party in April, I was sweating just listening to one friend dramatically describe the logistics of chauffeuring her kids all over the state and another talking about the camp concierge they hired. By May, my panic turned into resolve: I’m a therapist who works from home—which makes me “present” if not accounted for—my kids could stay home too. That’s right, my kids were going to do nothing this summer.

I practiced saying it out loud, “nothing,” and watched the reactions roll in—shock, confusion, pity. One person even said, “That’s okay,” like I was a kid with a skinned knee. My childhood trauma spawn-point was “The Nothing” from The NeverEnding Story; an existential nihilistic void. Was I welcoming a level of chaos and dread? Probably. But “nothing” also felt unhinged, defiant, rebellious—oh liberation! 

When we ran it past our children, they were “sus.” They were vaguely aware there were cost issues and some mentions of us being lazy. By the time June rolled around, they started teasing me about “Montessori Mom Summer” like it was a challenge.

All the parents who work from home with kids around share the same unspoken contract: You stay in your lane, and I’ll stay in mine…unless there’s an emergency. So there I was, seeing clients online, darting out between sessions to make sure the kids were fed, clothed, and that the house wasn’t in flames.

Which it once “nearly” was when Julian, my oldest, decided to make mac and cheese for lunch; he turned on the burner and thought he smelled gas (side note: we have an electric stove). His solution? Evacuating the kids and the dog, then throwing sticks at my window to get my attention instead of just, you know, turning off the stove and then knocking on my door.

Meanwhile, my daughter, Alice, did not hesitate to declare the need for my Sephora credit card as an emergency. The real crisis here? I’m starting to think I’ve failed to properly define the word “emergency” for any of them. 

Besides that, here were the summer rules we came up with together:

– Move your body for at least an hour a day.
– Make something at least once a day (food, art, music, your bed).
– Care for something (a plant, a pet, yourself). 
– Listen to something for an hour (a book, a record, yourselves).
– Lunch together at noon.
– No screens before 3 p.m. 

Admittedly, I imagined I’d crack by day three, envisioning myself hurling iPads out of my office. But, as it turns out, kids have their ways of filling space when given the freedom. They started spending more time together, in that rare way siblings do when they momentarily forget they’re natural rivals. They’d disappear for hours, making up games, playing with the dog, or building forts. The phrase “I’m bored” popped up a few times until I eventually responded with, “That sounds hard,” instead of offering up a list of activities they’d inevitably reject. Soon after, I began overhearing them earnestly whispering about a “mystery project.”

By July, they revealed their secret: The three of them would make a movie. Miles, my youngest, approached me solo, as a baby brother does when the others force him to do their dirty work, and says “I need $84. Don’t ask why.” I couldn’t help but laugh just as Alice squealed, “Miles is the ultimate sigma; he’s funding the budget for our film! So, yeah, he’s the producer.”

“What about you?” I asked. “I’m R&D,” she replied. “Figuring out the right equipment and tech for the film.” (Nod.) I didn’t need to ask about Julian—he was the director because, well, oldest child.

Fine, take my money. 

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The “Summer of Nothing” is partially a tale about our move from New York to Connecticut, which was both organic and tragic. Organic because who can live in the city with three kids and tragic because it felt like the death of my youth. 

James had always been skeptical about moving out of the city. When we’d visit my family in Connecticut, he’d grumble about the lack of sidewalks and the impossibility of decent late-night food. So it wasn’t that something pushed us out (though, I could argue that relying on public transportation with a questionable pelvic floor is its own form of Russian roulette) but rather something pulled us away.

When my mother—who had been relentlessly sending us real estate listings for a decade—offered to watch the kids so we could see a place she liked, we gave in. We figured, if nothing, we’d get a child-free car ride and an hour of quiet.

It was one of those crisp December mornings (the kind that New England’s first son has since canonized); when we pulled into the driveway, James said, “This is our house.”

Back in 2002, when we first started dating, we playfully crafted a dream home wishlist: a house with a name and a plaque dating back over 200 years, cedar siding, a porch, perched on a hill, next to a cemetery, and, of course, a house number under 10 so we could spell it out in letters. The whole thing felt like a joke—a contract with the city gods that guaranteed we’d never leave New York, because there was no way we’d ever check off all those boxes.

And yet, there it was: The Silas Hotchkiss House, built in 1790, complete with cedar siding, a wraparound porch, and proudly sitting atop a hill at Four
__ Road, right next to a cemetery. It was like the universe took our ridiculous wish list, threw it in a blender, and handed us this eccentric little gift, saying, “Challenge accepted!”

Now, this was 2019, before the real estate market shit the bed, and we didn’t just whimsically buy a house. We drained every retirement account, begged distant relatives, and sold family jewelry to make it happen. It might have been financially irresponsible but somehow we found ourselves the proud stewards of what was, quite literally, our dream home.

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When people find out we moved from the city to rural Connecticut, they often exclaim, “What a difference!” To me, though, it’s not so different. The city’s unwavering energy is like a daily pop quiz to see if your amygdala will trigger the correct survival response. Rural Connecticut, in contrast, offers a profound stillness that can be just as intense, with its vast silence peppered with bug sounds and sprawling openness creating a different kind of extreme.

During one of our first weeks here, we saw a dead deer on the side of the road, its eyes and mouth wide open as if struck down mid-thought. I remember holding my breath as we passed by in the car and thinking, Please don’t notice it, as if that mound of flesh could be ignored. My kids, fresh from city life, were stunned. “That doesn’t happen in Brooklyn,” they whispered. In the city, we lived near Green-Wood Cemetery, where death was quieter, fancier, more abstract, something you could look directly at without confronting because it was surrounded by Tiffany glass and sculptured mausoleums. 

Here in rural Connecticut, this type of wild was everywhere—blunt and unavoidable. The dead deer became a symbol of everything that felt natural and odd about the move and life, and a type of curated parenting to which I was still desperately trying to cling. One minute, they were savvy city kids, telling us how to use the subway, shaming smokers, and walking over rusty razor blades on their way to PS whatever. The next they were waving at cows and mourning roadkill. They forfeited the civility of city life and seamlessly traded it in for a rawer, more feral experience. We even adopted a rule that they could only pee in the backyard—we had acres of untamed land now, and with a “yard” on every side of the house, it felt like an important distinction.

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This past summer was also full of other strange and tender landmarks that continued to betray my sense of control. My youngest—my last baby—lost his first tooth, and we all hovered around it like it was a tiny relic, which I guess it was. One afternoon, while folding laundry, my husband held up a bra and asked, “Is this yours or Alice’s?” I stared at him, blinking. She’s nine, and I’ve nursed for SEVEN years. The eye roll was loud enough to echo, but I let it go because, well, this is how time creeps up on you. Suddenly, you’re standing in a sea of laundry, wondering when your kid started wearing bras—and if your husband even knows how big your boobs are.

Later, on our annual drive to Maine, we put on The Counting Crows’ 1993 debut record, August and Everything After and it hit us both at once—our oldest son in the backseat, staring out the window at a craggy coastline, an 8th grader now, the exact age we were when we bought that album. We felt the weirdness of life looping back around, only now we were the grown-ups, and it was our child whose future seemed to reverberate, “I belong anywhere but in between…”. 

Also, my house ate my wedding band. After a shower, I went to put it back on and fumbled for just a second. I recall permitting it to slip, assuming gravity would cooperate and it would land gently on the floor. But instead, the ring vanished—right through a crack between the 224-year-old wood planks, as if the house had been waiting for this exact moment. It swallowed the ring whole with a wicked thud. We talked about how we might retrieve it and even entertained the idea of installing a secret door where we would eventually stash our cash, but we never followed through. Maybe the house and I are married now. Maybe we always were destined to be together from the start.

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This narrative of “nothing summer” is only a novelty to anyone under 20 years old. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, coming home from playing Ghost in the Graveyard in the actual cemetery behind my house to the sound of a cowbell my mom had affixed to our garage. I have memories of snatching snapping turtles by the tails and rope swings over a creek behind the elderly housing complex nearby. A hot air balloon once accidentally landed in my backyard and my dad and I helped the pilot untangle some fabric from a tree. In return, he gave us a short ride.

I once told Julian this story, and his first thoughts were, “That seems dangerous and irresponsible.” He is the one who came home with a worksheet titled “What to Do with Your Anger,” featuring a rating system of suggestions, and by level eight, he’d written, “Call your therapist.” Chill is not in his vocabulary. 

Nor is it a term in most kids’ vocabulary. I see it frequently with my clients—how our culture of achievement collides with a certain type of parental prestige. Summer isn’t just about keeping kids occupied; it’s a peculiar contest of control to curate the most opulent, content-rich childhood. In places like Connecticut, there’s an unspoken expectation that you can afford the best camps, the latest gear, and the extra driving. If you can’t meet these expectations, well, you’re probably screwing it all up.

Honestly, the so-called “prestige” is just sleight of hand to distract from the real challenges our kids are facing. Politics, environmental crises, confusing international landscapes, gun reform, and polarizing social discourse have transformed into a constant stream of breaking news, delivered instantaneously through our digital devices. These issues not only dominate headlines but seep into our daily lives—almost by osmosis—creating a constant barrage of updates and opinions that have triggered real neurological shifts.

The rapid information dump amplifies their sense of urgency, making it difficult to escape or process the sheer volume of information. This constant exposure contributes to a heightened state of awareness and agitation, leaving little room for relief or detachment. And what is anxiety if not the lack of control? Anyone who’s read Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” understands where their fears originate. With the sky seemingly falling, our kids are like modern-day Chicken Littles, and distress tolerance should be a bullet point on their resumes. 

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After the premiere, we rewatch it, then sit around discussing their movie, as they excitedly plan a “world tour” of local viewings. I’m slack-jawed that they’ve pulled it off—the follow-through, the commitment, the ingenuity! 

I think their film, a full-fledged 8-minute Lego stop-motion production, perfectly summarized how they are feeling about being a kid. I previously had this notion that if I could just keep them busy enough, I’d be in control of their happiness. That’s what parenting is, right? Micromanaging joy? Except, it turns out I can’t. I can’t control them; not their creativity, not their boredom, not their messes, and especially not the world they are living in. 

I certainly couldn’t control the strange narrative they wove for the movie—a Jungian fever dream where the archetypes reflect their place in the world. It’s about a boy whose dog gets kidnapped by a villain in a mech suit. The boy’s mother gives him a sword (no insight here), and while he’s off slaying a giant tiger and retrieving a gemstone from its guts, she’s back home celebrating his absence. There’s vomiting on a pirate ship before we learn the gem miraculously revives the now-dead formerly-kidnapped dog, and they all go home for a harmonious communal dinner. Incidentally, in classic fairytale form, the dad does not make an appearance in this film. Maybe he’s at work, sort of like my husband is this summer. It was absurd, hilarious, and was one step away from passing the Bechdel Test.

And somehow, despite my presence and unimaginative adulthood lingering in the background, they came together and made it work. They fought, naturally. I didn’t intervene because of work, but also because I had traded in my gentle parenting for a try at something free-range. 

The ethos of a “nothing summer” came with the surprising insight that if it succeeded, I wouldn’t have to be the sole curator of every event and emotional experience for my kids. They will be partially responsible for this now, which means I might have done my job. Their film was an insightful conversation with their tiny slice of the world; a world that is as strange, anxiety-inducing, and beautiful. 

They started school last month, and I already miss knowing they are upstairs gathering props and scenery. Hearing things bang around and quickly resolved arguments above my head. I stumbled across their production schedule in the trash, as if it were just an afterthought. We held our end-of-summer family meeting, and I asked what their favorite summer memory was, and not a single one of them mentioned “the movie.”

And the dead deer? We’re used to them now. But maybe it was an introduction to the quiet grace in letting go of control, a reminder to stop and let others figure things out in their own time, in their own way. A symbol of destruction birthing creation, radically accepting the elasticity needed to adapt and thrive in unexpected ways. As I see my kids grow more competent and confident, I realize the story isn’t about the platitudes and grandeur of a summer filled with structured activities. It’s about finding meaning in the empty spaces—like the invisible trap door in my bedroom floor that’s secretly holding my wedding band for safekeeping. It’s trusting that even “doing nothing” might lead to something extraordinary. 

That said, it doesn’t mean they get a free pass to pee in the front yard. 

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