How to Have a Meaningful Summer with Your Kids: An Intentional Summer Planning Framework for Working Moms

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:04  

Welcome to The Executive Coach for Moms Podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:27  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show, and thank you so much for joining me in this last week of May. Can you believe it, next week is June, summertime. If you have school aged kids, they might be out of school already, or if they're like mine, maybe they will be out of school in the next few weeks. So it's here. Summer is here, or just about here. And since we have a change in season that is especially different for those with school aged children, I want to talk about this idea of approaching a new season and some mindset shifts and some tangible tools that we can use to ensure that we enjoy the season that we have, the kind of season that we want to have, that we don't end up looking back on it with regret. Because I think especially with summer, there's the narrative out there of we've got 18 summers with our kids, so use them wisely, and it creates this really like scarcity mindset and high pressure kind of feeling where we're like, Oh my gosh. How am I supposed to do that when I'm working and they've got their activities, and of course, we have such high expectations of ourselves as high achievers, so we want to like do it the best we possibly can. So either we exhaust ourselves making sure that we do it the way we want, or we don't do it the way we want, and we end up feeling bad about ourselves and full of mom guilt for not spending the time with our kids, you know, when we we were working instead. So I just want to talk about this, because I think it's important to stop and take a pause and step back and really check in with ourselves to figure out what kind of summer we want to have, so that we can make sure that we have that kind of summer. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:19  

So last fall, in September, I did a webinar called Release the Mom Guilt: Back to School Edition, maybe you were there, or maybe you listened to it. I did release it on my podcast. And in that I talked about how at the end of the summer, a lot of times we look back and we have regrets. We wish we had done it differently. And so I thought, you know, I really want to do an episode on the front end of the summer so that we can proactively reduce some of that mom guilt and hopefully avoid some of that regret that maybe we felt at the end of the summer in years past. So one of the things I talked about in that webinar, and that I want to talk about today, is that with our High Achiever mindset and mentality and orientation, we tend to have an orientation towards action. And so it's like we get an idea and we want to immediately start planning. We want to start making the to do list and just getting going on it. Less often do we take the time to really step back and check in and think about it and visualize it. And so what I want to encourage you to do is, before you jump into all of the planning where you've probably already done your planning, you probably know what your schedule is going to be. Probably know what summer camps or childcare or daycare, etc, you're going to have for your kids, and what your work schedule is, and that kind of thing. So beyond logistics, though, I think it's so important to step back and just ask yourself, what does success actually look and feel like for me?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:51  

If I were to say at the end of the summer, I love to zoom to the end and look back. If you remember that book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I remember that being one of them is go to the end and look back. So the idea of going to the end of the summer and looking back and asking yourself and write this down, it's really important to write down. What would it mean to have a great summer? What does that look like for me? How do I want to feel while I'm doing it? How do I want to show up? What kind of energy do I want to bring? That emotional clarity is really powerful because it becomes your true north, your internal compass of kind of directing you towards where you want to go and how you want to show up this summer, then once we have a clear visual, that is whenever we can move into execution. And I will also say that since the summer includes not only ourselves, but our family unit, or whoever we are cohabitating with, we might want to also check in with the other members of our family. So once we're clear on what does summer look like for me, what do I want summer to look like? It's important to also check in with our partner and our kids and understand what they want to get out of summer. Because you might think that your kids want to have this fabulous summer where they're on vacation every week and they're you're at the amusement park and doing all kinds of things, when in reality, maybe they just want to have a relaxing summer. When I asked my daughter, who's six, what kind of summer she wants to have, what she wants to do this summer, it was pretty much just playing. Playing with me, playing with her friends, playing with her cousins. It was not, you know, going on major trips. It was not going to all these different places. And so I think it's helpful to check in with everybody else, especially if part of our vision, if we notice, whenever we're saying what we might regret, or being clear about what we want, that we're also clear that if maybe some of those things are coming from a place of expectation, where we believe that others have expectations. Then let's check in with them. Do they actually have those expectations? Do they actually want to do those things, or are they feeling something different? So kind of just get clear about the visual that everybody has. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:16  

Then when we go into execution, I love taking things from work and applying them at home. I think sometimes we we're like, so good at doing planning at work, and then we don't really do it as much whenever we are at home in our personal lives. So I think this is a great opportunity to apply a model I learned years ago in business that I think applies everywhere. It applies in every aspect of our lives. And that is a flawless execution. I read this book. It was by a former US Air Force pilot. He talked about, when you're flying fighter jet, there's very little room for error. So the US Air Force has come up with a very simple, clear process that they use for every single mission, and it is how they've gotten better and better, and how they're able to continuously improve. The flawless execution model is four steps. One is plan, two is brief, three is execute, and four is debrief. I'll go through those real quickly. So first is plan. So based on your vision, you create a strategy. You can decide who else becomes part of the planning process. And then once you've gotten clear on the plan, step two is to brief everybody. You communicate the plan to the people involved that might cause some iterations, because, you know, someone might say, well, actually, that part of the plan doesn't work. And, you know, we need to iterate that. You know, maybe that's family members, extended family members that you're involving. If you're wanting to spend time with cousins, for example, then you're getting on the same page with them. So you're kind of creating this plan, making sure everybody's on the same page. And then, and only then do we go into execution. So step three is to execute the plan, take action. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  8:00  

And then step four is the most important, and the one that is most often skipped over at work and really anywhere, and that is debrief. And the idea here is that you pause to reflect back on how things are going, what worked, what didn't work, what you want to do differently, just asking yourself those three questions. So I think there are so many opportunities to do this, and usually we don't do it because we just want to get on to the next thing. It doesn't feel like there's time, but this is actually the only way that we're going to improve, because we have to make a plan. We have to take action on the plan, and then we have to reflect. We have to look and see and ask ourselves and ask the people involved, what went well, what didn't go so well? What do we want to do differently? What do we want to change for next time? If we don't do this, if we fail to do this, then we're just going to keep repeating the same mistakes. We're going to keep having summers over and over again that we don't feel like we maximized, that we feel like, Oh man, I wish I had done this differently, feel like the kids are already going back to school and I barely got to spend any time with them. So we we have to take this time to step back and reflect and debrief on how things went. A lot of times, I think we're afraid to do this. We either just skip over it, because it's that we don't we tell ourselves there's no time, or we feel scared that something's going to come up where we're going to see that we failed somewhere, or that we have a weakness. And it's a lot easier to just kind of keep charging forward and skip over that. But I just want to say that then we're going to keep doing that. We're going to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again. It gives us no opportunity to change. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:45  

In terms of debriefing, I think that waiting until the end of this summer would be a missed opportunity to check in. Of course, whenever there's an Air Force mission, it's a very finite thing, and so they're able to debrief at the end, but we're talking about a three month period or and so I think it's important to maybe create checkpoints, intentional check ins where we're going to debrief. So check in with everybody. How are things going? Check in with yourself. How am I doing? Am I showing up the way I wanted to? Am I living this summer the way I wanted to and if not, why not? I think that this can help us to create the kind of summers that we want. And then also, at the end of it, a bigger debrief about how did the summer go, looking back, you know, what do we want to do differently next summer? I think also another opportunity before we even start any of this, maybe before you do your visualizations for this summer is to look back on previous summers. And this is a great exercise too, to do with the family, to do with your kids, and ask, you know, what did you love about previous summers? What went really well? What would we want to make sure that we do again this summer? What didn't go so well in the past that maybe we thought would be great, and then we ended up not enjoying that we don't want to do again. And what do we want to do differently? What do we want to change? Where do we see opportunities for doing things differently?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:12  

I think taking this time to check in, we are going to try and tell ourselves that we don't have it, that we just have to go. But I'm going to tell you right now that whenever we take this time up front a little and it's not a ton of time, it's a little bit of time to check in and think intentionally about how do we want to approach this season, then we're able to end up doing it a lot more aligned with what we actually want, instead of accidentally creating something we don't want. And it ends up taking us so much less time in the end, because we don't have to spend all that time feeling so guilty that we didn't spend enough time with our kids, or feeling so regretful that we didn't have the season or the summer that we wanted to have. We didn't live it the way that we wanted to live it. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:01  

One last thing that I want to say, that it's, it's a crucial piece that often gets left out, is another thing you need to decide ahead of time is, how will I treat myself when things don't go according to plan, when the reality doesn't match the expectation? Because I think a lot of times when we visualize, when we create a plan, we generally only account for best case scenarios. We visualize this perfect situation where nobody's sick, nobody's fighting, everyone's cooperating, everyone's in a good mood, and that's just not the reality of life. And so I think it's really important that we recognize when we visualize that we're probably visualizing a perfect scenario and it's probably not going to go exactly as planned. So we probably want to level set a little bit in our visualizations. And also, when we're in the moment, we have to decide ahead of time. How are we going to treat ourselves? What story are we going to tell ourselves about this? It would be helpful to notice, what story do you usually tell yourself when things don't go according to plan? Do you tell yourself a story that you're a bad mom? Do you tell yourself a story that maybe, if you didn't work so much, maybe if you were around more often, the kids wouldn't be acting like this. Do you tell yourself a story of guilt and shame, or do you tell yourself a story that this is human, that this is normal, that this is part of parenthood, that this is part of life. You get to decide what story you want to tell yourself when you're in those moments and things aren't going according to plan, and I would strongly encourage that you decide that ahead of time, because if you wait until you're in the moment, our brains really like efficiency, and so our brains know the program. They know what story you go to most often, and so it's just going to pick that story every time, unless you intentionally redirect it. And your brains are kind of like toddlers. You really need to redirect them to something else because they get hyper focused on one thing. So choose ahead of time, how you're going to treat yourself, what you're going to say, decide to have your own back whenever things don't go perfectly, or whenever things don't go according to plan or whenever life starts, lifeing. That's really, really important in terms of helping you to enjoy your experience more. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:29  

So I hope this is a really helpful opportunity or invitation for reflection so that you can have an amazing summer. I'm wishing you the best summer, and also I just want you to remember that there are moms everywhere, across this country, across this world, who are doing the really hard work of trying to balance being an amazing working professional with having your kids home from school for the summer and being off routine and doing something different than they normally do and trying to balance and manage all of that. You're not alone. There are many, many women doing this, and you're probably going to tell yourself that they're all doing it better than you, and it's not true. We're all struggling. It's a challenging time. I'm sure that most of us are thinking about the summer and looking at it with a lot of both excitement and trepidation, so just know you're not alone. So I genuinely hope this helps you have a great summer. I'm wishing you all the best. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:30  

In terms of the summer here on the podcast, I just want to let you know next week starts our summer series where I have invited some amazing, inspirational women to join me for conversations, and we'll be releasing those in two part series. So look forward to hearing from some amazing, inspirational women this summer. I'll see you next week. Bye, bye.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:57  

If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out The Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success driven, career focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving. Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself. Head on over to coachleanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you get there, because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams. Let's create yours together.