Top 5 Picks”: An Engaging Activity to Maximize Family Time During a Second Pandemic Summer

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The summer of 2021 would be the 2nd summer spent cooped up indoors, protecting ourselves from either the two extremes: the sweltering summer heat or the fierce thunderstorms. However, being a mother during a pandemic, I felt compelled to protect them from my potential guilt of not allowing my kids a productive and enjoyable summer experience as well. My mind began an internal jabbering session, including presumptions and mindless, overwhelming brainstorming to tackle this issue.

"What can we do?”

"We live on a small island, and we have done and seen everything touristy.”

"My kids may want something I can't give them.”

Eventually, the boiling broth of guilt transformed into a liberating and productive exercise, solving both my problems or having to “protect myself” and feeling unproductive. Upon completing this exercise, we looked forward to plentiful activities and plans all perfectly laid out for us on a shared Google Calendar.

What did we do?

1. Each of us wrote down the Top 5 things we wished to do this summer

2. We then passed our chits to the person on the right, and then we all voted and scored our willingness to do that activity. (1 vote per person, on a scale of 1-4)

3. We then ranked the activity and plotted them on our calendars.

4. We assigned responsibility for each event to the relevant family member whose task was to ensure that the activity happens smoothly and on time.

What did I learn from this?

1. Collective consciousness is powerful. If we all put our minds to it, we can plan events that emanate feelings of satisfaction; no matter that individually, we may not feel powerful enough to bring such into our space.

2. Time is finite. what would you do today if there is no tomorrow?

3. Start “allowing yourself to “have” vs. “feeling empty” as a victim of your lacking desire to invite excitement into your life. When you feel empty, look around you, find something you can have, walk towards it and allow yourself to fill up with its energy and warmth.

4. Teamwork works, even at home: Treat your children with respect and remember, if you co-create and involve people no matter how old they are, you will find them more involved, more engaged, and more enthusiastic. This change in behavior coming from your children will automatically release your guilt. As you see them taking pride in their personal opinions, activity choices while working together with the whole group when making decisions, you will be able to sigh, exhaling a breath of comfort that they have turned out perfectly fine. Inevitably this experience will also show you that the definition of a “responsible parent” changes as your child grows older.

By doing this simple one-and-a-half-hour activity, we taught our children how to find the best when everything looks like it couldn't be worse. Through demonstrating the cliche but refreshing attitude of seeking joy when everything seems gloomy, we were able to transform the tone of our family's summer from hopeless to productive. We realized the inherent joy in freedom and that boredom essentially comes from the freedom of getting to fill up life's gaps with excitement. Subsequently, we were able to discover hidden gems, family-friendly activities, and loads of culturally diverse experiences that everyone would enjoy right here in our backyard.