Finding Balance When the Kids Are Home for Summer Break

Ep. 173 - Summer is here—and so are your kids. If you're a work-from-home mom wondering how to juggle client calls, constant snack demands, household chaos, and still actually enjoy this season, this episode is for you.

Christina shares her personal journey of finding alignment during the summer months, going from chaotic overwhelm to a rhythm rooted in calm, joy, and intentional systems. You’ll hear practical tips, mindset shifts, and encouragement to help you create a summer that supports your family and your sanity.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why guilt—not time—is the real energy drain for moms working from home
• How to blend work and family rhythms instead of compartmentalizing
• The magic of “planned spontaneity” and systems that support summer fun
• How to raise independent kids (and reduce the number of times you hear “Moooom!”)
• Tips for reclaiming your time, energy, and joy this summer

Resources & Links:

• Want to dive deeper and create a summer plan that supports you? Book a free consult with Christina → [link]
• Follow Christina on Instagram → [@yourhandle]
• Get on the list for Clear & On Purpose updates and freebies → [newsletter opt-in link]

Let’s connect!

If you loved this episode, share it on IG and tag me with your biggest takeaway or your “summer bucket list”! I’d love to cheer you on.

Blog Post: https://christinaslaback.com/2025/06/01/how-to-survive-summer-with-kids-at-home-without-losing-your-mind-or-your-joy/

Resources Mentioned:

• Join The Village: Click here to connect with our community.
• Sign up for the Momentum Challenge: Click here to get started.

Resources & Links

• Follow Christina @christinaslaback
• Email us at hello@christinaslaback.com
• www.christinaslaback.com

Transcript

Summer Alignment

Christina: [00:00:00] Being a work from home mom can feel like the dream. In theory. You're available, you're involved, you're getting it all done. But in reality, guilt shows up fast. Maybe you're the mom who was so ready for the school year to end, but now it's day three of summer break. Your house is covered in crumbs. Your inbox is overflowing, and the sound of someone saying snack makes your eye twitch.

You are not alone. You have guilt for being on your phone or your computer while your kids are vying for your attention. Guilt for not answering an email quickly enough. Guilt for needing space. Guilt for everything. 

Welcome to Clear and On Purpose, the podcast design to help you cut through the noise and get back to what matters most. If you're feeling stuck, but needs to take intentional action, you are in the right place. I'm Christina Slayback, homeschooling mom of two and life and business [00:01:00] coach, helping you drop in and align with your values and create more space.

Each week I'll be sharing practical insights and simple. Actionable steps to help you find clarity, boost your energy, and design a life that balances ambition with mates. Let's dive in and get clear on purpose.

Welcome back to Clear and On Purpose. Today's episode is for all my fellow work from home moms, her trying to figure out how to not just survive the summer with kids home 24 7, but maybe even enjoy it. Perhaps you're finally in a groove. Your mornings are going smoothly. You drop the kids off at school, you get your work done, and then you shift into your afternoon routine.

Now school's gonna be out, and part of you is dreading what life will look like with your kids around all the time. How will you ever get anything done? Not to [00:02:00] mention any peace and actual alone time, or maybe life is already feeling frantic and you're not sure how you'll manage once the school year ends.

I know that the transitions in the summer can feel like chaos. Routines are off. The house is louder. You're trying to work and everyone's hungry all the time. When I first started working from home, I thought this will be the best of both worlds now commute, more flexibility. The kids can get their school done beside me, and then we'll have so much more time for fun.

Right? Strong. It was chaos, loud and messy with constant interruptions. I heard mom 18,000 times a day and everyone was always hungry. My responsibilities didn't change. I still had to be productive. So I had to figure out how to create systems and shift my expectations to match the [00:03:00] reality, 

Not the Pinterest perfect picture that I had in my head. And summer is my favorite time of year. I love the sun, the warmth being by the water, and spending as much time as possible outside. 

In this episode, I'm gonna give you all the tips that I learned, so work from home homeschooling mom who's running a business, and I'm gonna break it down into three parts. The mindset shifts that helped me release guilt, the systems that brought more ease to our days and the fun, the actual joy part that we often forget to plan for ourselves.

Being a work from home mom can feel like the dream. In theory. You're available, you're involved, you're getting it all done. But in reality, guilt shows up fast. Maybe you're the mom who was so ready for the school year to end, but now it's day three of summer break. Your house is covered in crumbs. Your inbox is overflowing, and the sound of [00:04:00] someone saying snack makes your eye twitch.

You are not alone. You have guilt for being on your phone or your computer while your kids are vying for your attention. Guilt for not answering an email quickly enough. Guilt for needing space. Guilt for everything. We get stuck trying to do it all at once and then beat ourselves up when we can't. We think we should be better at this, more efficient, more present, more patient.

And here's the biggest thing that changed for me. I dropped the guilt. I accepted that being a work from home mom means that there are times that I work and my kids entertain themselves, and there are times that I pause work because they need me. And that reframe really helped me reclaim my energy and my perspective.

It's not that I didn't have the time or space to do both. It was that guilt was [00:05:00] draining my joy, my focus, and when I returned to the bigger vision I hold for my family. Raising independent, creative, resilient humans who don't need me for everything that freed me up to be able to loosen my grip on the guilt and show up more fully in both roles.

I don't think it's the time or the space we're actually blocked by the guilt. One thing that you can look at is, where am I holding guilt that isn't serving anyone? What do I need to hear in those moments when guilt creeps in, what can I tell myself to help me release the guilt? What is the bigger vision that I'm creating for my life?

So let's talk about practical tips to create more ease and flow.

How can we look at blending roles instead of compartmentalizing? We don't need those hard lines [00:06:00] between mom mode and work mode. Summer invite, smart blend. What would it look like to soften the transitions and let the roles overlap? When I stopped compartmentalizing and started planning for the season, everything changed.

I watched summer start to feel like summer again, more outside time, kayaking, concerts in the park, impromptu lake days, and hammock reading. But when I was constantly scrambling, none of that even sounded fun. I was constantly under the impression that there was something else I should be doing. But by building in systems and setting boundaries, I knew what actually mattered and what could wait.

I set office hours. I checked email at specific times. I created SOPs and FAQ responses to questions that I got all the time. And that structure gave me space to truly disconnect when I was done. It's really easy when you work from home to let [00:07:00] everything bleed into each other. There's always more space and there's always more time, and so it's constantly just trying to keep up on all the things that you could be doing.

But when I took time off more seriously when I was in the office, I had set hours that I was in there, and when I had clocked out for the day, I was basically done. There might be times when they have to check in or do other things, but I could just know that I had that afternoon free. But when I was working from home, there wasn't that set time.

There wasn't the time when I left the office, and so I allowed it to just kind of bleed into the days I was working at night. I was working during the day, I was trying to do all of it, and there wasn't a clear start and stop. And I'm all for being creative and being able to have all of it flow. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity for that.

But setting yourself boundaries of when you are intentionally checking in at work and when you are intentionally [00:08:00] not.

And this really allowed us to then go back to that feeling of having those times off, having the day off, or having the afternoon off, and being able to make plans for that because I knew that I was going to plan my week ahead of time of what I need to get done for work. And I knew that I would be able to take that time off.

So I was able to schedule my fun as well because I was actually scheduling a time for work instead of just letting it all be together. And that really was a big change, that mentality of. Being so flexible that I didn't have any space to do the things that I want, because I was constantly just going with the flow of whatever life was bringing meant that homeschool hours just extended into all day.

If we were not staying focused, it meant that work was bleeding into night and evening or weekends. So by actually setting up more routines and setting up times when I was working and times when I wasn't, it gave me more actual free time. [00:09:00] And I created systems for planned spontaneity. I love the flexibility of being able to just.

Have a lovely day out and just being able to pack up and just go to the beach, or go to the pool or meet up with friends. So by having some items ready and prepared so we could have this planned spontaneity. So when somebody calls, I'm not looking for all of the items that we need. I don't need the other flip flop and where do we pack the sunscreen?

And all of it just seems like too much. I keep a beach bag packed and ready. I have some grab and go lunches and snacks that are easy and convenient that we can just go and take with us so we can extend our time. I use our convenience food strategically, not as a default. Being home all the time can mean that snacking is just something that they wanna do all the time.

But by having certain items of food that are easy, that are quick, that are our go-to on the go snacks, rather than just [00:10:00] available all the time while we're home, keeps those as treats that we have, that it's everybody's excited about when we have them. When we're on the go and it stops the constant questions and the need to constantly try to get those snacks all day long.

I keep our car prepped with things that we might need while we're out and about. And having all of these little systems in place makes it so when someone texts last minute about a lake day, we can be out the door in 15 minutes when we're driving through or on our way to somewhere else and we see a cool park that we wanna stop by, we can do that because we are ready and prepared for it.

And it just makes the ability to be spontaneous so much easier and so much less draining. And keeps it fun and light and exciting. I embrace something that I term lazy parenting, and this is really the core [00:11:00] of building independence for kids. So I don't make my kids lunch most days. They can do it and it's not lazy, it's leadership.

Parenting is a philosophy or is my philosophy on helping our kids be independent and being able to do things for themselves? The way that I go about this is by giving them age appropriate responsibilities and setting the environment up so that kids can succeed without you. So think like Montessori style, where they have utensils that they can reach, they have foods that they can prep, they have responsibilities that they own, and this is really, especially when they're younger, embracing that unhelpful, helpful toddler.

It would be so much easier and so much more time efficient for me to just make breakfast, clean it all up, get it all ready, and then give it to my toddler, [00:12:00] but the act of inviting them in as the unhelpful helper. And giving them that space to be able to participate in the process, to help to clean up the messes when they're done.

in the short term, it can create more work for you, but in the long term, you're building in those habits and you're giving them that ability to be able to learn how to do these things on their own. And eventually that's gonna give you more space. It's gonna give you more freedom because they can make their own food because they can clean up after themselves.

Really releasing the idea of having a perfect house and setting my expectations. If I have children that are helping and involved in the house maintenance, then they're learning those responsibilities and learning how to do it. It means that I don't always have a perfectly clean house. 

It may mean that some of the household isn't up to my [00:13:00] standards, so if they are cleaning the living room and vacuuming the floor, they're gonna miss things. It's not gonna be the way that I would've done it, but that's not the point right now. The point for me right now is not to have the cleanest house.

The point for me right now is to be able to have a functioning household where we are all able to live and to. Be able to become more independent, to be able to take on more responsibilities and for them to be involved in it. So setting my expectations, knowing that it's not going to be at this season, our picture perfect household, and that's okay if I'm working from home and the kids are home.

The glitter, the science experience experiments, the cut up cardboard across the floor, those are all signs of creativity and independence. And that is my priority in the season. And being able to look at [00:14:00] it from a viewpoint of those being signs that they were getting along, that they were independently playing, that they were creating and curious, 

Being kids and not looking at it as one more thing that I'm trying to manage and managing my own expectations about that allows me so much more freedom and so much more patience with the season that we're in. And that leads me to setting emotional and physical boundaries, creating a work zone. We even had a sign, so I have a separate area that's.

Because it's not solely my home office. It also has our homeschool stuff. It also has some of our craft activities for the kids, but it does have a door that closes and having a sign that has it where it's green when I'm working. But they can come in if they need me, or I can turn it to red if I'm having a meeting with a client or I am recording a podcast episode, where it has those [00:15:00] visual indicators.

So that they know what that space is, and I have a space that I can close the door and I can have some more focus time building daily quiet time into our routine. When the kids stop napping, we continue to have quiet time and it's just an opportunity for everybody to kind of go in their own areas. I can get some work done.

They can each go into their own rooms, they can play, they can do whatever they want to, but they're in their own space. They're doing it quietly and they're, it's just kind of a little. Time for everybody to just be able to chill for a little bit and to not be in everybody's space and with so much energy all the time, connecting first, often and intentionally.

All of the systems, all of the steps, all the things that we put in place are not going to be. Effective if we're not building in that connection first, it is so much easier for my kids to be [00:16:00] able to go and have their own space for them to be able to interact with each other well, for them to feel like they can be independent and do their own things.

If I'm connecting. First thing or as early as possible in the morning and really making sure that it's not just me giving them a list of things to do or me constantly asking them to, to give space while I'm trying to get stuff done, but knowing that I am there and that I'm available and I'm interested in them as people, and really having that time for connection and throughout the day whenever I get breaks or taking those really intentionally and being able to connect with them, it just makes it much smoother for everyone.

When they were young, I used a lot of screwing or activity invitations. So if I knew that I had to get something done, or if I knew I was gonna be in a couple of back to back meetings, I might the night before or that morning set up some activities for them that I just kind of leave out and they're just [00:17:00] invitations to play and.

It might be something simple like having some vinegar and baking so and stuff out on the porch where they can get into or setting up the sprinkler for a little while, or, setting out some art supplies or something that they're not usually, just have available and just having those invitations for play.

That they can explore and they can kind of find on their own to give them ideas to help them as they're navigating that and navigating more and more the ability to figure out how to cure their own boredom. Knowing that boredom in itself is a good thing. When they're bored, it forces them to come up with other activities.

It forces them into a state of creativity. If you can wait out the boredom and know that you are not supposed to be the sole entertainment for your children. And just kind of waiting out that, especially when they get done with school, like having a little bit of space and those first few weeks of not creating a lot of [00:18:00] activity and not creating a lot of things that are going on so that they have that opportunity to be bored and then to be able to find something to do.

That's where they really build those creativity muscles. Another option would be to swap play dates or coworker at a friend's house. If you have friends that are also are working from home, being able to get it together with them or to be able to swap back and forth. It might just be because I came from a big family, but it is always I.

Almost always easier for me if I have more children than if I have just mine. They just seem to get along better. They have more things to do. There's more activity going on, and they will often just go and be much more content if they're just playing with friends. Being able to have that if you have friends that you can swap back and forth so that you can be the one that's kind of the on-call house where you can get stuff done, but they're just kind of playing, interacting.

Or if you really need to be the focus, like I [00:19:00] have these, I just really need to not be interrupted at all. Can you take the kids for a few hours and having that swap back and forth if that's, if that's available to you, that's a really great way to be able to, manage with more kids too. Look at screen time in a way that aligns with your family values.

This one is tough because everybody has individual. Ideas of what screen time means to them. They have their own values and what they deem acceptable in screen time. So I would never want to tell someone else how to do their own screen time. But just looking at it and thinking about like, what are my intentions for this?

What is feasible and then what actually is providing more ease in my life? So for us, we don't have strict limits on screen time, but also. They know the intention that we're not gonna be on screens all day. And a lot of days we aren't on screens at all just because we're doing other things. But it also can be really helpful [00:20:00] if you do just need to get it done and letting go of the guilt for that.

So screens in the morning is a no-go for us, just because I've noticed that their moods are not great after that. and it kinda makes the rest of the day harder, but. If it's the afternoon, if it's something going on and I just wanna get something done, or if they have friends that they want to be able to play with totally fine.

And not having those strict limits on it. If you don't have your own strict limits that are just set, then it can, you can, have a little bit more issues of constant check-ins for it or wanting it more. so you're really gonna have to look at what works for you, what works for your kids, but just.

Having a game plan going into summer, I think is so much easier than trying to adjust and implement rules later or doing things haphazardly and your kids not really having any idea on what it might be for that time,

and just looking at little [00:21:00] opportunities when things do get chaotic, when things inevitably are just stressful. How can you take some one minute resets, step outside, breathe, stretch. Ask yourself like, what's one small thing that I can do today that'll bring more ease? What's something that I can do today that'll bring more fun to our day?

Really reclaim the joy in design your own summer feeling. So clarity creates capacity, and all of this comes from slowing down enough to ask, how do I wanna feel this summer? Go into it with intention. Do I wanna feel joyful, spacious, lights grounded. One of the journaling prompts that I love to use with my clients that I use for myself is that wouldn't it be nice?

So wouldn't it be nice if [00:22:00] I was able to go to the beach with the kids? Wouldn't it be nice if I had a block in the morning that I could just be able to focus before they got up? Wouldn't it be nice and just kind of journal and see what comes up for you? Thinking about little things, big things of wouldn't it be nice.

See what is, when you go through that, it can be surprising sometimes to identify what your intentions are and what actually would feel really great for you, and that is a really good guide that you can use when planning your summer. And make a summer bucket list. Include the kids in your planning, but also don't forget about you.

What do you want from the summer? I love to take the time to do this for each of the seasons and just say like, if I looked back at the end of the season, I look back and the kids are going back to school. What are the things that I really wish that we would've done, what are the things that I would look back on [00:23:00] with fondness on those memories?

And it doesn't have to be big. It can be something simple like reading a book in the hammock or heading to the pool with friends, or going out on a couple of solo hikes or doing that yoga class that I've been wanting to even making lemonade in the backyard. Looking at the season as a reframe of you're not just surviving summer, you are shaping the memories your kids are gonna take with you.

And I know that that can feel like pressure, but what if you look at it in a way that makes it look like opportunity and look like a abundance? And you get to matter in those memories too. It is not just about creating all of these magical moments for our kids for summer. It's what is going to fill me up, what is going to help make this summer joyful for me [00:24:00] as well.

What's going to make this feel easy and light? Because a summer packed full of activities where you are just burned out and just pushing through is not gonna have the kind of impact that slightness and ease and you feeling really good. We'll have on just the everyday activities in summer as well. So if you're looking at the summer calendar with a little bit of dread, I want you to know that you're not alone and you're not behind, and you don't need to entertain your kids every minute or keep your house perfectly clean.

Create so much pressure on creating these magical moments to create a meaningful, joyful summer. And message me and Tell me what's on your bucket list, and if you need more support in aligning your business, your home, [00:25:00] and your energy with this season or any other season of life.

I'm here. Let's chat.

Thank you for tuning in to clear and on purpose. If you're ready to take intentional steps toward a more fulfilling life and wanna customize the approach, I'd love to work with you. Visit www.christinaslayback.com to schedule a free consultation or explore current offers designed to help you gain clarity.

And reclaim your energy. And don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with a friend if you found it helpful. It helps others find the show and grow our community.