79: 5 Simple Rhythms to Save Summer & Your Sanity

Summer can feel like the best kind of slow and the most exhausting kind of loud at the exact same time. Longer days, bored kids, extra meals, constant interruptions, and the quiet pressure to “make it magical” can leave you overstimulated and behind before lunch. We want something better than survival mode, so we’re sharing a practical way to build a summer routine that supports peace, flexibility, and real rest for the whole family.

We ground the conversation in God’s design for rhythms and seasons, then walk through mindset shifts that change everything: letting go of perfection, reframing chaos as a flexible season, and moving from “I have to entertain” to “I get to enjoy and disciple my children.” From there, we lay out five simple summer rhythms you can adapt right away: a morning anchor around breakfast and devotions, a three-part day flow that gives structure without rigidity, weekly theme days that reduce decision fatigue, a daily quiet time reset that protects everyone’s nervous system, and a light chore system tied to meal times so kids learn to contribute.

We also talk about screen time boundaries, including how to make screens a tool rather than a crutch, plus ideas for simple delights that create meaningful family memories without overplanning. If you’re looking for a summer schedule for kids, Christian parenting encouragement, and realistic routines for overwhelmed moms, press play and take what fits your season. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs calmer days, and leave a review with the rhythm you’re trying first.

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Transcript

Summer Feels Slower And Louder

Leanne Tuggle 0:00

Whether you homeschool or you send your kids to school, there is something about summer that just brings a different rhythm. And it's not necessarily bad. It's just different. The days are longer, there is more downtime, the pace is slower. I mean, honestly, all of those things sound kind of amazing, right? And yet, with all of these delightful summertime perks comes less desirable things like unstructured days that can feel long and chaotic. Bored kids who are convinced that there is nothing to do. Then there's the constant noise and interruptions and the pressure to make it magical since you only have X number of summers left with your kids. And then that precarious balance of getting things done around the house while still soaking up all the adventure and the excitement of summertime. There's more mess, more meals, and more management. It's enough to make any normal woman feel a little bit crazy, right? There is the overwhelmed mom, and then there is the overwhelmed, overstimulated, and over-it-all summer edition of Mom. What if there was a way that you could embrace this summer with excellence and actually get to the end of the season feeling refreshed and rested and completely at ease? Is that something you'd want to know more about? Summer does not have to be something that we just survive. It can absolutely be a season in which we thrive. First,

God Designed Rhythms And Rest

Leanne Tuggle 1:46

I think it is important to note that God designed life with rhythms. You can look at Genesis 1, specifically verse 14, where God says, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. God created the world with order and rhythm. He made day and night work and rest. He put seasons together with purpose and intention. Just because it's summer doesn't mean that we have to abandon our rhythms and routines. But we might need to make adjustments to accommodate for the change of pace that summer does bring. Psalm 127, 1 and 2 says this unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. Let's allow the Lord to guide us as we create a rhythm and a routine for summer that allows space for creativity and boredom for adventure and rest. Start first by ensuring that you have the right mindset going into the summer months. Remove any pressure to make it perfect and magical, and instead decide to facilitate a summer that is purposeful and intentional. So there's three possible mindset shifts that you may need to make. One shift might be going from I have to entertain my kids to I get to disciple and enjoy my children. Another might be going from everything is chaotic and out of control to this is a slower and flexible season. And lastly, you might be feeling I'm behind on everything. And you can shift this to I'm

Three Mindset Shifts For Moms

Leanne Tuggle 4:05

right where God has me. With these mindset shifts in mind, I'd love to share some simple summer rhythms that I have found to be particularly helpful for my family over the years. These systems provide freedom, and they are not intended to be rigid or strict. I know I've said this before, but it is much easier to throw a plan out because you don't need it than to try to make one up on the spot. So with those things in mind, I want to share five summer rhythms that I have adapted and used over the last several years and have found to be particularly helpful to have some sort of a flow to the summer months. So the first rhythm that I want to share with you is what I call the morning anchor rhythm. This rhythm honestly just creates stability in an otherwise very flexible day. The consistency of starting every day at the same time, or just starting it the same, will provide just the right amount of security and structure that everyone is really secretly craving. I like to anchor the morning rhythm around breakfast time because everyone has to eat. And we also do our morning devotions at this time around the breakfast table. Now, to be a little bit

The Morning Anchor Routine

Leanne Tuggle 5:35

more specific, I recommend for you personally to get up a little bit before your kids so that you can spend some time with the Lord. For your kids, I recommend giving them a few tasks to accomplish before gathering together for breakfast. Since my boys wake up early, they have to get dressed and make their beds and then find something, something to play with until it is breakfast time. Now, my daughter, who's a preteen, will likely roll out of bed at like 7:59 for an eight o'clock breakfast. So she will complete her morning tasks just after eating breakfast. The bottom line is that this is how we start our day, every morning, all summer long. The next summer rhythm that I want to share with you is what I like to call the three-part day flow. Morning, afternoon, and evening. I find it's a little bit easier to structure your day when you can chunk it into parts. Mornings are for productivity, things like chores, work, errands. More specifically, my kids spend about an hour doing a few pages in their summer workbooks and also reading. While that gives me an hour to get any work done that I may need to do. We then might turn

A Three-Part Day Flow

Leanne Tuggle 7:00

on some fun music and do some chores that need to be done for the day, or I might even take one kid with me and run some errands. But all of that happens in the morning. After lunch, my kids get one hour of rest or quiet time. And then after this rest time, usually around two o'clock, we'll go on an adventure. And these adventures can be simple like going to the park or the library, or they can be a little bit more elaborate. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. So that at the lunchtime and just after is the second chunk of your day. And then the third part of your day is in the evening, where we shift our focus to connecting together as a family. So the kids might play in the backyard while I'm making dinner. We might play a board game together. And we always love to wrap up our day with a read-aloud time after dinner. This summer we are reading the Green Ember series as well as Tales of Magic series. So we're reading those two book series this summer. The main point of this rhythm is not to plan out every hour of the day, but to kind of give the day a bit of shape or structure. It also helps to simplify expectations. A third summer rhythm that I really love is weekly theme days. And now honestly, I think I love this because it removes a lot of the decision fatigue that I think affects moms the most. And it gives my kids something to look forward to. So I hear a lot less of the mom, what are we doing today when I use this rhythm? So here's an example of what I mean. And please keep in mind that this is just a sample for you. You can do literally anything to make your days fun. And I'm just creating a theme for each day of the week. So here's an example. On Monday, and I love alliteration, so we like to call it Make It Monday or Mail It Monday or Mark It Monday.

Weekly Theme Days Reduce Decisions

Leanne Tuggle 9:05

So this day is sort of a reset after the weekend. Usually on the weekends in the summer, we do more family adventures. So we can include my husband and we might do something that is a little further away or takes a lot more time. And so being able to kind of be home and reset on Monday is really appreciated. But it's also a great opportunity for my kids to make something. Maybe they're creating something new with Legos or Magna Tels or whatever else they're really into. My daughter loves to keep in touch with her friends since we move all over the place. So she likes to call it Mail It Monday and she likes to write a letter to her friends each Monday. And then since our farmers market is on Mondays, we also like to go to the market in the afternoon as a part of our little adventure time on Mondays. So then on Tuesday, Tuesdays for our family is our adventure day. So this is the day where we might do something a little bit bigger, like go to the zoo or maybe hike in a new place. Maybe we even go to a theme park or we plan play dates with friends or something. So Tuesdays are our bigger adventure day. And we might actually be gone all day, like right after our morning time, and then be gone until the evening. But we're only doing this once a week. So for planning purposes, you know, and for cost benefit analysis there too. We're just doing one big adventure each week, and we do that on Tuesdays. And then on Wednesday, I like to call this work it Wednesday, or implementing new this year is calling it Water Wednesday. So this is a day that I like to spend teaching my kids some sort of age-appropriate life skill. So I have kind of this list of things that are good for eight-year-olds to be able to do or 11-year-olds, and I teach them a new skill. And then, or in addition to, we can do something with water, like a slip inside or put the sprinkler on, maybe a squirt gun fight, whatever it may be, something fun that we're doing with water. So we do the work and then we play. That's kind of the skill I'm teaching them. Thursdays. Thursdays are another sort of reset day. And I also, it's a creative day. So this is a day that I like to set aside for crafts, for baking, or maybe just a day to be home and embrace boredom. I think it's really good to have a balance of going out and adventuring and then being home and just relaxing. I think both are really important in the summer. I like to set out random supplies, like maybe some paper towel rolls and some pom-poms, and then I just see what they come up with. I'll just make a little pile somewhere and it's amazing the kind of things that they'll come up with. And I think that that's really good for their creativity. And then on Friday, since I've talked a lot too about how we love to go to the forest, we have a forest area near us. So Fridays I like to call forest day or even friend day. So this is a day that we go to the forest or we play outside with our friends. So you might meet up with another family at a park and just spend the day outside as much as you possibly can. We might arrange play dates with different friends throughout the summer. So like every Friday, we have different friends to hang out with, or we might just get together with the same family every week and just enjoy that time together. So these are just some of the ideas to help get you started on thinking about theme days and think about what makes the most sense for you and for your family. And really the main idea with this is not that you need more ideas, but that you need fewer decisions. If you already have these things kind of set up ahead of time, it really takes the pressure off of you to come up with new things every week. Now, let's talk about probably my favorite summertime rhythm, which is the quiet time rhythm that I mentioned earlier. So this is a non-negotiable. The only time that this might not happen is if we are on a family vacation or if our once-a-week adventure is an all-day thing. Like if we're gonna go to a theme park or the zoo, we might not actually have rest time that day. But other than that, we will have a quiet time every day. This is for survival and sanctification. Even Jesus withdrew to quiet places to pray, as it says in Luke 5.16. So, like I mentioned earlier, we like to call this room time reset. And it is for one

Daily Quiet Time Reset

Leanne Tuggle 13:40

hour. My kids use this time to listen to audiobooks. They might play independently or color or draw, but it's it's just quiet time for them to be in each of their own spaces. Everyone honestly looks forward to this time. I have found it to be especially helpful on days when we've had maybe a hard morning and there's been big feelings or hurt feelings. This is this time when everyone can kind of have a little break from each other. We're having a lot of time together, maybe more than what we're used to. So being able to have a little bit of alone time helps to process and sort through some of those feelings. And then when we come back together later, we can kind of have a fresh start. This is also a protection for me. And it would be for you. You need time to reset as well. There needs to be some room for margin in your day. And this one hour is just the thing you need so that you can be refreshed and ready to jump back in with your kids for the remainder of the day. And for me personally, I like to have a cup of tea and a good book and just be still for an hour and enjoy that time so that I can jump back in with all the fun in the afternoon and evening. And then the last rhythm I want to share with you is the simple chore system or rhythm. Summertime often means that there is more mess. It's just kind of a given. But this doesn't mean that you have to be the one cleaning up all these messes. So I like to attach chores to each of the three parts of the day, that three-part day flow that I mentioned before. I attach chores to each of those segments. Or even easier, the chores are connected to the meal times. So there's chores around breakfast time, chores around lunchtime, and chores around dinner time. So for example, beds are made before or right after breakfast. Before lunch, we do a 15-minute cleanup of toys or projects or workbooks. So turn on the timer for 15 minutes

Chores Tied To Meal Times

Leanne Tuggle 15:45

and everyone kind of cleans up. And then before dinner, we do another group cleanup time to reset our home for the evening. I find it really helpful to assign specific tasks to each child or specific rooms in the house to each child. That way we can all work together to clean up the mess. And then it gives everyone an opportunity to be a contributor in the family and not just a consumer. Like I'm not here to just be everyone's servant and clean up after them. If you want to build the fort in the living room with all of the pillows, that's great. I love the creativity, but also we're all going to work together to put it back before the evening. When it comes to embracing excellence in the summer months, the best thing that you can do is to let go of your unrealistic expectations. You are not going to have the perfect house. You will not find the perfect schedule. And not all the experiences that you share together will be perfect or even memory-making moments. What you can do is choose to connect with your family instead of try to control. You can decide to be faithful with the small things. And then trust what Galatians 6, 9 says. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So this summer, look for ways to build

Let Go Of Perfect Summer

Leanne Tuggle 17:15

in delight without overcomplicating things. The best summer days are often the most ordinary. So make memories with popsicles on the porch or backyard picnics, evening walks around the neighborhood. And don't be afraid to let your kids be bored. Some of the best, most creative ideas are born from boredom. Before I wrap up this episode, I do want to make one note on screens. There is nothing wrong with giving your kids some screen time in the summer. I don't personally think there is anything inherently wrong with that. However, be cautious. Let screen time be a tool and not a crutch. Perhaps screen time is a reward for chores completed with diligence and without complaining. In our home, my kids can earn marbles for various different things, like if they read a whole book or maybe they go above and beyond with their responsibilities. And then they can spend a marble on screen time. And one marble equals 15 minutes, and they're only allowed to spend two a day on screen time. So be strategic about when you allow

Screen Time Without The Spiral

Leanne Tuggle 18:35

screen time. And if you see it starting to become a problem, take it away. Take it away for a whole week or more if needed. Let it be sort of a detox time. Our family also really looks forward to our Friday night movie nights. And you could incorporate something like this into your family summer rhythm too. Maybe you keep it even, set it up outside. Like if you have a projector and you could do an outdoor viewing option, I think that would be really, really fun and special. The best summer is possible. And not because it is perfect or Pinterest worthy, but because you choose to see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to disciple your children, to cultivate joy, and to live with intention. Invite God into the chaos. Let Him help you sort out the crazy and create a summer rhythm that works for you and for your family. And above all else, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. First Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18. As you step into this summer, I want to leave you with a simple question to ponder. What would it look like for you to receive this summer as a gift instead of a burden? Or what really matters most this summer? And a scripture for you to savor this week. Psalm 90, verse 12. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.