Summer Series with Ashley Morck: Balancing Play, Rest, Growth, and Connection

Dr. Matt Bitsko welcomes back Ashley Morck to kick off the first episode of our Summer Series! Throughout the series, we’ll explore how to make the most of summer vacations, camps, and activities while navigating the seasonal transition with our kiddos in a way that feels smooth and manageable. In this episode, Ashley shares tips and activities to create a meaningful summer for your family and encourages parents to embrace a rhythm that works for them — balancing play, rest, growth, and connection without the pressure of perfection. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Summit Emotional Health Podcast. I'm Dr. Matt Bitsko, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder and CEO of Summit Emotional Health. We are excited to launch a new summer series where we will meet with a variety of our child and family clinicians to explore how to make the most of the upcoming summer vacations and successfully navigate this seasonal transition with ease. Our focus will be on helping families take advantage of the many opportunities summer provides for engaging with our children. The main theme for these episodes will be on how to play, rest, grow, and connect with our children. These approaches and techniques will focus on preschoolers through elementary school. However, some of the approaches can be adjusted for middle schoolers as well. I'd like to thank our wonderful clinicians for sharing their time and insights on these very important topics. This series will feature Dr. Brynn Moore, Dr. Megan Lawson, Teresa Vosson, and Ashley Mork. So without any further delay, please enjoy this episode of the Summit Emotional Health Podcast. Hi, Ashley, and thank you for being here today. We're excited to talk about our summer series that we're putting together for parents and families of certainly preschoolers and elementary age kids, but certainly this can be adapted and worked through with some middle school stuff. So our main strategy today is going to be play, rest, grow, and connect, especially with the transition from the school year into the summer period. So why don't we slow down, you tell us a little bit, remind us who you are and what you do here at Summit, and then roll us through your topic for today.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Sounds great. Thanks for having me. My name is Ashley Mork. I'm here at Summit as a professional educational therapist through the Association of Educational Therapists as well as a certified structured literacy and dyslexia interventionist. And so I work with children primarily from the JK through sixth grade age range, give or take. I work with parents and children as well on executive functioning. And then I also provide literacy intervention. I work with children that may or may not have a diagnosis or gone through the testing process, or they just need a little bit of extra support and have not yet gone through that or why they're waiting to go through that.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Okay. So you are one of several great young child providers here at Summit, right? I'm a little bit proud of that. But when we were talking about, hey, what is the best content now that's timely? Can you even just slow down and just explain to the listener why you guys thought this overall approach would be helpful before we dive into your specific stuff?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Sure. So as we were thinking about summer and how it's coming right around the corner, we feel like there's a lot of pressure to have a specific type of summer. Either a very scheduled summer full of camps and activities, maybe continuing sports or doing new sports and trips, or a very laid-back summer without any sort of schedule and just kind of relaxing. And a lot of times these ideas are pitted against each other as if one is better than the other. And we really want to explain how one is not better than the other and you can achieve balance. And also it really just depends on the structure of your family and your child's personality and the dynamics and what's available and what really works best for you. So truly, the best summer is the one that works best for your child and your family. And so within that idea, we think that we would really like to provide some strategies to balance play, rest, growth, and connection. Um, and our hope is not to say that you need to use these strategies all of the time, um, just to adapt the ones that work well for your family when they may work well for your family.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, and it kind of hits the family, whoever's listening to this, whoever, whatever parents listening to this, they're in their own life cycle. Right? They're they're probably thinking back to last summer when they have one, two, or three kids and what their ages were and what they're gonna do. So they're just looking at for some changes, ways to evolve, ways to fit what the personality and ages and needs of the kids are, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

So walk us through. You have these these three, at least three kind of tenants you're gonna walk us through. I'm excited to hear about. So start us off with your first one there.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Sure. So as I was thinking about which strategies we might want to talk about today, I was trying to think of things that are um easily accessible and that you could adapt to different age groups. Um, so the first thing I was gonna talk about is the library. It's free, they're typically accessible and they're available to different age groups. And you might go with your child, you might have a grandparent or another caregiver go with your child, and it's also open to variety of interest. So oftentimes we will think we're going to the library. Okay, that's pretty simple. We're going to get books, we'll take them, we'll bring them home, or maybe we attend a story time, which is great. And I do think there's a time and place for just going to the library without a plan and just enjoying it. And I think that should happen and is wonderful. Um, today I want to provide some ways that you might also use a visit to the library as well as what to do with those books when you get home that will help build some of those executive functioning skills and early literacy skills. I want to emphasize you don't need to do these every single one of these. They're just some suggestions. So, for example, you might build your child's planning skills by deciding what, how many books are we going to get? What type of books are we looking for? Maybe they make a list or maybe it's just out loud. You might discuss with your child to help with their emotional regulation about what it's going to look like and sound like and feel like to be in the library. We're going to use quiet voices, we're going to walk, um, and the reasons why. You may get a library card and do that with your child and even give it to them to hold in a special place to create that um ownership. Um, they might decide to get a special tote bag just for their library books. They might even want to decorate it, and then a special basket at home. I know so often as a parent, we'll check out, you know, 10 books and we get home and it's great. We love reading, but I don't want to lose these books if we don't own them. So, really teaching how to care for something else that doesn't belong to us and where we can put those things in a specific place and when we're done using them, put them back in that place. You can get into time management by marking on a calendar when they're due. Um, for a younger child, you might have a picture of a book on a specific calendar date and count how many days you have to enjoy those books. You, for an older child, they might manage that themselves. Um, you can model and practice response inhibition as they're browsing the shelves. You know, are we just grabbing every book that has a special cover? Which again, that can be exciting too. Or are we modeling really sort of glancing through the book and deciding, oh, if I can only check out X number, why do I want to choose this? Um, or do I want to save this for next time? The frustration tolerance piece, if there's something on their list or they're really hoping for that's not available, acknowledging that, but maybe we can discover a new interest. Um, some self-advocacy skills, practicing asking the librarian for assistance, not just may I have help, but also what specifically what they need. And that's gonna blend into the classroom later. I'm having difficulty understanding this. Could you help me? Oh, this is helpful, or I need more help, things like that. So those are skills within the library that you can build upon either just some, all of them, just depending on the day and what works best for your child. And then I also had some suggestions for either in the library or once you get home to effectively have um reading and engagement with your child with the books when you get home. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

So so before we go there, I mean, I'm sitting here as a dad and as a psychologist, and you know, everyone gets through the school year, no matter what your grade was, and everyone is looking for that relief and that change, and even parents are. But I love this because even from a thousand feet, you're encouraging the parents to be thoughtful of all right, what is the what's the frequency of going to the library? What is our intention behind it? How much time are we going to spend then? What are our expectations of behavior? Right. And that might be just 30 minutes the first time. It might be two hours if they like hanging out there. But to think as the psychologist, and you're you're thinking as the mom, and I'm as a parent too, it's like we're choosing to now take it from a very relaxed, the new, relaxed atmosphere and putting them in a little bit more of a structured environment. So it's allowing them to keep that awareness, to keep those kind of social and emotional muscles going throughout the summer. That's that's what I'm hearing from the starting before we get into some of these great details.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Exactly. And you know, there's still time for play. If they want to go play in the play area at the library, that's wonderful. They're still in the library and have a positive association with it, and maybe one day that's all they do there, and that's fine as well. Um, so it's really a balance of it's a restful experience, but you're also growing and you can also play at the same time, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah. So we get these books and they're coming back and take us through some some cool strategies there.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Um, sure. So just before opening the book, really exploring the cover, asking your child, why did you pick this book? What stuck out to you? Making predictions. What do you think it's going to be about? And talking about the back cover and the spine. Um, oh, this is the author. What do you think their job was? Maybe one day you'll be an author. Maybe you already are, depending on their age. Um, oh, this is the illustrator. How do you think they work together? What do you notice about these illustrations? Um, then making connections and predictions as you read. What do you think might happen next? Or even when the book's over. Oh, how would you, what do you think might happen next if there's a sequel? Or how would you change the ending? Um, making connections to themselves about the character feelings, um, taking on different character perspectives, also making connections between different texts, even if it's a completely different series and by a different author, comparing the characters, how they might be similar or different, or the events um in the book, and then making connections just to the world around them. You can also build phonological awareness skills with the younger ones, pause, you know, let them fill in the rhyme. And don't be afraid to renew the books over and over and read the same book. Some people get worried, you know, if their child, oh, I want them to read 10 different books, but they want to, they pick check out 10 and want to read the same too over and over. And that's okay because they're learning so much each time and building different skills each time. And you can even model that. Oh, that's interesting. You just noticed that. I just noticed that too. I, or I'm looking at it from a different way or a different perspective this time, talking about left to right orientation and how we read a book, or even just how we care for a book, things like that, drawing a picture when they're done, or writing a summary if it's an older child, things like that. I do want to stress, you can also just sit down and just read a book. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You don't need to sit there every single time. But if you're just looking to integrate some of that here and there, those can um be some ways to build skills.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Well, it's really cool because you can read the book and you like we said, your your child's personality, what is their comfort? They might be really comfortable and really excited, they might be really slow to warm on this. It's maybe not something that they're feeling a lot of confidence or sense of mastery. To your point, if over the next month they just want to read one or two, there's a sense of mastery and familiarity that can still be hugely beneficial. And I love those, you know, eight or ten ways to think about you're trying to engage with the kids, you're trying to have them engage with the story, everything from the words in all five senses. So even if the parent just wants to read with them, they can do it. But if the parent's equipped with, hey, I might pull this one out, and then that could turn into like their own habit, like what they start doing with that child reading the book, and then the kid gets more familiar with that.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Exactly, exactly. So the library really just opens up sort of a world of possibilities. And again, it's supposed to be a fun thing. So as long as you are feeling connected and feeling like it's fun, that's really the most important thing. I don't want anyone to feel like they need to do every single strat, use every single strategy, every single visit.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And the kid will certainly play off you and your eagerness. Exactly. All right, time to move on to number two. There's a couple more to go through here.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah. And uh different lens, but similar in the sense that it's accessible to many of us and also free and can be adapted to different ages. Um outdoor play or play at your own house in your own backyard. Again, similarly to the library, where some days you might just want to go and read a book. Some days you're just gonna want to go outside and play. And that is so important and so wonderful. And I think that should happen. With that being said, there's also days where you might want to do some skill building and growth and have a little more structured. And so I want to provide some suggestions. You can work on planning skills, sequencing skills, which can also tie into literacy skills, um, building obstacle courses outside. You might build them, you might build them with your child, or you might have your child build them and then talk about use words like first, next, after that, last. If you think about summarizing, that ties into that. Then from that um metacognitive piece, talking about how what did you do and how would you do it differently next time to get through it faster? Or what was the hardest part of that obstacle course and why? Um, and change it up or shifting. Maybe you just switch two things in the obstacle course. Also doing nature hunts, um, classifying or sorting. So it could be very structured in the sense of we're gonna have a bag and I want you to put in this bag everything that's something that's green in this paper bag, something that's red, and so forth, or something that starts with this sound. Or it can, if you want to get more into cognitive flexibility, it can just, I want you to grab as many things as you can find outside, and then we're going to sort them, but however you want. So, and then talking about how did you sort them? Oh, all these things are soft and all these things are hard. Okay, can you take these same objects and sort them in a completely different way? Or maybe subcategories for your older ones, how many different ways can you do? Yeah. Things like that. And then also you could have your child, whether it's um, again, something more structured like a lemonade stand, or if you want to get a little more creative and have them open up like a rest pretend restaurant using pretend items outside or pretend store. Um, you can have them, if you want to get into the writing piece, make a menu or get into their you know interpersonal skills, have them actually invite neighbors over and sell the pretend things. Or if you want to work on um goal, um achieving goals, you can have them uh select somewhere they want to make a donation and maybe their eliminate stand goes toward that and they have a set goal. And how are they going to achieve it? And making a like a little mini business plan, things like that. Um, so those are just some ways that you can get active in your own backyard, front yard, and sort of build some of those early skills within play.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Yeah. Again, this is gonna depend upon the environment, your neighborhood, how many siblings, how many close friends can they play with. And it goes to your first point. Like there might be times when you're able to be like, let's just go outside. And I know you can be outside and you can be really safe and you can coexist out there. There's times to shift up and be like, hey, what did you find and collect? And how can we let me let me put you on the spot here though? Sure. So that really cool example about let's just collect a bunch of different things and then let's figure out how to sort them and different ways to sort them. So give me like the really nitty-gritty about what kind of skills that's teaching for that job.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Sure. So if you're just saying you get anything you want and you sort it how you want, one, we're gonna build flexibility because let's say they sort it um one specific way, hard and soft, is the example I gave earlier. And you say, that's great. Tell me more about why it's hard and soft. One, you're getting into higher level thinking. But then if you challenge them and say, I want you to sort it a completely different way, they have to shift and look at it from a completely different perspective. Or maybe the reverse, you then take their items and sort it your own way, and they have to look at it from a different lens and guess how you sorted it.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

And maybe they think of multiple ways. So taking different perspectives, things like that. And also just they're going to be learning without even necessarily knowing they're learning as well. And also explaining their thinking is really, really important. They're not just saying it's hard, it's soft, it's pink, it's red. How did you know that? How like how hard is this? Could you break it down even further? What's really soft, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Well, would it need to be for this one to go over here? Yes. If it was out in the rain, if it was right, but the social and emotional learning, the cognitive flexibility, the emotional flexibility.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

As you're walking through that, you know, we all have uh either our own kids or the neighbors who are like, some are very rigid. Like, no, this is how I said to sort it. Yes, I'm not sorting in a different way, and neither are you, by the way. Okay, now we got something to work with. Yes. Or there, or there's different ways as far as if they're really easy and really skillful in doing that, then we're just noticing what comes easily.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Exactly. Exactly. Another one that came to mind is also using items in your backyard in different ways. So let's say you have um a sandbox, for example, building a sand castle, and then trying to pre how many different ways can you protect this, like different moats from or from it getting knocked over, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

And when you said obstacle course earlier, I was like, and you can even put your dogs through it. That's one of the things that we you know, there's all different things. You can take the things that the family has to do and see what their creativity is. Okay, very cool. But I love this because it's it's it's right there a lot of times, unless sometimes the parents need to engage and like walk them along about different ways to look and act and behave within that space. Yes. Right? Because we all just get into ruts as far as how we think about how how how to use a space versus really trying to be creative.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yes. And a lot of times I think we I'm guilty of it too. We think we need stuff. You know, and stuff is great, you know, toys, backyard things, or we think we need to go somewhere. And sometimes you do, but sometimes it's just what's right there, and you really don't need a lot of items.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah.

unknown 19:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Okay. Very cool. What next do you have for us?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

The last thing I was going to talk about are family projects and family activities that can build connection and also growth. So, some suggestions for this. And this is one of those areas where it can work for many different ages depending on what you select within game nights. You could either just have a set night or just randomly here and there a game night. You're going to be building skills like response inhibition while they wait their turn, frustration tolerance if they're, you know, not winning the game, strategies, planning. Um, sometimes you might want to play an open hand of Uno, for example, and you're instead of just putting it down, you're also thinking about other people's hands, planning, prioritizing. Um, you might play matching games, work on working memory a bit, charades to build task initiation skills and flexibility if they're not guessing it, how to show in a different way. So game nights are one way to build that you're playing, you're growing connection, floor puzzles, uh building that flexibility and planning as well, especially those large puzzles that can really get the whole family involved. Another one, a family book club. And so you could have this is going to be probably for when they're a little bit older and can read independently, but you could structure it in different ways and you're all reading the same book and then discussing it. Um, you could even, if you don't think your child would want to do that, you could even do it with neighbors, you know, a neighbor book club of a couple kids their own age and host at different houses and discuss, you know, the characters and things like that. If you do want to encourage reading, but you don't want to do the book club, um, one of my favorite strategies is body doubling. So you can be reading your own book or magazine or whatever it might be near your child. A lot of times, if they just see you doing a similar activity, they're going to do it too. A lot of times when I'm working with children, I will ask them, you know, how would it feel if you were taking a test and everyone was outside or half the class was outside playing, versus how would it feel if everyone was taking that test or at least doing something quiet? And that's sort of how I introduce body doubling. So you can use body doubling um for reading or just any activity you want them, quiet activity you want them to do. And then finally, another suggestion is recipes. I think it really lends itself to build a lot of executive functioning and literacy skills. So making a plan, setting a goal, writing down the list of what they need, making a budget, even, going to the grocery store. You can talk about comparing prices, um, what's on sale, what if you need to um be flexible and substitute an ingredient, sequencing and following steps to make. The it and then reflecting on how it was and what you might do differently next time. That can be another fun family activity that is also building scuffs.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

And if you're making cookies, then you can go back to the lemonade stand in that with a backyard and day two, they can maximize their profits.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

This this really hangs with, you know, I we we're trying to stay within our lane because we're talking about a bunch of different cool things for this age for the summer. So I don't I don't want to bring in the the technology and other things, but in the examples you gave with the family projects, whether it's game nights, whether it's the reading or the body doubling, it's really cool because I could see a household, there's times for structured stuff. And you see which kids love that, which ones don't.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

And then there's almost time as I'm listening to you, there's time for unstructured stuff.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

And it's really cool to see what the kids do, what the family does when it is the downtime, the unstructured time. Yes. And and how they can kind of ebb and flow in that.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Absolutely, absolutely. And sort of realize their own interest within. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Do you have a favorite one that you do in any of these, the library, the backyard, or the family? Do you have any which is kind of a favorite of yours for you and your family?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

I would say family activities, just because it also builds connection as well. And sometimes I'll even take the let my child take the lead on what they want to do rather than having a plan of, oh, we are going to do this, pick a game. What do you want to do? Or even just open-ended, what would you like to do? And letting them pick. Um, and then building skills within that, depending on how things are going and and what they're doing. And you know, I also think it's important within all of these, whether you're at the library or outside or doing a family project, to not get so stuck on completing it that we aren't following the child's lead. So if they, like I said at the library, if one day they are just having a day where they just want to read one book over and over, they want to go play, that might be. Do you want to do that every time? Maybe not, but that's okay because the whole at the end of the day, you're trying to rest, play, grow, and make a connection. Um, same thing. If you start playing a game and you just realize this isn't going well, we're gonna shift. Yeah, that's okay. No one's failed. There's always an opportunity for growth. And you can even talk about that there. We're shifting. Um, this wasn't working. Let's go do something new.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Um, so there's a there's no perfect summer, there's no perfect way to be in these environments. Um, it just needs to be what works for you, your child, and your family.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Well, and that that brings back one of the first things you said is you want them to associate this with a good time, a relaxed time of having fun. They might not know it in the moment, but they're actually building or maintaining their executive functioning skills, their play, all that stuff we've talked about. But you want it to feel a little bit softer than just how some of school has to look. You want you want them to enjoy it. Absolutely. So that's the kind of a number one, whether it's super structured, like you said at the star, really flexible, but that still can be one of the parenting guideposts.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Ashley, thank you so much for being here. It was very, very helpful, and I hope you and your family have a great summer.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

As always, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. We appreciate you being part of the Summit Emotional Health community, and we'll see you next time.