Summer: Time to Slow Down

Summer is supposed to feel like space, yet so many families enter the break with the same tight grip they used all school year. I’m Amy Edelstein, and I’m inviting you to consider a different kind of summer for teenagers: less optimization, more presence. When life is overscheduled and overstimulated, the mind loses the room it needs to roam, integrate, and create. When there’s slack in the day, something surprising happens problems quietly solve themselves, imagination returns, and young people get to hear their own inner life again.

Join Amy Edelstein as she unpacks why unstructured time matters for teen development and mental health, and how our adult pace becomes a powerful lesson about what “being grown up” looks like. Instead of chasing the next big activity,  explore small, concrete alternatives: unplanned walks, noticing overlooked corners of your neighborhood, sitting by water, and simply spending time together without an agenda. 

Let yourself unwind, and learn to model that for the youth in your life.

Transcript

Welcome And Big Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom, where we explore the future of education and what it means to create learning environments that truly support human flourishing. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein. In each episode, we'll look at how mindful awareness and systems thinking deepen learning and well-being, why inner strength and self-regulation are essential skills for young people navigating our fast-changing world. And how do we thoughtfully integrate synthetic intelligence without devaluing the heart of our humanity? For educators, leaders, and anyone shaping the future of human development, you'll find practical tools and big picture perspectives to increase your wonder and your impact. Let's get started.

Why Summer Matters For Teens

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Hello, welcome to the Conscious Classroom Podcast. My name is Amy Edelstein, and I'm happy to talk to you today about summer. School's out pretty much everywhere at this point, and for most teenagers, that means summer activities or summer jobs. For many parents, what it means is trying to help your teen figure out what to do and how to occupy their time. Everything here moves slow. It takes longer to get things done. People eat slowly. They don't move slowly, but somehow it seems that the pace of life is the way summer used to feel when I was a child. That the days seemed to stretch forever. And nighttime came late. And the feeling was that we're in this endless happy day of sunshine and freedom. That's what summertime used to mean, at least when I was growing up.

The Case For Unstructured Time

SPEAKER_00 2:45

When we're too structured, when there's too much crammed in to each minute, when we barely sit down to enjoy a meal, when we are racing from one event to the next, there's little room for our minds to just roam free. And when our minds have the opportunity to roam free, it's not that we're thinking about anything in particular, but when they have that space, things percolate, problems get solved, creativity starts to be born. And it can go against the grain because our postmodern life and technological life seems to be running faster and faster. So we're trying to keep up with the pace of machines, which isn't what the human mind is meant to do. Machines are meant to do that, and it's good that we have them, and it's good that we can partner and co-create with them. But the human mind needs space to roam and explore. It's like in the high mountains in the Himalayas, they take the yaks up to the high pastures in the summer, where there's even more space for them to roam. And I think that our minds need that, and especially young minds need that. They need to learn how to, on one hand, entertain themselves without being over-scheduled and overstimulated and over-entertained. And they need unstructured time to be able to find themselves, find each other. Walt Whitman has this beautiful line: I loaf and invite my soul. And that line of intentional loafing, of lying in the grass and inviting one's soul forward is what summertime used to mean before we were over-scheduled and overpressured. It meant time for teens to explore their emerging new forms of relationship and social life, time to explore themselves, time to think about the future, time to think about what life means. If you're in touch with teens, young adults in your life, the best thing you can do during the summer is to have some of this unstructured time together, to spend time not doing anything, to spend time just going for a walk, letting yourself explore new alleyways, dead ends, and little streets that you hadn't looked at, parts of your neighborhood that you walk by without paying attention to, new parks in your city that you haven't visited for a long time, or sections of larger parks that you used to enjoy and you'd forgotten about. You don't need to look for the next big entertainment event, big activity. There's maybe a fountain to sit by and watch the water dripping, watching the people rollerblading or skateboarding. If you find that you're longing for this in your life, then probably those teens in your vicinity have already started to pick up from you that racing after oneself and racing after time is what adulthood looks like, is what growing up or accomplishing is meant to be. And so you really want to make the effort to reverse that.

Learning To Slow Down

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Where I am right now, which is outside of a big city and outside of the states, there were a bunch of older teens gathered to watch the World Cup in a little cafe where the TV was set up, big TV screen was set up outdoors, and everyone was sitting around with the families. These two boys ordered these massive bowls of French fries. And they ate them one at a time. So slowly, just eating, enjoying each one, waiting, and then eating the next. Not racing to be finished and have the next thing. Not in that hamster wheel of constantly consuming. And I found it very unusual to see older teen boys just doing that on their own, with no adults around, nobody telling them to mind their manners. And I really reflected on that quality that we want to bring to our young people.

Meditation As A Way Of Being

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Meditation can really bring that forward. And by meditation, I don't just mean the formal sitting and counting the breath or watching the breath or abiding in open awareness or noticing sensation. I mean that quality of meditation where you sit down and you allow everything to be and you experience the current of meditation so that the meditation is meditating you instead of you doing the meditation. When you can practice like that, especially in the summer, it allows your whole system to unwind from a school year, a work year. It allows your system to gather some slack and to prepare for what's next. And maybe what's next, if you're a teenager, is your senior year and colleges and SATs and applications. Maybe it's career choice and school and employment. Maybe it's who you're going to take to the prom. Those things loom large for our young people. And as the adults surrounding young people, our way of being is guiding them as much as our input, our vocal input. So why don't we take a moment right now to allow ourselves to drop into that space, to rest, to be easy, and to let that old-fashioned feeling of summer. Maybe the summers of our childhood come back. So if you're driving, please wait to practice this. If you're in a space where you can really let go, let's enjoy this guided practice.

Guided Practice To Unwind

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And let's take this as a way of being that we want to embody so that we can impart it to our young people, so that we can be exemplars of what it means to be and not to do, to know that we're enough, to have that sense of wholeness, and from that sense of wholeness and nothing missing, to find incredible creativity and energy and space to explore and evolve, which is the attitude that we want to impart to our young people, that the future is bright, that there are possibilities, and that we as we are are enough. And we're enough because we're here, we're present, we're available. And when we're available for life, we find resources we didn't expect. So allow yourself to come into a comfortable but alert meditation posture, particularly with your spine tall, and letting the field of vision soften. You can close your eyes if you like or not, but release the constant input of the visuals from the field of your attention. We're turning inward. You can allow the breath to be your focus, letting yourself drop into yourself.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

And notice the moment you turn your attention inward, the way that time slows down. The way there isn't anything you need to do to be present.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

If your thought process slows down and you feel openness and spaciousness, you can also be present with that. Whatever's arising in your experience is fine, and none of it needs to be an obstacle to being present. Notice what happens in your experience as you become present to it, as you tend to it, as you accompany it. Notice how your effort to be with your experience makes you a p makes you aware that your experience is already present with you.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

If you'd like.

What We Model For Young People

SPEAKER_00 22:00

They're doing their thing. Things are flourishing on their own. And allow that sense of being planted, being rooted, and flourishing to be the message that you transmit to young people this summer. That your ability to be present with their difficulties and their successes will give them the message and the skills that they need to be present for themselves when you're no longer in their immediate sphere, as they move on to young adulthood and full adulthood as the relationship shifts. So this summer take all the advice of the slow movement. Thinking slow, eating slow, moving slow. Take all of that to heart so that you can be fully present and fully with your own life as it unfolds. And as a mentor, a relative, a teacher, or just a concerned adult really wanting the best path forward for our young people. Let that path forward be informed by this wholeness that we discover when we're not leaning forward off balance, when we're allowing ourselves to tend fully to our experience, to be present fully to our experience. And in that, being present fully to those around us and transmitting the message that it's good to be awake and alive. It's good to be present and alive. It's good to be mindful and awake to our experience as it is. So I wish you a great summer, a great meditation, and a great time with all the young people in your lives. And I look forward to exploring next time. Till then, stay well.

Closing Thoughts And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Thanks for joining me on the Conscious Classroom. If this resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really helps other people like you find the show. And thank you so much for caring about the inner lives of young people and the future of education. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein, and I look forward to seeing you next time.