Summer Lovin'

At my job we see our patients every five-six weeks. That means every day when we check people out and make their next appointment we are looking at the calendar five to six weeks ahead. In a way it's like living in constant anticipation of the future (for me anyway-at my last job at a day care center we were so busy and worn out we barely knew what the date was that day, let alone 6 weeks in the future).

Anyway, this week when we schedule out 6 weeks it brings us to the first week of June, which is almost summertime.

Summer! Man. Wasn't it just Christmas?

Inevitably, as we start to schedule our patients during these summer months we are told many times

"Oh, I can't make his/her appointment now. I'll have to call you back after I look at his/her schedule".

Schedule? In the summertime? When I was a kid we didn't have a schedule. Our schedule was to sleep late, and watch too much t.v. and spend the day immersed in some sort of body of water, whether it was the pool in our backyard or the beach where my Mom would takes us several times a week just to get us out of the house to keep us from killing each other.

The families that I work with now regale us with their hectic summer schedules of travelling sports, summer camps and riding lessons. Some of them have several family vacations to schedule around as well. Trips to Hawaii, or France, or cruises to the Caribbean. (Yes, I work in a very affluent area).

In fact, it is harder to schedule our patients in the summertime than it is during the school year. It was the opposite when I was growing up.

One activity we get a lot of grief about parents having to schedule around is Summer School. A lot of our patients (teenagers) require summer school. It seems to me like kids need a lot of extra help when it comes to their education these days. Some of them need it just to pass the grade they are finishing and others take it to give them a little extra edge for their SAT scores, or the upcoming school year. Whatever the reason, we see many of our patients having to attend summer school.

Last year due to budget cuts summer school in several school districts in our area was cancelled. This caused an uproar and a panic for many of our parents, as they tried to find an alternative to help their child with their academic needs.

Most of them that I spoke with went with either a private tutor that came to their home, or a tutoring center.

I didn't do that well in school as a child and I think I would have really benefitted from one of these types of programs, although I'm sure I would have been none too pleased about having to go to "school" in the summertime!

Those of you with school age kids, do you do anything to help give your kids a leg up on the upcoming school year? If so, what is it?



Spring Fling Day 24. I can see the finish line now!