The Summer Your Kid Gets More Room To Be Themselves

Summer has always been the season of more room.

More time. More flexibility. Less structure. And for teenagers and young adults, more opportunities to inhabit themselves a little more fully than the school year allows.

That can feel like a gift. It can also feel like a lot.

I want to talk about two things today that are more connected than they might seem. Screen time and socializing, AND clothing, experimentation, and the freedom to try things on. Literally and figuratively.

Underneath both is the same question. What kind of space are you creating for your kid this summer? And are they actually free to inhabit and explore it?

On screens and socializing

Each of my four kids had a completely different relationship with screens and online socializing, and I want to be honest with you. This is one of my least favorite topics. Not because it isn’t important. Because it is hard and there are no clean answers and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What I can tell you is what I’ve learned from four very different kids over many years.

For one of my kids, being online was a safety issue. For another, it was isolation. For another, it was depression. For another, it was simply that texting your friends and playing video games together online requires less effort than making a plan and actually showing up in person. Same behavior. Four completely different reasons underneath it.

The rules we tried to enforce early on didn’t work. Not because rules are wrong, but because blanket rules don’t account for the why underneath the behavior. The shift that made all the difference for us was moving from “you should” to “help me understand.” From time limits to actual conversation. From consequences to curiosity.

When you get curious about why your kid is online instead of running around outside, you learn something. Sometimes what you learn is that they are struggling in a way you didn’t know about. Sometimes you learn that their online friendships are real and meaningful, not a substitute for connection but an expression of it. Sometimes you learn that they genuinely just don’t want to make plans, and that is, in fact, fine.

Ask the why. Then actually listen to their answer.

On trying things on

Connor came home one summer with dyed hair, a curiosity about makeup, shoes, and accessories, and a whole new relationship with who he was becoming. He had discovered RuPaul’s Drag Race. He had discovered a community. And somewhere in all of that, he had discovered more of himself.

He was seventeen.

I will tell you that from the outside, Steve and I probably looked pretty gracious about it. We were the duck. Calm on the surface. Paddling for our lives underneath. Here was our kid, sporty and pretty conventional in his presentation two years earlier, now walking in the door as someone we were still learning to see clearly. We loved him completely, AND we also had a lot of unlearning to do in a very short amount of time.

Remaining as the status quo risked losing him. Not dramatically. Just incrementally. The slow drift that happens when a kid stops bringing themselves home because home doesn’t feel safe enough to hold all of who they are.

That early work changed everything. And, it is why, years later, I can sit with my kids at a table in France and watch them be fully, completely themselves without any part of me needing them to be different.

So if your kid wants to try a new style this summer, whether it is dyeing their hair, ordering a binder, or wearing something to the beach that isn’t what you expected, I want to ask you, gently and directly, to get curious about your own discomfort before you react to their choice.

Not because your discomfort is wrong. It isn’t. Old programming is stubborn, and the feelings that come up are real. But your discomfort is yours to examine. It is not your kid’s problem to manage.

And then ask yourself what is actually underneath it. What you were taught. What you assumed. What you are afraid of. Get curious about that, honestly and without self-judgment, and see what you find.

Curiosity toward your kid. Curiosity toward yourself. Both directions. Same practice.

That is what creates the room. And room is what your kid needs most this summer.

Keep becoming more human and more kind.