Summer brings a shift in pace for families with children. Learn how to use this season to explore identity, deepen connections and create opportunities for growth with your adopted child.
Summer offers a change of rhythm — longer days, less structure and more chances to spend quality time together. This slower pace isn’t just a break from school. It’s an opportunity to foster emotional growth in intentional ways. And for adoptive families, it can bring even more opportunities to connect with each other and explore identity.
Summer Can Bring Challenges
While summer holds great potential, it’s helpful to recognize that some children may struggle with changes in routine. Transitions, gaps in structure or the sensory stimulation of camps and travel can bring dysregulation, especially for kids who experience ADHD or difficulties with executive functioning. These moments don’t have to define the season, and being aware of them allows families to respond with patience, flexibility and support.
Summer Can Bring Opportunities
With fewer time constraints, summer can invite meaningful conversations and experiences that don’t always fit into the school year. There’s more space for play, presence and unhurried time together. Kids benefit from slowing down, and so do parents. The season invites a kind of everyday connection that can be hard to find during busier months.
For adoptive families, this shift in rhythm can open the door to deeper moments of bonding and conversations about identity. It may also provide opportunities for visiting birth family members or countries of origin to explore identity further. Summer can also strengthen attachment through consistent time together and shared experiences.
Tips for a Meaningful Summer
Explore practical tips for how to make the most of your summer as an adoptive family!
- Create a schedule together. Kids, just like adults, like to know what’s going on every day. Creating a schedule, and involving your kids in the process, can provide helpful structure. This is also a great time for children to learn how to use a schedule. For younger children, you can use a picture schedule.
- Balance activity with downtime. Children can benefit from doing activities such as camps and trips. They can provide fun ways to get out of their comfort zones. But be mindful of too many transitions, which can be difficult for children with regulatory difficulties. And allow decompression time after big events for children to recharge.
- Teach life skills and avoid summer learning loss. Help your child learn executive functioning through play and activities. Cook or grow a garden together. Do a puzzle or build something. Read aloud as a family. Limiting screen time and allowing your child to explore boredom is important to their development.
- Explore your child’s identity. Without the pressures and schedules of school, the time, space and unstructured play can give your child a chance to think and talk about their identity. This is also a time when you can plan family trips to your child’s birth country or birth city, where they can further explore their identity. Additionally, consider using this time to visit with your child’s birth parents or birth siblings, or to make a family tree.
- Work on a lifebook. An adoption lifebook is a special way to document and share your child’s story from the very beginning. They contain information about the child’s life and history before and after adoption. Between homework and busy schedules, it may be hard to remember to update lifebook pages during the school year.
- Use presence to build connection. Spending time together and sharing experiences are great ways to build attachment and deepen your relationships as a family. Explore your child’s interests by going to the zoo or watching their favorite movie together. Take a trip and create memories as a family. Playing together can help strengthen attachment.
Summer doesn’t need to be packed with big plans to be meaningful. With a little intention and flexibility, it can be a time to strengthen family rhythms, nurture identity and enjoy the kind of connection that often gets lost in the rush of the school year.
If you need support, The Cradle is here to help. Our adoption-competent therapists can provide the support you and your family may need to navigate adoption’s challenges so you can better celebrate its many rewards. Fill out our online inquiry form or call us at 847-475-5800 to speak with one of our counselors.
