There is a pressure that arrives with summer and nobody ever quite says it out loud, this expectation that because the sun is out and the children are here and you have all of this time, every single day should be something, an adventure, a destination, a memory worth keeping, as though summer carries a higher bar than any other season and a slow Wednesday in July is somehow a wasted one, as though staying home means you have not tried hard enough.
And for childminders, this pressure is doubled.
You are running a business, you are responsible for other people’s children, you feel the weight of making it good and making it count and giving families something worth paying for, and on top of all of that you are a person, with your own energy levels and your own needs and your own version of tired that has been quietly building since September.
Seven weeks is a long time if you go in trying to sprint the whole thing.
Here is what I want you to know before you hit the wall.
The slow day is not a failed day.
In 2022 I spent most of the summer in my garden, not by choice as it turned out, but I am glad it happened anyway because I learned something that summer that I have not forgotten since. I had begun to feel unwell in a way I could not quite name, dizzy and uncertain on my feet in a way that had no obvious cause and no obvious solution, and I could not go anywhere, the world had shrunk to the garden and the garden was going to have to be enough.
So I put the gazebo up for shade, I dragged out the paddling pool, I filled a sandpit and found the water toys and I told the children that this was where we would be for the summer, right here, and that was that, no magical adventures, no days out with long walks and interesting things, just the garden and the food and each other.
Those children were happy, and not politely happy or making the best of it happy but genuinely, thoroughly, contentedly happy in a way that I was not expecting and that I have thought about many times since, because the paddling pool was everything to them and the sandpit was endlessly interesting and they found things in that garden I had never noticed and made things I could not have planned, and they had two of the finest weeks I can remember while I was sitting in a garden chair feeling frightened and holding it all together on the outside and quietly falling apart inside.
The children did not need the destination, as it turned out. They needed the time. They needed the unhurried version of me, the one that sat in the garden and watched them find things rather than rushing them onto the next thing, and that is something I come back to every summer now when I feel the pressure building to make the day something more than it is.
Your nervous system is working hard even when you cannot see it.
Childminding through the summer without a routine is genuinely harder than term time, even when it looks easier from the outside, because the structure is gone and the children are different and everything requires more energy to manage because nothing is automatic anymore, and your body feels all of that even when your mind is telling you to push through and just get on with it.
There are small things that help, things that take seconds rather than the hour of self care you do not have time for, and they are worth knowing about because they actually work even when they sound too simple.
One slow breath out, longer than the breath in, is enough to begin to activate your vagus nerve, which is your body’s own emergency brake, and you do not need to leave the room or explain yourself to anyone or do anything other than breathe out slowly, which you can do while a child is asking you something and nobody will even notice. Humming while you do the dishes works in a similar way because the vibration it creates in your throat activates the same nerve through a completely different route, and I know that sounds like something you would roll your eyes at but it genuinely, actually works. Cool water on the inside of your wrists or the back of your neck is worth remembering too, particularly in the heat, because physical warmth dysregulates us in ways we often do not notice until we are already in the thick of it and this brings you back faster than almost anything else.
And then there are glimmers, which are the small moments of joy and safety that your nervous system genuinely responds to, the cold tap running over your wrists while you wash up, the moment after the children are settled and there is briefly nothing you need to do, bare feet on grass, a cup of tea that is still hot when you drink it, and looking for these things deliberately during the summer is not a fluffy idea, it is actually how your nervous system recovers between the harder moments, so it is worth paying attention to them rather than rushing past.
You are allowed to use the summer permission slip.
You have full permission this summer to let the children watch something while you drink a hot cup of tea in peace, to call an afternoon in the paddling pool outdoor water play and mean it entirely, to say no to the trip that sounds exhausting and yes to staying home instead, to eat the ice lolly you bought for the children because you bought them and you count, and to feel proud of yourself, quietly, for how much you do every single day without anyone particularly noticing or acknowledging it.
Not every day can be an adventure, and some days the sun is out and everyone is tired and the most you can manage is a blanket on the grass and something cold to drink, and some days the garden is genuinely all you have, and on those days the garden is enough, it really is, because simple and present is its own kind of magic and the messy unplanned nothing-to-photograph kind of day is often the one the children remember longest and the one that leaves you with something still in the tank at the end of it.
What actually prevents burnout is not doing less. It is noticing more.
The childminders who come out of the summer feeling restored are not necessarily the ones who planned the least but the ones who were most present in whatever they were doing, the ones who sat on the floor next to the paddling pool instead of standing next to it scrolling, the ones who let the afternoon be what it was rather than what they thought it should be, and there is a real difference between those two things even if from the outside they look exactly the same.
This summer, lower the bar a little, not because you are not capable of clearing it but because clearing it every single day for seve weeks comes at a cost that you will feel in September when you are trying to get everyone back into a routine on three hours of sleep and an empty tank.
You are not just a childminder. You are a person doing a genuinely demanding job and you deserve to take care of yourself the way you take care of them, which is not an indulgence but actually just how you last.
Claire Hassall is the founder of Not Just a Childminder, a magazine, community and resource hub built by a childminder for childminders.
Thank you Claire ,
Reassurance is what we all need , pressures of our job is so high and to know when it’s me time is so precious especially when the little ones are napping . I jot down ideas of places to visit every morning because I’m used to going to groups & we all socialise . But summer holidays are different and I love catching up with children that have left my setting but come back in the school holidays . I ask them what they would like to do it’s always National Trust , then a film in the afternoon. I don’t use my garden as much as I’d like due to babies waking from naps & feeding them time goes too fast . I do feel I’m an octopus with 8 arms . My family say how do u do it , but we just do don’t we . Comes naturally after 30 yrs in the same job . Thank you