Summer Time

Few things strike fear and nervousness into my heart like the impending summer break. It has nothing to do with the fact that my kids will be without structure for a few months, or the unbearable heat. It DOES have everything to do with the fact that these three months mean I am without care for my son with disabilities.

And to be clear, I don’t look at school as “daycare” for my son. I’m glad he’s in his PPCD classroom. His teachers are wonderful and push him to try harder and do better every single day. But a significant by-product of that is that five days a week from 8 a.m.-3 p.m., I don’t have to worry about childcare for my son…in a childcare system driven by and built for neurotypical kids.

Around February is when my wife and I started planning for the summer. We explored every possibility, including daycares, time off, and live-in nannies.

We finally settled on the possibility of hiring someone to watch all three of our children at our house. And then came the challenge of finding someone skilled enough to handle a child with disabilities, and someone who understood that changing a 4-year old’s diaper is perfectly normal to us…and needed to be normal for them.

I’ve written before about how difficult it is to find childcare for kids with disabilities, and man, that difficulty factor is multiplied by a factor of ten when it comes to the summer. The other kicker is to find someone to care for my son, who’s not just going to plop him in front of an episode of Paw Patrol or something but will engage him intellectually and physically.

Care for my other two kids is easy. There are enough day camps and Vacation Bible schools to make the summertime easy to plan (both time-wise and financially) but few of those things are built for kids with disabilities! It’s so dadgum frustrating.

So, advice for any of you with kids young enough to where you don’t have to worry about this right now:

1. START EARLY! Have plans in place by March so that you can both move into the summertime with confidence and have plenty of time to plan just in case things fall through.
2. Care.com www.care.com is an excellent web page to help you find qualified caregivers at a variety of rates.
3. Use resources like this one to seek out summer camps for kids with disabilities---they do exist.
4. Above all—don’t panic! You’ll get this figured out

I let out a huge sigh of relief the day that we figured out what we were doing this summer regarding childcare. Then I took a step back and immediately started thinking about next year.

It’s never too early to start planning.

Find services, groups and events near you that can help through those summer months.