If you are reading this, chances are you are a parent, whether you are a new parent, you’ve been at this for several years, or you are thinking about starting a family in the future, the summer season can really challenge us to balance professional aspirations with family responsibilities.  Summertime can be challenging, especially if you already have anxiety or obsessions or compulsions around your kids. Let’s talk about the summertime struggles managing anxiety with more kid time.

Today I’m sharing:

• My Personal Experience Managing Anxiety With More Kid Time
• The Unique Struggles of Parents with Anxiety
• Confronting the Myth of Constant Entertainment
• Strategies for Managing Parental Anxiety

My Personal Experience Managing Anxiety With More Kid Time

And just so you know while you’re reading this, I am coming at this from both a professional point of view and also a personal point of view. It is summer for me for me right now, and my son is out of school. He just finished kindergarten and now summer changes for all of us. Whether you are working from home or working outside of the home, you end up having to make a lot of decisions about childcare at this point.

For me personally, I work from home. I run my own business. My husband is transitioning out of his current work in office job to work more from home, but it’s still going to be a huge challenge. Although in the past we have relied on childcare, we did opt out of the wraparound care this year. Instead, we’re sending Eli to a couple hours of summer school every day where he gets to learn about Legos and basketball and a bunch of other stuff that he elected to want to do, but it’s only three or four hours a day.

I already know that that’s going to really challenge us to be as productive towards our own goals. We will need to be productive for our own benefit to fill up our cups professionally, continue to make money, while also just taking care of ourselves. We don’t have the previous seven or eight hours that we used to have during the school year. It is going to be challenging, especially if you already have anxiety or obsessions or compulsions around your kids.

The Unique Struggles of Parents with Anxiety

There’s lots of different angles where that anxiety can come in as a parent. It can be especially challenging if you have ever struggled before with being alone with your child. This is really common for people who have OCD and anxiety. It can be really challenging to be alone with your children for even just a couple of minutes. There is that mental back and forth, that mental onslaught, it’s awful. And then of course, you start to feel awful about feeling awful. You start to wonder what is wrong with you? What’s wrong with me that I can’t just be here and be alone with my child? I want you to know that you’re not alone.

Confronting the Myth of Constant Entertainment

I want you guys to know that if you are struggling with that structured downtime, I get it. But, at the end of the day, unstructured downtime is important. It can be just as crucial for your kids’ development as those structured activities.

We get so inundated nowadays with all the things that we need to be doing with our kids. For example, we need to make sure that they’re doing this and getting this many minutes of this type of activity every single day. We never want to let our kids be bored. Our culture often pressures parents to prevent boredom at all costs, but it’s a myth that children need constant entertainment.

It took a lot of time, if I’m being honest with myself about the fact, that I am not always wanting to play with my 2-year-old. Sometimes yes, I need to work because I make the majority of the money for our household. There are times where I want to just read or there are times where I want to do my version of play (which is just to watch a movie and relax). It took a lot of time for me to get to the point where I felt okay not structuring 100% of Eli’s day. Plus, overscheduling our kids to avoid our own anxiety can actually increase stress for both you and for your children.

As we are going into the summer, we are going to be dealing with more of that unstructured time, and in turn have more of that temptation to want to fill everything up, fill up all the weekends, and get as much as you possibly can out of the summer.

That can be a huge challenge. You don’t necessarily have to keep doing that, especially if those are fear-based decisions because of anxiety with more kid time. If you are feeling like you have to constantly entertain your child or else something bad is going to happen, or if you feel like you have to constantly structure your child’s time or else something bad is going to happen, then those might be fear-based decisions rather than decisions. They aren’t rooted in pleasure and joy and actual values that you and your kids actually want to do together.

The OCD And Anxiety Blueprint

And while we are on this subject of managing anxiety, I want to take a second to dive deeper into what my digital course, the OCD and Anxiety Recovery Blueprint is all about. It’s more than a course, it truly is a ticket to freedom on the other side of that awful, awful ocean that you feel like you’ve just been treading on forever. No more endless cycles of anxiety and scary thoughts holding you back. No more feeling like you’re tiptoeing around a real life haunted house.

With the OCD and Anxiety Recovery Blueprint, you are finally going to break free from the chains of your mind and be able to step into a life of clarity, freedom and confidence. This course isn’t just about managing your symptoms. I believe that we are not here to just get by. It’s about reclaiming your power, your joy, and your sense of self, and saying saying goodbye to the pain and frustration of living with OCD and anxiety. You’re going to learn how to prevent rituals, prevent mental compulsions, and prevent physical compulsions that are holding you back. You’re going to learn how to do the hard things, how to expose yourself to what used to be absolutely terrifying, and you’re going to emerge stronger, braver, and more resilient than you could have ever freaking imagined. Join me inside now!

Strategies for Managing Parental Anxiety

I could talk forever about all the different ways you could be struggling with anxiety as a parent. Just know that if you are anxious about your kids, or you’re anxious about something happening to your kids, if you’re anxious about your relationship with your kids or your impact on your kids, or literally anything related to that, that is okay. We are here for you. Regardless of the specifics of it, it can be addressed. There’s always a solution.

While summer can increase stress due to the lack of routine and it can be tough to manage anxiety with more kid time while you have additional responsibilities, heightened expectations, all of those things (not to mention the just onslaught of perfection that we see on our social media feeds of everybody going to Disney and everybody going to the beach and everybody doing all these fun things), remember that no one really posts the real stuff, the unstructured stuff, the boring stuff. We tend to have these skewed visions of what summer should look like. Then, when we’re not measuring up, it can feel really bad.

Next, I want to jump into a few practical tools that can radically alter how we handle our parental responsibilities, especially when anxiety with more kid time tries to take the wheel.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) 

Exposure and Response Prevention is about facing fears without falling back on the safety behaviors we use to soothe ourselves. For example, if the thought of an unstructured afternoon with your kids spikes your anxiety, ERP would guide you to go through with it anyway. You would resist the urge to over-plan or distract yourself. It’s about staying in that moment, despite the discomfort. Then, you are teaching your brain that you can handle the situation—even if it’s not perfect. Over time, this method reduces the anxiety associated with such scenarios because your brain learns there’s nothing truly dangerous about a free afternoon.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy means accepting your anxious thoughts and feelings without judgment. Let’s say you’re worried about whether you’re engaging enough with your kids. Instead of pushing that anxiety away or criticizing yourself, acknowledge the thought. Then, look at it with curiosity, and then focus on actions that align with your values—like being present and connected, regardless of the activity. ACT isn’t about denying discomfort but about moving forward in alignment with what truly matters to you. This could mean genuine moments of connection, no matter how mundane they may appear.

Empowerment Through Understanding

When it comes to implementing these things to help manage anxiety with more kid time, start small. Together, ERP and ACT empower us to not only face our fears but also to live according to our values, not our fears. This approach encourages us to be real with our kids, showing them that life isn’t about constant entertainment or avoiding boredom, but about finding joy in the simplicity of being together—even if that means doing ‘nothing’ by conventional standards.

So this summer, let’s challenge the notion that we need to fill every moment. Let’s use ERP to gently push back against our anxieties about unstructured time, and let’s use ACT to embrace our moments with our children as they are, not as we think they should be. By doing this, we transform our anxiety into action, our fears into moments of teaching, and our parenting into an authentic expression of who we really are.

Like I talked about earlier, the OCD and Anxiety Recovery Blueprint is my three part course for action takers who are ready to end the cycle of their intrusive thoughts and their scary anxiety. If you’re ready to take control of your life and be the boss of your brain again, I’d love to welcome you inside now.

Keep doing all the hard things. Bye for now.

👏 Unlock your free 40-minute video on “5 Must-Know Strategies for Handling Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts”: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jennaoverbaughlpc.com/strategies⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

🧠 Start your transformation today with the Mental Compulsion Mini Course referenced in this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jennaoverbaughlpc.com/mental-compulsions⁠

💪 Ready to conquer OCD/anxiety? Explore The OCD and Anxiety Recovery Blueprint – with or without a therapist: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jennaoverbaughlpc.com/blueprint⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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