Summer is supposed to be fun. Nobody told your kid's nervous system.

Posted by Katie Black, Program Director and Lead Executive Function Coach

You made it to summer. School's out, the backpack is in the corner, and everyone told you this is the easy part.

And maybe it is, for some families.

But if your kid went through every activity idea you had by noon on day one, or doesn't wake up until noon and then the get-ready fight is as bad as it ever was, or treats the fun vacation you planned like they're being sent somewhere terrible, or flat-out refuses to go to the camp you booked months ago — you're not failing at summer. Something real is happening in your child's nervous system, and it has a name.

What most people assume is happening

When a kid who held it together all year falls apart in June, the instinct is to look for a cause. Something happened. They're being difficult. They're addicted to their screens. They just need more to do.

Sometimes those things are true. But for a lot of neurodivergent kids, none of them are the main story.

The main story is that school was quietly doing a lot of work that your child's brain wasn't doing on its own. And now it's not there anymore.

What school was actually doing

For kids whose brains are still developing the capacity to manage transitions, emotional responses, and impulse control (which includes a lot of kids, not just kids with a diagnosis), the structure of the school day was doing a lot of that work for them. The bell rang and your kid transitioned. The schedule said lunch is at 11:30 so they knew what was coming. Getting dressed, getting on the bus, sitting in the same seat in the same class: all of that gave their nervous system something to hold onto. Predictability is genuinely regulating. It's not a nice-to-have for these kids. It's functional.

When June hits and that structure is gone, your child doesn't just pick up where it left off. Their nervous system has been leaning on that external framework all year. Without it, they have to do that regulating work themselves, and a lot of them don't have the reserves for it yet.

This is why the first week of summer can look like the worst week of the school year.

When uncertainty itself is the problem

Some kids don't just dislike change. Their nervous system responds to the unknown as a threat, and that response is real and physical, not a choice or an attitude.

Research on intolerance of uncertainty has been most studied in autistic kids, where it shows up consistently as a major driver of anxiety (Jenkinson, Milne & Thompson, 2020; Hodgson et al., 2016). But the pattern shows up in kids with anxiety, kids with ADHD, and plenty of kids who don't have any diagnosis at all. If your child needs to know what's happening next, has a hard time tolerating open-ended days, or falls apart when plans change at the last minute, this might be part of what you're seeing.

What makes summer hard for these kids isn't that something bad is happening. It's that the pattern is gone. Their nervous system is scanning for what comes next and not finding a clear answer.

This is also why "we have fun things planned" doesn't always land the way you'd expect. A fun but unpredictable week still reads as uncertain. It's looking for pattern and not finding one.

About that family vacation

A lot of families plan a trip in the first week or two of summer. Everyone has been grinding since September, a vacation feels earned, and you want to do something good for your family. That makes sense.

Here's what I see happen: the trip lands right when their nervous system is the most unsettled it's going to be all summer. They're already adjusting to the loss of school's structure. Now they're in an unfamiliar place with a disrupted sleep schedule, more sensory input than usual, social demands with extended family, and none of the familiar things at home that help them settle when they're overwhelmed.

And that can make the trip hard in ways that feel like failure.

I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying the difficulty isn't a parenting problem or a kid problem. It's a load problem. A vacation concentrates a lot of stressors into a short window. Knowing that is useful, because it means you can build in more downtime, lower the expectation that everyone has to be having fun every hour, and not take it personally when your kid wants to go home.

If you have flexibility on timing, waiting a few weeks does help. A kid who's had some time to find a summer rhythm is in a different place than a kid who is eight days out of school. But timing alone isn't the whole answer, and I don't want to leave you with the impression that if you just schedule it right, it'll be fine. The load is the load.

For kids with ADHD specifically

One pattern I see consistently: kids with ADHD who were managing reasonably well during the school year can look like completely different kids in June and July. More reactive, harder to move, more dysregulated in ways that feel sudden.

What's more likely is that the school year structure was compensating in ways that weren't visible until it was gone. Consistent wake times, predictable meals, built-in movement breaks, clear expectations for each part of the day: all of it was doing regulatory work. Without it, their nervous system has to manage more with fewer external supports.

This can show up as big emotional reactions to small things, not being able to start anything, more intense boredom, worse sleep, and what looks like a complete loss of the skills they had in May.

The skills aren't gone. The structure that made them accessible is.

What you're carrying

You're in a transition too.

The end of the school year means the end of structures that were supporting you. IEP meetings are done. The morning routine that was hard but predictable is gone. The people at school who knew your kid are gone until September.

And now you're home with a kid who is harder to reach right now, trying to figure out what this summer is going to be, while your own nervous system is also recalibrating.

It's okay to be tired. It's okay if this doesn't feel like relief yet.

What actually helps

These aren't rules. They're things that tend to work with the nervous system instead of against it. Use what fits.

Keep a few anchors in place, even loose ones.

You don't need a rigid schedule. You need enough predictability that the day has a shape. Roughly consistent wake times, meals at similar times, a known flow to the morning. The goal is pattern, not perfection.

Say what's coming before it happens.

"After lunch we're going to the library" does more work than it seems like it should. It gives the nervous system a chance to prepare instead of being surprised. You don't need a detailed itinerary. Just a heads-up.

Let the boring days be boring.

The pressure to make summer meaningful is real and it works against recovery. Unstructured time at home doing familiar things is not wasted time. For a lot of kids, it's exactly what they need in June. Rest is doing something.

Quiet before, not just after.

A calm morning before a busy afternoon matters. A low-key day after a hard one matters. Building in decompression before the hard thing, not just after, changes how the hard thing goes.

Don't hold May standards in June.

The first few weeks of summer are an adjustment period. Holding your kid to the same expectations they met in May, when the entire scaffolding of their day has changed, isn't fair to either of you. Lower the bar in June. Raise it gradually as they find their footing.

Watch what regulates them, not just what entertains them.

Screens are a complicated topic, but for some kids they're genuinely regulating. So is being in water, or time with animals, or repetitive physical movement. Pay attention to what actually settles your kid, not just what keeps them occupied.

One more thing

If your kid is harder to parent in June than in May, that's not a sign that something went wrong.

It's a sign that they were working incredibly hard all year to meet demands their nervous system wasn't built to meet easily, and they're finally somewhere safe enough to stop holding it together.

Your home is where they fall apart because your home is safe.

That's not a problem to solve. That's the relationship working.

If you're navigating summer with a kid and want support, that's some of what we do at Summit Ranch. You're welcome to reach out. summitranch.org | [email protected]

Research citations

Jenkinson, R., Milne, E., & Thompson, A. (2020). The relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety in autism: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Autism, 24(8), 1933-1944. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320932437

A meta-analysis of 12 studies on the link between intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety in autistic individuals. Nine of ten studies found a significant relationship. This is the research behind the claim that uncertainty itself, not just change, drives anxiety in many autistic people.

Hodgson, A. R., Freeston, M. H., Honey, E., & Rodgers, J. (2016). Facing the unknown: Intolerance of uncertainty in children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 30(2), 336-344. https://doi.org/10.1111/jar.12245

Parent focus groups exploring how intolerance of uncertainty shows up day-to-day for autistic children. Key finding: it appeared in both new and familiar situations when the expected pattern was disrupted. Relevant here because even a familiar home can trigger this response when the surrounding routine has changed.

Stuart, L., Grahame, V., Honey, E., & Freeston, M. (2019). Intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety as explanatory frameworks for extreme demand avoidance in children and adolescents. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 25(2), 59-67. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12336

Looks at demand avoidant behavior in autistic children through the lens of intolerance of uncertainty. Found that this behavior can be understood as an attempt to increase predictability and reduce anxiety. Useful context for why some kids seem to push back on every proposed plan during the summer transition.

Note on the school structure framing: this draws on Russell Barkley's work on ADHD as a performance disorder, which describes external structure as compensating for executive function development that isn't complete yet. This is widely accepted clinical thinking rather than a single study.