If You Want Your Kid To Have A '90s Summer, You Have To Be A '90s Summer Mom

Sometimes I hear it more often in the fall as school starts back: “We’re banning all devices at home. I want my kids to have the childhood I did.” But I think I hear this rallying anti-phone and “ban tablets!” cry ramp up the most at the end of spring. The store endcaps are full of water balloons and sunscreen, your inbox is full of camp reminders, you’re making your kids try on sandals to see what you need to buy — summer is coming. And with it comes every millennial and Gen X parent’s need to give their kid the beautiful, idyllic summers of our own youth. We want them off of their iPhones, we want them to ignore their tablets, we want them to forget about Roblox.

But if you want your kid to have a ‘90s summer, you’re going to have to be a ‘90s summer mom.

And that’s a little more work than you might realize.

We all say the ‘90s were a “simpler” time, but I really think that only applies to the impact social media has had on parenting. The ‘90s were simpler because everyone minded their own business and, for the most part, nobody knew what was going on in anyone else’s life as a parent. Nobody knew if you hadn’t taken the recycling out in three weeks unless you told them. Nobody was filming their kids having a tantrum and then feeling the heat of 800 comments calling you a bad mom for weeks. Nobody was subjected to all day and all night scrolling of “real mom” accounts that made them feel like they were the worst parents in the world.

But you know what moms were doing in the ‘90s? Dropping kids off at sleepovers and speaking to the other parents. Going to the library and letting kids wander up and down the aisles for an hour. Taking their kids to the grocery store and letting them pick out their own Kid Cuisine. Trusting their teens to walk around the mall for an hour with $20 in their pocket and a group of friends.

I love the idea of a device-free summer, of my kids having the kind of ‘90s summer I had. But that means I have to pay attention.

It means I have to be willing to drive them to the park at 7:00 a.m. to ride their bike before it gets too hot, like my family did. It means I have to go to the grocery store and let them pick out the ingredients they need to make a cookie recipe they found in a cookbook. It means I have to be willing to let the house get trashed while they build forts and mix paint and Play-Doh together and track mud through the house as they look for items to play “float or sink” with in the yard.

I have to be my ‘90s summer mom, who said yes to pretty much everything, who put her own comfort aside so we could have fun, who had to go meet parents she barely knew and socialize with them so I could go to Six Flags for the day with my friends.

My mom was always willing to have a friend over, to drop me off somewhere, to let me pull out 8,000 craft supplies and spend six hours at the dining room table. She once let my brother and me dig holes in the backyard so we could look for dinosaur bones, and then she pulled out the sofa bed and let us eat dinner on it while we watched Jumanji.

If we had an idea for a milkshake-and-lemonade stand, she said yes. If we dragged all our toys out into the yard, she didn’t bat an eye. If we asked for the camcorder so we could film ourselves doing a puppet show, she made sure it had fresh batteries.

If you’re not willing to do all of that, you might as well hand your kids their tablets back now.

Because we all know half the battle of our kids and screen time is that they’ll drive us crazy without them. If our teens can’t FaceTime their friends, they’re going to ask us to take them somewhere to hang out with them. If our kids can’t find anything to do other than play Roblox, they’re going to wander around the house annoying us and asking us to play Candy Land.

We give them their devices, in part, so they’ll just do something quietly. And that’s fine! But if you want the ‘90s summer for your kids, you’ve got to prepare yourself for all the ‘90s mom feelings.

You’re going to yell at them 800 times to stop fighting. You’re going to tell them things your mom told you, like, “Only boring people get bored” and “Hi, Bored, I’m Mom, nice to meet you.” You’re going to beg them to get out of your space, to go upstairs, to go outside. You’re going to have to sit with them while they swim in the pool, you’re going to be driving them and their best friends to the movies, and you’re going to be making playdates with other moms even though you really don’t want to.

You’re going to feel anxious about letting them ride their bikes alone in the neighborhood. You’re going to go on walks when you don’t feel like it because they want to find fireflies. You’re going to trust them with scissors so they can open their own popsicles.

You’re going to be a ‘90s summer mom, and it’s going to be exhausting and sticky and overstimulating.

But it’s better than watching them zone out on the iPad for four hours, right?