Why the Summer Holidays Are Harder Than People Admit
The Neurodivergent Summer…
There is a story we are told about summer. Long light evenings, spontaneous plans, children home and happy, a loosening of the usual rules. For a lot of neurodivergent people, and especially neurodivergent parents, that story quietly leaves out how hard it can be.
If you have been dreading the summer holidays even as you feel you are supposed to be looking forward to them, this is for you. There is nothing wrong with you. The season genuinely asks more of a neurodivergent nervous system, and it helps to name why that is.
Structure disappears exactly when you need it most
Many of us rely on routine to hold ourselves together. The term time rhythm, however imperfect and exhausting for its own reasons, is a scaffold. School runs, set mealtimes, the predictable shape of the week. When the holidays arrive, that scaffold is pulled away, and suddenly every day is an open field to be organised from scratch. For a brain that finds transitions and planning genuinely effortful, that is not freedom. It is a daily executive function tax, paid before anyone has even had breakfast.
More people, more noise, more masking
Summer tends to mean more social contact. Days out, gatherings, other people's children, other people's expectations. Each of these asks for a little more masking, that exhausting management of your natural self to fit what the moment seems to want. Masking is invisible, which is exactly why it is so draining. Nobody sees the effort, so nobody offers the recovery. By August, many neurodivergent people are running on empty and quietly wondering why they feel so frayed by a season that is meant to be restful.
There is also a pressure, especially so with our false lens into peoples’ lives through social media, that we are all meant to be doing enriching things with our children. Keeping them off screens. Ensuring they have fun summers to remember. Organising play dates. Being present with them. Or perhaps you work all summer and have to plan and execute all the additional activities to ensure they have care during the day.
And then there is the summer holiday itself, perhaps a week or two away from home. For neurodivergent families this isn’t restful. The kids can become easily overwhelmed from being out of routine, being somewhere new, the travelling and expectations that everyone is going to ‘have the time of their lives’. Parents are frazzled, overspent in terms of money as well as energy. It is a lot!
Give yourself permission to plan for the real you
The kindest thing you can do is plan for the nervous system you actually have, not the one you think you should have.
That might mean…
Deciding in advance that you will do one thing a day and no more
Letting the kids watch TV all morning while you rest
Having off days in between doing days
Protecting a quiet hour that is genuinely yours
Saying no to an invitation without a long explanation
Keeping a familiar anchor in the day, the same walk, the same cup of tea at the same time, so there is always one predictable thing to come home to
Not doing your family holiday in summer, you may choose to do it during a winter half term or have a staycation instead
None of this is failing at summer. It is meeting summer honestly. And a summer met honestly, at your own pace, is far more likely to leave you with something in the tank by the time September comes.
If any of this feels close to the bone, you might find companionship in my first novella, Little Bird. It follows a family stretched thin by the pressures of neurodivergence, told through the eyes of a boy who feels invisible in his own home. Many readers have told me it helped them feel seen. It is available as a Kindle download, paperback, or to order through your local independent bookshop.
