Summer Was Never Made for Us- Dismantling the Neurotypical Fantasy and Rebuilding Our Own Rhythm
You can feel it, can’t you? The shift in the air after the Fourth of July. The collective exhale that never comes. The fireworks leave behind an ash of expectation: Was that it? Was this the summer you swore would be different? More connection, less yelling. More slow mornings, fewer meltdowns. And here we are burnt out, behind, and barely holding on.
Let’s name it.
We are past the peak. For many families, the week after the 4th is when burnout finally arrives not just for your child, but for you.
The Nervous System Remembers
Summer is a portal. A season that stirs up more than sunscreen and snack wrappers. For many of us especially those with trauma, neurodivergence, or complicated childhoods July doesn’t feel like ease. It feels like exposure.
Our bodies remember what our calendars erase. That fireworks often echoed fights. That summer meant chaos, or worse being the one expected to keep everything calm.
Now we’re adults, parenting in the heat, wondering why we’re unraveling. It’s not in your head. It’s in your nervous system.
Reflection Prompt:
How did summer feel in your childhood home?
What are you still carrying that’s unspoken?
If even these questions feel like too much that’s information. We build from there.
The Lie of the American Summer
Summer is marketed as bliss. Endless sun. Cold drinks. Barefoot joy.
That story is a lie one deeply embedded in class privilege, neurotypical assumptions, and historical erasure.
Summer has never been safe or simple for many of us. And for parents raising neurodivergent kids, summer can feel like both a gift and a gut punch.
There’s no school scaffolding. Therapies pause. Routines dissolve. Support disappears. And still, the pressure persists to make it magical.
Meanwhile, we still have to work. Still have to pay bills. Still have to feed people and fold the damn laundry.
And this is where it starts: lunch plates crusting in the sink. Half-eaten snacks on every surface. Wet towels layered on the stairs. Zoom calls taken from the bathroom because someone is screaming again.
Summer burnout doesn’t look like a dramatic collapse. It looks like wearing sunglasses inside because you haven’t slept. It sounds like yelling over nothing, then crying over everything. It feels like shame you can’t name.
Parents Aren’t Just Tired. They’re Systemically Unsupported.
Summer burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a structural setup. A season designed for someone else’s life.
As psychologist Mona Delahooke reminds us, “Behavior is a clue, not a problem.” And summer strips away many of the clues we depend on: the school schedule, the teacher insights, the daily rhythm that helps us decode what’s really going on.
Here’s the setup:
A calendar still built for 1950s America
An education system that assumes neurodivergent kids pause in June
A mental health framework that forgets executive function doesn't take summers off
Parents aren’t just tired. They’re exhausted from patching together care that never quite fits. Especially when they’re the only one who sees what their kid actually needs.
The Shadow Regulator: Naming the Invisible Role
Every household has one. The Shadow Regulator is the child who holds it together. The one who doesn’t explode. The sibling who tiptoes around meltdowns, anticipates needs, softens the edges.
Often it’s the sibling of a child with high support needs. Sometimes it’s the one who mimics adult regulation because they’ve been socialized to.
Shadow Regulators are burning out too. Quietly. Internally. Invisibly.
Ask them: “Where do you go when you feel overwhelmed?”
Say to them: “You don’t have to be the easy one here.”
And if you're the Shadow Regulator now parenting your own kids double that exhaustion. You’ve been holding things for too long.
You Are the Regulation Scaffold
And scaffolds crack. Especially under the weight of endless expectations, invisible labor, and the grief of another summer slipping by.
If you’re wondering why you feel behind, short-fused, emotionally porous—it’s not just the heat. It’s your own nervous system. Your own executive function. Your own loss of structure.
You are trying to regulate everyone while:
Managing transitions
Juggling appointments
Carrying your child’s IEP, 504, therapy schedule in your head
Mourning the summer you hoped for
This isn’t a failure. It’s an impossible ask.
The Unlived Summer Grief
There’s grief in realizing July is almost over and nothing felt restful. You didn’t take the trip. Your teen pulled away. Your child with ADHD is unraveling without structure. The days blur and the guilt swells.
You are allowed to grieve the summer you imagined.
And you are still allowed to begin again.
The Mid-Summer Reset (No Download Needed)
Pause – Stop narrating your failure.
Name – What’s actually hurting? You, your kid, your rhythm?
Adjust – One thing today gets simpler. Just one. That’s enough.
This is nervous system repair not behavior chart
You’re Not Just Parenting. You’re Disrupting.
You are not weak for feeling tired.
You are radical for:
Showing up differently than how you were parented
Seeing what was invisible in your childhood
Naming what hurts—and refusing to normalize it
You’re not just surviving this season. You’re rewriting the map.
And if you're ready to reset not just your kid’s schedule, but your own inner rhythm we're here.
Book a Reset Session. This isn’t coaching for compliance. It’s scaffolding for the uprising.
