Maybe this is a slow summer?

On settling into the chaos and not fighting the meltdowns

Summer is here. I’m also back working in an office three days a week. The logistics are never-ending. Every Sunday night Dan and I sit down with our Google Calendars open, playing Tetris with our days, our meetings and our family responsibilities.

Every family I know with two working parents stares down the summer with a mix of nostalgia for days gone past of free-range kids and dripping popsicles, and dread at the aforementioned calendar Tetris. We want a simpler time, but we live in a complex time. We want our kids to be unscheduled, un-screened, un-burdened, but we live in a scheduled, screened and frequently burdened era.

Not surprisingly, the change in routine the summer brings is disruptive to Owen. Gone is the predictability of a 7:50 bell, his beloved Ms. Huang and his 20 smiling classmates. Instead, we have a rotating cast of different camps, different counselors and different kids. Every day brings something new, with new stimuli, new social dynamics and new stuff to handle.

During these times of transition or change, tt’s normal for Owen to “act out” — to be quicker to anger or melt down, or to struggle with things that previously weren’t an issue before the changes in routine. Is the struggle because he’s on the spectrum? Is this just how his brain works and I should understand that it’s just who he is? Or is the struggle because he’s a 7-year-old kid and summer can be a challenge, but the behavior is something we can work on? What do we try to “fix” versus just let be?

What’s challenging for me as a parent: Does it actually matter if any given behavior or response is caused due to him being autistic versus just cranky/tired/a human in today’s world?

I don’t know and I don’t know if there’s anyway to know one way or the other. If life is hard, life is hard. Giving Owen — and myself — the tools to make it easier feels like a win for both of us.

Luckily those tools are often what summer is designed for in the first place.

• Slowing down instead of rushing around

• Saying “yes” to one more episode of whatever is on TV

• Drinking more water and finding more ways to get into the water (shoutout to SF’s public pools which are the best deal in town — $2 for a kid to take a dip)

• Finding ways to read more books, to ourselves and to each other

Just eight short weeks until school starts again. We’ve got this right?

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Recommendations

To read: I loved this paragraph from Brian Rucker’s Substack about Fanny Singer’s granola recipe:

Though Berkeley is known for its history of protest, in 2025 it is too comfortable, too rich, and too old to be the center of any political movement. This isn’t even a value judgement, it’s the natural capitalist order of things. A city formerly at the center of so much becomes desirable for too many people. Real estate prices increase, younger people are priced out, and decades later, the older generation doesn’t want to move. I don’t blame them. As I walk around my mom’s neighborhood (anchored by Chez Panisse and a mellow Thursday afternoon farmer’s market), I see lots of sun hats and comfortable shoes, pairs and trios of women with Waters’s graying short shag strolling along Shattuck and up in the hills towards Tilden.

Fanny's Superfood Granola — My Pantry (2015)

I have not made the granola so I cannot vouch for the recipe (or lack of deliciousness) but this Berkeley description was spot on.

To appreciate: Our family went to the No Kings protest over the weekend. We lasted about two hours which felt pretty good considering it was loud, crowded and pretty boring (my sense was that the organizers were overwhelmed in a good way about how many people showed up — we mostly milled around for an hour before slowly walking down Dolores).

To eat: We celebrated my parents’ 50th anniversary over the weekend (Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!). My friend Chef Alex Scotta was my VIP cheese board advisor and recommended Meredith Dairy Marinated Goat Cheese for my platter. I have no idea what they do to this cheese but we couldn’t stop scooping it onto bread, crackers and anything else we could find. I found it at Costco and hopefully you can too!