The Current - Summer’s here and the time is right for… “kidrotting”?

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

This summer, some parents are opting out of the packed schedules, the summer camps, and little leagues and instead are saying yes to slower days at home. Amil Niazi, a columnist for The Cut, shares how she’s embracing an unscheduled, unstructured summer — sometimes called “kidrotting.” And child psychologist Janine Hubbard explains why letting kids be bored might actually be good for them.

We're all looking for great places to visit in Canada. One of my favorites is the Stratford Festival. The theatre is truly of the highest caliber and there's so much selection. They have 11 large-scale shows on stage and trust me, whatever is on manure there will be exceptional. People always think Shakespeare when they think of Stratford, but it's so much more. Broadway musicals, family shows, classic comedy and drama. Whether it's Robert LaPage's Macbeth or Donna Fior's Annie, you will be blown away.

It's the perfect Canadian getaway. To quote William Shatner, who got his start in Stratford, every Canadian should make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Start your next adventure at StratfordFestival.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Good morning, families. It's time to register for summer camp. This year, camp is $872 per hour. Registration begins at 3.03 a.m. and closes at 3.03 a.m. and 59 seconds. Okay, so that mom might be using some sarcasm to deal with her emotions, but parents will agree

that registering their kids for summer camp can in fact feel like the Hunger Games and they're expressing their frustration on social media. I have two kids who are summer camped aged kids and I have a spreadsheet for each week for each kid because they're different ages they can't just go to the same summer camps to figure out what I'm going to do with my kids in the months of June, July and August. And you can't just sign up. No, you have to be logged on when registration drops as if you're buying Beyonce concert tickets every day, different drops, different times. Some of them at six o'clock in the morning. Are

we okay? Short answer, no. These parents are not okay. That's why some are pushing back, rejecting expensive camps and scheduled summer programming in favour of something freer, versions of which are being called kid rotting or wild summers. That's when you let your kids do nothing, or at least nothing scheduled and costly. Emile Niazi is a freelance writer based in Toronto. She writes about parenting for the cut and she also has three kids under the age of eight. Good morning Amil. Good morning Duncan, how are you?

I'm doing well. We're going to get to your plans for the summer in a moment but we just heard those clips. For those who don't have young kids, what does the process for getting into camps look like these days? I mean, Hunger Games is a good way of putting it for sure. You have to basically know your plans for the summer in February. Often they start that early in the year. You've got to be logged on. You have to have, you know, sometimes you have to have a city login. You've got to have all these different things planned and ready to go.

And you have to know exactly when your kid is going to be doing XYZ and you have to be able to financially figure out how you're going to afford all of those camps. So it really is a terrible process. It's not just signing them up in June. You have to be prepared super early in the year. You mentioned the impact on the pocketbook. That mom was joking about it being hundreds of dollars per second for camps. How expensive are some of the summer day camps out there? They can be thousands of dollars.

People are basically going to work to be able to afford to pay for these camps. Last year, I think I spent easily, you know, several thousand dollars putting my very young son through camp for two months. So, tell us about that. What was your experience with your son and his summer camp experience? Well, it wasn't great. Yeah, like I said, I signed up in February, I made sure I had all my weeks of work covered off. And it was hell, to excuse my language. Every day I dropped him off at a different camp. He was miserable.

He hated going to it. I hated putting him through it. Every day I just thought, I'm paying for this misery. And it was really difficult. And he just didn't feel like he had a summer at the end of it. School suddenly comes up and you have a kid that's not feeling like they were rested or had a break. And so I really just wanted to do something different this year. 05.00 Did he say why? Was it something specific about the camps or was it just the general

experience? 05.00 I mean, it just felt like school. It just felt like a lot of activities that you don't really have control over. It felt like, you know, it's hard to meet so many new people. My son's quite shy, and so he had to sort of go through this process of being the only kid that, you know, that didn't have friends there or, you know, it was difficult for him to adjust to all these different camps and going to all these different places. So, I think a lot of kids are like that. They're not necessarily accustomed to having to go to all these different places all the time.

And I had to just, it was a patchwork of camps and most parents are dealing with that. And did you ask him if he wanted to go to camp this summer? And he said, no, absolutely not. So that's where we're at. So as you said, you've chosen a different path this summer, a wild summer. What's that? Wild summer is basically exactly how it sounds. I mean, kid rotting sounds so negative to me, but wild summer sounds very positive. Basically I want my kids to be able to have the kind of summer that I had growing up in

the 90s. You know, we used to hop on our bikes and just be gone all day. We were just a pack of roving kids doing whatever we wanted for as long as we wanted until the sun came down and we came home. And I want them to be bored. I want them to be creatively inspired. I want them to have a break, a true mental and physical rest and to be able to discover what makes them happy outside of the school year. So that's what it means to me. So here's a question for you. Are you just going to send them out on his bike and let him roam all day long?

Well, they're a little young for that still, although he would love to be able to do that. And of course, I have three kids, so I have to kind of keep them together. But my plan is to, you know, to hit the free waiting pools at our local park, to let them play on the street, to let them go through in the sprinkler in the backyard. And there are, we have memberships to the AGO and to the MOCA in Toronto. And so, you know, I will have some scheduled things, but for the most part, we're just going to hang around and go to the park. Sounds like you're doing some planning if you're looking at the memberships at the museums and things like that, but let me write, you write, I'll quote you, three kids, two months,

no school or summer camp, one mom. It sounds like the setup to a horror movie. Depending on where you are in the country, this is week one of summer break. How are you holding up so far? Well, honestly, I'm doing just fine. I mean, you kind of have to just give into it and let it wash over you. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And I really take a lot of pleasure from parenting. And I think when you can step, take your foot off the gas, you know, we're so hyper vigilant as parents these days, millennials spend more time with their kids than baby boomers did. And I think if we can just ease up a little bit and make parenting a little more fun, it doesn't have to overwhelm you. You mentioned just being bored. What do you see as the value in boredom? I mean, I remember being bored as a kid and having to then find my way through it.

And that led me to writing, which is my passion and what I do for work today. And I hope that my kids being bored allows them to figure out what brings them pleasure and joy outside of the structure. And screen time especially doesn't allow for boredom. They have access to every single form of entertainment in the world. They never have a moment to be bored. So I think it's really valuable. And you just mentioned the really tough thing for a lot of parents. What about the screens?

I mean, how are you, one mom, you're up against three kids, you're outnumbered. How are you going to make sure that they up against three kids, you're outnumbered, how are you gonna make sure that they aren't always on their screens, or worse, badgering you to be on the screens? My kids are not allowed to watch YouTube and they don't have iPads, so that's one problem solved. And I'm not really against TV. I think TV can be a wonderful way of exercising your creativity as well.

I love watching television and my kids do too. So I limit screen time to evenings and they are allowed to play video games on the weekends. So for me, the most important thing about a wild summer is that the kids are off screens. What are you hearing about from other parents about how they're thinking about this summer? Nicole Larson A lot of parents, of course, are into this idea. But the reality, obviously, is that I have the privilege of being a freelance writer, so I am able to be home with my kids. Most parents are in two income households, they're both working, and so they have to rely

on camps. They have to rely on some form of care for their kids while they're at work. So I think people are feeling like they would love to give their kids this opportunity, but it's really hard when you are both working. And so I think it's more about taking it as a concept and letting your kids just relax when they're able to in the summer because they need a break too. Pete You mentioned you're a freelance writer, so you've got a bit more flexibility there. But how much was cost part of this? I mean, did you crunch the numbers and try to figure out how much the camps were adding up? Yeah, it was a huge part of it. It's much more financially feasible for me to just stay home and not take contracts

and be with my kids than to pay for the camps and then work a little bit more. So I think a lot of parents are feeling the crunch. Reading the kid rotting piece in the New York Times, there are parents that are spending something like $40,000 to be able to send all of their kids to camp. That's not realistic for most parents. It's certainly not realistic for me. So, Wild Summer is also just sort of like an easy-on-pocket book summer. You mentioned the piece in the Times. There have been a couple major papers that have

dealt with kid-ting and wild summers. What do you think that that tells us about this moment that we're in in terms of parenting and the pressures that parents and kids are facing? Yeah. I mean, I did not realize my piece would be part of a moment like this. I think it's great that everyone's sort of on the same page. It tells you that parents are feeling exhausted. They're feeling frustrated. They're feeling like, you know, their kids are not getting an opportunity to have the kind of childhood they had and they're not sure how to give it to them. As I mentioned, like, millennials are working more and they're and they're parenting more and they're feeling the stress of being able to afford

the kind of childhood that they're being forced to give their kids. They want to be able to ease back. And I think that this is a great opportunity to look at how we're parenting and maybe give the parents a break as well as the kids. You know, Wild Summer is just as much about taking it easy as a parent as it is taking it easy on your kids. You mentioned your own summers as a kid and thinking about being free. What was your best memory from your summers as a kid? I really just, I mentioned being on my bike and being gone all day and just having that freedom and independence. Our kids do not have freedom and independence anymore. I think we're all very worried about their safety and I get it. I'm so concerned about cars and my kids, but that independence meant everything to

me. I made so many friends. I learned so much about myself just being by myself and feeling free as a kid. And I really want my kids to have that. And I worry that most kids are not having that today. Pete Is part of this about nostalgia for 80s or 90s or even older summers? Lauren Of course. I mean, that's the millennial way, you know, we're sort of like living in a bubble of how good it was back before phones and the internet and our parents constantly monitoring us and having Life360 on all the time. I think a huge part of it is about remembering the good old days, but that's the essence of parenting in many ways. You're

trying to give your kids the good parts of what you had and preventing the bad parts. Pete Slauson Okay, so we've talked about the impacts for the kids. You've said that the wild summer is hopefully for your kids as much as it is, but I mean, it's also for you. What are you hoping to gain out of this? Jennifer Lutz I really am hoping to be able to shift how I parent and being a little less hypervigilant, being a little bit less concerned about what they're learning and where they're going and what they're doing and allowing myself to remember that parenting is fun. It's beautiful, it's joyful, it's optimistic, especially in this moment we're in right now where people are not feeling that optimistic about a lot

of things, including the future. And I really want to remember that parenting is not meant to be miserable or that difficult. It can be really fun. So I want to remember the fun part of parenting. I know you say it can be very fun. Have you got an answer plan for the 50th time that they pull on your pant leg and say, I'm bored, I'm bored, mom. Yeah, it's okay.

It's okay to feel frustrated. Obviously I'm not saying that you're not going to have frustration this summer. But again, I'm just trying to lean into it and experience this summer with my kids and hopefully we're going to have a good time. Alright, well, excellent. Good luck being bored. I hope you have a great summer. Thanks, Duncan. Emil Niazi is a freelance writer based in Toronto and writes about parenting for the cut and she's also the author of Life After Ambition, a good enough memoir.

She's the mother of three, as you heard. We're all looking for great places to visit in Canada. One of my favorites is the Stratford Festival. The theater is truly of the highest caliber, and there's so much selection. They have 11 large-scale shows on stage, and trust me, whatever is on when you're there will be exceptional. People always think Shakespeare when they think of Stratford,

but it's so much more. Broadway musicals, family shows, classic comedy and drama. Whether it's Robert LaPage's Macbeth or Donna Fior's Annie, you will be blown away. It's the perfect Canadian getaway. To quote William Shatner, who got his start in Stratford, every Canadian should make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Start your next adventure at StratfordFestival.ca.

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Learn more at Viking.com. Pete Jenner Janine Hubbard is a child psychologist. She's in our studio in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Janine, hello. Janine Hubbard Oh, good morning, Duncan. Pete You heard Emile's plans for the summer. What do you make of this idea of a wild, unstructured summer for the kids?

Janine Hubbard Well, I think it's important to remember that not one size fits all in terms of both family needs and child temperament, but I love the fact that embrace the boredom is a message that I've been trying to give to parents for I guess at least a decade now in that it's actually a skill that kids have lost in many ways and as parents we've you know really lost a lot of that skill even just standing in line at the grocery store the tendency to pull out a phone and scroll mindlessly as opposed to paying attention to your surroundings. I wish her the best of luck. I think

there's going to be some days where you know that that might need to be reevaluated but like I say it really I think depends on parental situations in terms of employment, in terms of budget, but also really knowing your child and their temperament. There are some kids who really need something structured for the summer, especially I'm thinking some of the kids who may be neurodiverse. On the other hand, there are some kids who absolutely don't want to get involved in anything structured and really thrive on that freedom. So some of it is kind of practical realities and some of it is trying to best meet the

needs of you as a parent and your child. I do want to ask you about kids that are neurodiverse and what's best for them. But generally for most kids, why is unstructured time good, particularly over the summer? It's so important because there are so many skills that we develop when you're in unstructured non-screen time. We can talk about screen time in a second, but it's things like problem solving. It's social skills, navigating, you know, how do you deal with the interpersonal piece when the kid you're playing with doesn't want to follow your rules? It's again, exploring

interests. I love the idea of exploring some of the writing, but it can also just be problem-solving creativity. It's amazing. You know, you can give kids just a thing of tape and some, you know, straws and some popsicle sticks and just sort of say, go for it. And it's amazing what comes up and how each child is going to handle some of that differently. I do remember some summers where I was just so bored. What role does boredom play when developmentally? Well, like I say, tolerating boredom is a really important skill that is part of typical development and is something that's important because then it's also the, okay, what's my comfort level with being bored? Am I comfortable with this? I'm not comfortable with it. And then the important piece is trying to learn how you yourself can alleviate that boredom, not looking to parents, not looking to somebody else.

So yes, if you're getting tugged on the pet leg for the 80th time that day, I always suggest, you know what, come up with a jar full of activities or tasks or things that can be done. Or if your kids are a little bit older, you utter the words, I'm bored and guess what? There's a chore list that immediately comes out. But no, it's a skill that like any skill takes time and practice to develop. But I'm wondering, what is it about this generation? You know, why do you think parents are so involved in trying to get rid of that boredom for kids rather than just letting them figure it out themselves? Well, I have – I know we've talked about helicopter parenting before.

I like the Canadian version which is the curling parents. So we're sweeping obstacles out of the way before the kids ever have to encounter them. So there is very much that wanting – in terms of wanting to set things up as best as possible and for a long time that really felt like that, kind of like the New Yorker article that rat race of, well, I have to get them into specialty training camps and they need to be learning robotic skills or, you know, advanced athletic skills or the violin or whatever it may be. And there are some kids who will thrive on that and absolutely love that.

And then it's also important to remember that most summer camps actually have an element of boredom and again, go figure it out, go sort it out amongst yourselves. Picking activities, deciding what do I enjoy doing when there is kind of that unstructured time even within a camp setting? You can't go completely wild though. I mean, if you've got two or three kids, you've got to do some pre-planning here. Is part of it, is a hard truth here that it takes a fair amount of work to keep a kid busy during the summer?

Oh, no question. To keep them busy, to keep them off electronics, to set some of those boundaries or let me rephrase that, using electronics appropriately. Looking up a YouTube video on a how-to for a craft or a project or an activity or maybe a recipe, that's great use. Even for some cases, it could be things like playing basically a board game, but online with some of your friends where you're talking, you're interacting, you just don't happen to be in the same room. There can be great uses for a lot of those kind of things. But yeah, it does involve planning adults, it involves looking

at the weather, it involves, it could even be that you've got a set of parents who've said, yes, we want some unstructured time, but we still have to work. So I'll take this week off and I'll take all three of the families and the next week you'll do it. And, you know, so there's still a lot of planning involved. No question. Some kids love camp. Some want to explore all those different interests and skills and some love all the organized activities. What kind of kids do benefit from from structured time? I was one of those kids. But a balance, right? Maybe it's one or two camps that are of a particular interest or involve a particular friend group. It's a great way to again explore, but it also depends on where you

are in the country, what you have access to, what your kids enjoy. I do find that there are some kids who either are really curious and want to explore something in particular and others for whom it's more that schedule, that routine, as I sort of said, especially for some of the kids who are more neurodiverse, perhaps having structure and routine for at least some of the summer can be really, really helpful. And I want to emphasize if you have a kid who's in camp all summer and structured activities, that's great. If that's what either meets their needs or meets your family's needs, then it's focusing on the evenings and weekends and making sure that all of you as a family are finding that unstructured board time. Summer camps are also really social. I mean, you're hanging out with a bunch of other kids.

Is there a risk that those who don't go to camp are going to fall behind a little bit in terms of those really important social skills that they'll be getting from other children? Oh, such a good point. And again, some of it is, depending on your child's comfort level, any new social experience is really important and it does help to develop that skill. Some kids are very much the, it's the equivalent of throw them in the pool, they'll figure

it out, you know, socially and other kids might need a little bit more structure and support and some more kind of one-on-one or small group environment. So again, it's all about knowing your child and your child's needs. Is, as Emil mentioned, I mean, there are some parents who just don't have a choice here. They have to put their kids in camp because they got to work. And some kids like the camp. So is there a way that a parent can find a balancing act here between some structured activity, but also having a bit of wild summer too?

Absolutely. And remember that that wild summer includes the parents. So it could be beginning of the summer, even figuring out what are some things that you really want us to do as a family? Whether that's going to the park, whether that's going swimming, like whatever that might be, figure some of those out. But then set up some times where you know what, on weekends, we're going to put the phones away and we're not going to book anything in and we're just going to see what we feel like doing. And like I say, that's also for kids and adults learning how to deal with disappointment.

Well, I know we thought we were going to the park, but you know it, it's pouring rain, so we're going to have to find something to do indoors. And that teaches, again, that emotional development. It also then teaches the, okay, well, change of plans, what would you like to do now? And helps them to figure out, okay, how can I deal with unexpected things? So it's all learning, it's all development. And there is something glorious about just saying, you know what, we have nothing booked for today, I'm going to call it a pajama day or a pajama weekend. And we're just kind of kind of do what we feel like, including

some timeouts away from everyone else. And whether that means your kids are running around in the backyard or wherever they're safe to do so, or whether it's sending everybody to their rooms for a little bit of quiet time, whether it's a rest or a craft or a book, again, just finding that balance. What about you, Janine? Do you have any favourite memories from your summers as a child, wild summers at all? I was laughing and recollecting with a friend earlier this week. As a family, we drove across country, road trip. This is way before, you know, the days of electronics in the car. And we had finger puppets and I narrated the adventures

of Pinky the pencil crayon and all of her friends. Listen, there's a reason I'm, you know, do things that are very creative to this day and imaginative. And I think about, yes, we also had to identify every type of cow that we drove past on those car trips. I never got very good at it. But again, that was family time. That was time together, and it was being inventive or creative, or at least learning when to tell your sibling

to please be quiet and keep that to yourself. Janine, thank you. Lobbying for bringing back the finger puppets. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise on this. Jenine Hubbard Oh, thank you. Pete Jennings Jenine Hubbard is a child psychologist. She's in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Matt Galloway You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.