When you have kids, summers are a flurry of activities. Going to amusement parks and zoos, playing outside, eating ice cream—lots and lots of ice cream.
And then, the preteen years hit and all that changes. Suddenly a kid’s interest shifts. They spend less time hanging with the fam and more hanging with friends, or alone. Though this transition is natural, it can still be painful for parents and make them feel like they’re not doing enough to evoke that same kind of magic the season once held.
As Cyndy Gatewood’s three children have all entered teen and preteen chapters, she began to feel this particular kind of pain, which she called “summer guilt.”
In a now-viral TikTok, Gatewood described summer guilt as “the guilt that comes when you have teens and preteens during the summer, and you’re home with them, but they’re too old to go to a playground everyday … and now they just want to be in their rooms. And it’s like, should I be doing something? Should I be taking them somewhere everyday? But when I ask them … they don’t want to.”
“I still have that constant guilt that I’m not doing enough. That their summer’s being wasted,” she says, and these feelings only get exacerbated when she sees other families with younger kids enjoying themselves on social media.
Though she knows that this shame is something she’s putting on herself, Gatewood still asked if there were other parents out there who would relate. And boy, could they.
“The teen transition is so hard. It’s hard to bring them joy now, used to be so easy,” one parent lamented.
Another wrote, “My heart broke when my son stopped wanting to go explore the new parks.”
A few folks chimed in to reassure that just because teens preferred to be in their room, it didn’t have to mean that summer was wasted. In fact, that solitude could also contain some pretty wonderful memories.
“I still remember so clearly being a teenager and my favorite thing in the world was being in my room on my own doing my own thing. Don’t feel guilty, it’s healthy to spend time on your own. They don’t need to be busy, to be doing something every moment of every day,” one person wrote.
Another added, “…then I remember my own teenage years, and I know how peaceful I was in my room. I had my first Walkman, listened to music, translated the lyrics, read books. It didn’t feel like a waste of summer.”
Many reflected that perhaps the root emotion Gatewood was feeling wasn’t guilt, but grief. As one person put it, “It’s more like grieving a life that you no longer have which you recall was the best time of your life. And it’s nothing you did wrong and nothing you can do to preserve it.”
By opening up about her feelings, Gatewood told Good Morning America that countless people have commented to thank her for putting this very relatable situation into tangible words.
“It makes me emotional, because it really is such a beautiful thing when we can open up about our struggles, especially as parents, and find out that we’re not alone in these feelings,” she shared.
And since sharing her video, Gatewood has seemed to take on a more nuanced perspective on this new parenting chapter.
“It’s a beautiful thing to watch your kids grow up. But we have to evolve with that. And that’s what I’m learning right now.”