​“You know what it's like having five kids? Imagine you're drowning. And someone hands you a baby.”  -- Jim Gaffigan
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Can you relate? Maybe not with having 5 kids, but do you feel at times you’re barely keeping your head above water when it comes to this parenting thing? Yesterday was “Swim a Lap Day”. All of my children have been on the swim team, and I’ve seen kids swim hundreds of laps over and over and over. One night at practice, a little guy was learning to swim on his back. The coach kept telling him, “Point your feet!” He pointed them straight up to the ceiling, smiled, and hardly moved.

​When I think about summer, I tend to think about the fun activities I can do with the kids, the classes or lessons they will have, and the joys of warm weather and sunshine. My picture of the perfect summer gets stifled by the sibling rivalry and conflict that somehow sneak up on me every June. 

Maybe your kids have been on summer vacation for a month or maybe they just got out last week; whatever the case, it’s all but guaranteed that your children will struggle to get along sometime over the next three months, and typically sooner rather than later. Let’s just pause for a second - this is completely normal!