I recently read the article “‘Backwards Beach Days’ Could Be A Game Changer For Your Summer Vacation” by Kelsey Borresen on HuffPost, and while I’ll concede that the mom she was writing about (“content creator” Kelsey Pomeroy) may have coined the term “backwards beach days,” I’ll tell you that she absolutely did not invent the idea, as we have used this basic premise for almost my whole motherhood — and it is indeed a game changer!
This idea assumes that the “normal” beach visit is one that starts in the morning and ends before dinner, which Pomeroy argues “is the literal opposite schedule that works for little kids.” This has been my experience as well! She specifically cites naptime as a key reason for switching up her thinking about beach time (her kids do better at the beach after they’ve had their afternoon nap than if the family tries to manage naptime at the beach), and notes that beaches are usually less crowded and less expensive later in the day, and the sun isn’t as much of an issue. Yes, yes, yes.
My family has spent time at a mountain lake since I was a teenager, which has become the main summer beach time for my own kids as well. Very early on in our parenthood we discovered that heading to the beach after naptime helps the hardest part of the day (that post-nap pre-dinner time often referred to as the witching hour) not be so terrible, and I also don’t have to worry so much about the kids getting sunburned. Most people head back home for dinner around this time, so the beach is emptier, and the water is the warmest it’s been all day. Late afternoon beach time has absolutely been the best for my family of little ones for the majority of my time as a mom, and I would definitely recommend this to parents of young families who’d like to make beach time as stress-free as possible.
(While we’re on the subject of little ones at the beach, I want to share again something I read when I was a young mother that I found life-changing: if taking your babies and toddlers and preschoolers to the beach is the worst thing you can possibly think of doing, then don’t bring them! Please don’t get caught up in some panicky idea that not bringing your little ones to the beach means you’re depriving them of key important childhood experiences like I did. I spent so much time trying to force us all to have a nice time at the beach when my big boys were tiny and it was basically the worst. Reading an older mom’s advice that trying again in a year or two might make all the difference almost made me cry with relief. And she was right! None of my older boys even remember that we didn’t do a whole lot of that when they were very small; having older kids somehow made it all easier, even with adding more babies to the mix for several more years, and they all have great memories of beachy summers.)
Now that I’ve shared with you a great tip for making beach time with little ones easier, and hopefully gave you permission to give it up altogether until your littles are older and it’s less traumatic for you, if you feel like you need permission, I also want to share my continued amazement at how quickly we have changed from a family for whom every outing was a stress to a family who can actually do things: we have now become a family who can handle an all-day beach trip!
We had the great blessing of starting this summer with a trip to the ocean with our extended family — my two brothers and their wives and children, one of my sisters, and my parents (twenty-one of us altogether). None of us have babies anymore (my almost-five-year-old was the youngest), nobody takes a daily nap (except me!), almost all of my kids can sunscreen themselves and swim/play safely on the beach and in the water without my husband and I worrying that someone will drown or run away or fall apart in a sanity-ending tantrum. We had two glorious beach experiences on two different days — we were at the beach for far longer than we’ve ever been able to stay at a beach; my big boys walked up and down the long beach and jumped in the waves; my little guys delighted in the water and the sand. We brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips and iced tea. My dad bought us all ice cream from the snack stand. What an absolute joy it was to go to the beach with our kids and our extended family!
I’ve been feeling for a while now that I don’t have much new to write about in terms of my motherhood — the constant newness of new babies, even when you’ve already had a bunch of babies, is in my past; there’s only so much to write about the middle-ish years when things often seem pretty reliable and uneventful; and while there’s a lot that can be said about middle school, high school, and the college years, I tread very carefully and try to err on the side of preserving my big boys’ privacy. But these changes to our family dynamic as a whole — less restrictions, new freedoms and abilities — are, I’m finding, a frequent cause of wonder for me and things that I think might give hope to the moms who are in the trenches. If summers are as hard for you as they used to be for me, take heart that one day that will change, and it will feel like the change happened overnight!
Kate and her husband have seven sons ages 18, 16, 15, 13, 11, 9, and 4. Email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
