Handing Down Warm Summer Memories

Marilee Cosgrove of Irvine didn’t want to wait for the June 21 solstice that officially marks the beginning of summer. The end of the school year in mid-June wasn’t going to be soon enough, either.

So on the first day of June, she made an announcement to her 7-year-old son, Christopher, as he was getting ready for school. “I told him: ‘Today’s our first day of summer. We have 103 days of it. And we’re going to do something special every day.’

“I want him to really get the flavor of being a child in summer,” she says. “It’s just such a wonderful learning time for children. He can play as hard as he can, without worrying about how dirty he gets. And I want to get dirty, too. I guess no matter how old you get, there’s still that nostalgic feeling of summer. You know: take off your shoes, stay out until the street lights come on.”

Cosgrove, a lifelong Orange County resident, remembers how, when she was a child, the smell of orange blossoms at night signaled the beginning of warmer weather and long, unscheduled days.

But Christopher doesn’t have those kinds of memories. For his generation, orange groves have become a rarity--and so have the lazy days of summer.

“He’s been in day care every summer since he was born,” says his mother, who works full time as community services supervisor for the city of Irvine child-care coordination office.

For such kids as Christopher, summer days may not seem all that different from school days. Sure, they get a break from homework for a while. But they still have to get up and go somewhere every day on schedule--sometimes to the same building they went to during the school year.

“They don’t have it the way we did,” Cosgrove says.

Cosgrove and her husband, Cameron, have arranged to give their son a different kind of summer this year. For the first day’s “something special” on Wednesday, they picked Christopher up from the after-school day-care center at his elementary school and drove to the beach. They built sand castles, looked for seashells, watched the sun go down and the moon rise.

When school is out, Cosgrove says, she will take four weeks’ vacation to stay home with Christopher. Her husband’s vacation will overlap part of that time, and then Christopher will have a week at home with his dad after his mother goes back to work. For the rest of the summer, he will stay with an aunt and have a chance to play with his cousins.

“There’s just something about summer--even the smells are different: suntan lotion, barbecues, cut grass,” Cosgrove says. “We wanted him to have that.

“We made a family commitment that no matter what, our child would have the same upbringing as we did. My working was not going to be a factor,” Cosgrove says. “We reprogrammed ourselves. Sometimes it gets hectic, but then, it got hectic for my mom, too, even though she stayed at home.”

To keep things relaxed, the Cosgroves had to get organized. “We made a list of the things we remember from childhood that we wanted to include in our son’s life. And we also listen to him and add things he suggests,” she says.

“We also make lists of things we’re going to do. It doesn’t have to be anything big; it could be just a walk around the neighborhood or a family bike ride.”

Even before Christopher’s special summer began, his mother says, he seemed to be enjoying his childhood. “One day he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, Mother, isn’t it wonderful to be a child?’ ”

But what if you can’t manage to take the summer off with your child? Is there still a way to make summer special?

As part of her job, Cosgrove helps families find not only standard child care but also fun activities for the summer as well as the school year. She can list more suggestions than most callers have time to hear.

“There are so many neat things for children, and families, to do,” she says. “There’s a myriad of day camps out there--the YMCAs, the YWCAs, city parks and recreation departments. Nearly every city has a program. The Sea Scout base in Newport Beach offers sailing and windsurfing lessons, the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point has all kinds of marine-related activities.”

For more information on those or other activities, Cosgrove recommends “Parents Guide to Orange County,” by Glenda Riddick, available in many local bookstores or for $12.61 from Resource Directory, 1038 N. Tustin Ave., Suite 241, Orange, Calif. 92667.

In the Saddleback Valley, hundreds of kids will spend their summer vacations at a familiar location: school. But instead of classes, the 5-to-12-year-olds will be attending day camps run by the Saddleback Unified School District’s Parks and Recreation Department.

Jim Ball, director of the program, says he is making an effort to keep camp from seeming too much like school.

“They’ll be going to Universal Studios, taking a ride on an Amtrak train, going to the Ringling Brothers circus, Angels baseball games, the La Brea Tar Pits, Sea World, and then we’re having an end-of-summer sock hop.

“And if we can’t get the children to some things, we’ll bring those types of services here. We have a storyteller coming around this summer, and a person who’s into theater will do some mime. We want to whet the appetite of the kids, so that later, if they want a full course, we’ll be able to offer that, too.”

The school district got into the recreation--and child care--business by default in 1975, when “services were needed and there wasn’t a local government,” Ball says.

More than a third of the program’s $1.4-million annual budget goes to child care. Under Proposition 13, the entire program must be self-sufficient, he says. To meet the growing demand, the program’s day camps are expanding from four to seven sites this year, with a maximum of 80 children at each site. So far, one of the sites is already at capacity for the summer, and the others have an average of 40 to 50 children signed up. The program costs between $55 and $67 per week per child. For more information, call (714) 586-1234.

Parents who prefer a more home-like environment for their children might consider a licensed family day care home. Cindy Stewart, president of the Orange County Day Care Assn., says she takes in a few school-age children during the summer, usually siblings of the infants and toddlers she cares for year-round. So do many of the other 2,200 members of the association. But she recommends that parents and providers take into account that school-age children need a different kind of care.

“It’s difficult to mix the two age groups,” she says. “Older children need more space, a little more freedom, but they also need to be supervised.” And because school-age children need full-time care only in the summer, many providers prefer the little ones. The association is holding a workshop today “to encourage providers to consider school-age care,” Stewart says. “We do see the need for care for these children, especially now with summer beginning. So many of them are being left alone.”

The association provides free referrals in 27 county areas according to ZIP code. Call (714) 545-0472 for more information.

An even more difficult area is care for children from 10 to 15. Irene Dardashti, coordinator of Planning Programs for Young Adolescents at the Coalition Concerned with Adolescent Pregnancy, concentrates on that age group. In addition to parks and YMCA programs, Dardashti recommends checking with local Youth Employment Services for jobs for young adolescents, or hospitals and other agencies for volunteer opportunities to keep kids busy during the summer. The Young Sportsman Club in Tustin and Irvine also offers activities for older children. She also suggests summer school, which is recovering from the stigma of failure once associated with it.

“With so many schools going to year-round, the image of taking the summer off is a getting a little foggy,” Dardashti says. “The scramble for child care isn’t just in the summer. We have to come up with something year-round.”

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