Summer enrichment is free for Wayne, Macomb and Oakland county students.
- Parents say they want to see more state-funded summer school programs and more full-day options for kids under age 5.
- Parents are also looking for community based options neighbors can pool their kids and switch off care.
The school year is over, but summer break isn’t necessarily a welcome reprieve for parents. It’s a notoriously difficult time for families to cobble together childcare for out-of-school kids and their younger siblings.
“No one makes summer work,” said Detroiter Markeisha Chapman, a 41-year-old mother of six. “Everyone doesn’t have a support system,” Chapman said.
Parents across Michigan echo Chapman’s frustration.
Planning needs to start months ahead because summer care options often fill up within minutes of opening. Places that serve the youngest kids are few and far between. So are sites with full-day hours for working families. Summer camps and daycares can be expensive, and a private nanny is typically prohibitive. Summer, too, brings chaos and inconsistency that can wreak havoc on little ones used to routine.
The list goes on.
Lauren Dake sees the summertime dread in her work as a family liaison for the Great Start Collaborative in Northern Michigan (Great Start Collaboratives exist in each county to coordinate early childhood resources).
“I see stress — this worry of what am I supposed to do?” Dake said.
Jennifer Beuthin, a leadership consultant and mother of 6-year-old twins in Traverse City, said summer care stress is another example of how the world “is not set up for moms and families.” Beuthin’s family figured out the majority of their summer childcare plans before Christmas.
“I just know it shouldn’t be this hard,” she said.
Parents highlight a number of possible solutions including more state-funded summer school programs and more options, particularly for kids under five-years-old, for full-day summer care to make the landscape less competitive and more tenable, especially for families where parents work outside the home. Many also said they wished for more community-based options where neighbors pool their kids and switch off care.
Seven Michigan parents from across the state share how they’ve figured out — or are still figuring out — summer care for their kids.
‘Where’s my village?’
Ashley Morrow, Chippewa CountyChild welfare project specialist for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians17-year-old Kadence, 15-year-old Mackenzie, 11-year-old Carter, 8-year-old Lincoln, 3-year-old Reagan
Ashley Morrow, 38, has five kids, so she’s used to the overwhelm of trying to figure out summer childcare. Still, it stresses her out.
Her two eldest daughters, Kadence and Mackenzie, have paid summer jobs lined up at a youth job program through the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Morrow said they’ll both have to balance their work schedules with staying home to watch their two little brothers. Morrow wishes she could put her sons in a summer program — she’d like for them to have more structure, not just gaming and staying up late. Her boys could attend day camp at the Sault which would be free because her kids are members of the Sault Tribe. But the camp is a 25-minute drive each way from their home in the Upper Peninsula’s Kincheloe. It’s just too far for Morrow or her husband to drive there and back on a daily basis, morning and night.
“I wish we had more options locally,” she said.
During the year, Morrow’s three-year-old daughter goes to a daycare that’s around $1,000 dollars per month — also covered by the Sault Tribe — which she’ll stay at for the summer. Though even that care isn’t totally consistent. Because the daycare follows a school schedule, it will close for 11 days from June 30 to July 11 and Morrow will have to piece together care for her daughter those days.
Morrow said she’ll likely take time off work during that time and will lean on her teenagers, too. She’s grateful to have their help. “Otherwise, I don’t know what we would do,” Morrow said.
Morrow was at a loss when trying to consider what would help her as a parent during the summer, aside from more summer program options near her home. She said she sometimes feels she and her husband are on their own.
“I mean, I always hear people talk about their ‘villages’ and it’s like, where’s my village?” she said.
The race to find spots for summer programs
Nakia Middleton, Wayne CountyEntrepreneur 12-year-old Skylur, 10-year-old Sebastian, 4-year-old Syre, 3-year-old Saryah
Nakia Middleton, 31, is a single mom of four kids living in South Redford. She’s an entrepreneur, specializing in finance. But since she had her two youngest kids — a 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter — Middleton said she’s sacrificed making money to take care of her family.
“Before, I made over $100,000 dollars working at Rocket, Charles Schawb, great companies,” Middleton said. “You think I would have a job, but as a single parent, I can’t do both.”
Middleton is focused on finding “character building” summer programs that will help her kids avoid what she calls “the summer learning lag,” but not break the bank. She’s secured a full-ride scholarship for her 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son at Keys 2 Life, a life skills and music-focused camp held at Wayne State University from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. from June through early August.
As for finding summer options for her two younger kids, Middleton’s anxious. She said she hasn’t seen many affordable local camps catering to three and four year olds and said she’d like providers to create more options for this age group. Especially for her 4-year-old who recently finished state funded pre-K, known as GSRP, Middleton is worried about being able to find care that continues the education he’s been getting all year. “My son got his first year of experience of school, so I don’t want it to abruptly end and he’s back in the house,” she said. “I want him to have exposure to summer school.”
At the moment, she’s planning to look into options at Detroit nonprofit Focus: HOPE and New St. Paul, a Head Start provider, but feels she’s running up against the clock: “I feel like I’m running a race before the other parents!”
Middleton has her fingers in many pots — she’s earning a certificate in journalism and taking a certification exam for life and health insurance administration. She’s hoping to find summer care for her youngest so she can focus on her studies. “If I can get the kids away, even if for half a day, I could get about 10 steps ahead,” Middleton said.
A potty training workaround
Nikki Sprague, Midland CountyPart-time family liaison for the Great Start Collaborative 21-year-old Andrew, 18-year-old CJ, 6-year-old Wade, 4-year-old Everett
Up until the beginning of June, Nikki Sprague’s summer childcare plans were going to be “on the fly.” The 43-year-old mother of four boys and her husband planned to cobble together care for their two youngest between her husband’s days off and her own flexible work schedule part-time at her county’s Great Start Collaborative program. Sprague’s husband recently got a full-time job at the Corning Solar chip factory in Hemlock, which requires him to work 12-hour shifts, sometimes nights, with days off varying weekly. Her two eldest are out of the home and can’t be relied on to help out, she said. Plus, Sprague’s father, the couple’s only living parent who lives close by, is in fragile health.
The situation was not ideal because it likely meant they’d sacrifice time with the whole family. “I don’t want us to be on opposite shifts all the time where we don’t get to see each other, or my boys don’t get the whole family together,” Sprague said.
She’d been researching summer programs for her boys and the options she found were too expensive. Then, Sprague’s luck changed. Recently, she drove by the Salvation Army, which was advertising its summer camp. “I had heard about it but figured they would already be full, or it would cost a lot, or Everett would be too young,” Sprague said. When she went in to inquire, she was elated to find the camp was for ages four to 12, was just $10 dollars a day for each kid, and offered full-time care from Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with the option for before care beginning at 7:30 a.m. and after care ending at 5:30 p.m.
But there was one roadblock: kids have to be potty-trained to attend and her son Everett is not yet. It looked like she’d be back to square one until Sprague decided to reach out to the program to find a workaround. She agreed to set up a deal wherein she’ll come change her youngest daily so that he can attend, something she’s able to do given that her schedule is flexible and the camp is a block away from her office.
Sprague said she remembers her own summers growing up. “It seems like people had more family members able to help out,” Sprague said. “With having my younger two a little older, the grandparents are older and not as able to help out as they would if it would have been 10 years ago or something.” Sprague’s two eldest boys are foster children who came into the couple’s care when they were older. Having just re-entered the workforce last August, this is Sprague’s first summer needing to navigate care with younger ones.
“I’m just going with the flow and trying to be resilient,” she said.
There goes the routine
Joann Arpino, Oakland CountyProgram director at NeuroRestorative4-year-old daughter Eden, 2-year-old daughter Elle
Joann Arpino, 36, isn’t normally an anxious person but said she feels anxiety when it comes time to figure out summer care for her two young daughters. “It’s something I have to do every year, it’s an unknown,” she said.
Arpino is from Canada and her husband is from Australia, two countries, she said, that offer more robust social support to families than the United States. Arpino lists year-long paid leave for new parents and government-funded daycare as examples.
Childcare, Arpino said, “has been very hard to navigate because we’re both working professionals.” Figuring care out during the summer is even more chaotic given the lacking options for young kids.
Most camps Arpino saw were for 6-year-olds and above. Even in Troy, which Arpino calls “family-friendly and well-resourced,” many summer camp options she came across wouldn’t work. She recalled a community center with a 9 a.m.-11 a.m. schedule. “What is 9 to 11 going to do for a working parent? Nothing,” Arpino said. Other camps only accepted kids who were potty trained, which her youngest is not. “I’m not doing two separate drops every day,” she said. In the end, Arpino said she ended up touring around five options, all of which she took time off of work to see in person.
For Arpino, summer just throws things out of whack. “This year is the first time since becoming a mom I feel I’m in a good routine, I was just getting back to really working,” she said. “And then you gotta disrupt it all in the summer.”
This summer, Arpino said her family will cherry pick options that provide their daughters a balance of structure and fun. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the girls will go to Learning Grove Academy, a new summer camp that didn’t have a wait-list like many of the options Arpino found. On Wednesdays, the girls will both go to the home daycare that the youngest, Elle, attends during the year. And on Mondays and Fridays, the couple will rely on Arpino’s mom to help.
As the mother of a child with autism, Arpino said summer school would be ideal because her daughter, Eden, has an especially hard time with a changing schedule each summer. “It’d be a way of easing the transition because it’s an extension of what they’re already doing,” she said.
No options? These moms created their own.
Linnea Delahanty, Leelanau CountyStay at home mom2-year-old daughter Spencer, 4-year-old daughter Rhyan
Leelanau County is a great place to raise young kids, Linnea Delahanty, 30, said. Even so, the stay-at-home mother of two faced a number of barriers to figuring out summer care including high costs and few available options for those in her kids’ age range. “It’s hard to find anyone willing to take kids that young,” she said.
Potty training can be a big barrier for getting a little one into a summer program. But even with a potty-trained daughter, she couldn’t find an option. Programs that would have served both kids either filled up immediately (Delahanty was ready and waiting at her laptop when registration opened, to snag a spot at the Boardman Lake Nature Center camp for the last two years, to no avail) or were too expensive at an average of around $200 a week. The only other free program available was a vacation bible school run through a nearby church. But because her family isn’t religious, Delahanty didn’t feel that was the best choice for her kids.
After researching for a week, Delahanty and her two mom friends took summer plans into their own hands. The group — two stay-at-home moms, one mom who works outside the home — sat down for eight hours to plan their own “DIY nature summer camp,” Delahanty said. The summer camp they’ve created will run once a week for eight weeks, and will focus on a different theme each week. The six kids in the camp will do activities, complete worksheets and eat food all made by the three moms.
“We tried our best to make sure everything we did was free or affordable so if we wanted to share with other people, it was accessible,” Delahanty said.
On the days that their summer camp isn’t running, Delahanty plans to take advantage of library story time and parenting playgroups funded by a Leelanau County millage, that run for an hour each day and include snack, story time and a book kids bring home. As a stay-at-home mom, she’ll also provide summer care for a friend on Wednesdays.
Delahanty said she’s excited about the summer camp they’ve cooked up, but acknowledges the option is time consuming. “I’m giving up a lot of my personal time to make this program work,” Delahanty said. “It’s time also they would get to spend with my parents or my husband’s parents. Now they might just be with me.” Delahanty said she feels lucky to be able to spend this summer with her daughter before she starts kindergarten, but wishes her husband, who works as a carpenter seven days a week to support the family, could have the same opportunity. “He does miss out on quite a bit,” she said. “I know it does affect him and it affects them.”
Finding a hidden gem
Ashley Fetters, Grand Traverse CountySpeech therapist7-year-old Evelyn, 3-year-old Lucas
When Ashley Fetters, 39, moved to Traverse City from Cincinnati, Ohio, she didn’t know she’d have to start finding summer care options for her kids in February. This was her first summer needing to find care. In early 2024, she opened her own therapy practice and had previously been a stay-at-home mom.
“I was still very much in winter mode,” Fetters said. “And then a lot of my mom friends were stressed for me, because they were like ‘you need to do this now.’”
When registration opened in February for summer camp at her daughter’s public school, it filled up within five minutes. “If you don’t click refresh quick enough, you won’t have a spot.” That’s what happened to Fetters. The YMCA, the other public summer camp that would take both of her children, was also booked within minutes of registration opening.
Her options kept narrowing. “I was feeling a little desperate,” Fetters said. She considered stringing together a different camp each week for her 7-year-old which felt overwhelming. Plus, the camps that were available didn’t also take 3-year-olds, which means her son couldn’t attend. “It was really hard to find a place for them to be happy, safe, entertained, and both together,” Fetters said. Hiring a nanny, she said, would’ve been easily triple the cost of summer camps.
In March, through a mom friend, Fetters found a summer camp hosted by a private school through a community church that offers 12 weeks of summer care where both her children could attend. “I felt relieved and grateful.” Because she wasn’t able to sign her kids up for the larger summer camps in her area, she said this one felt like a hidden gem.
Fetters also wanted to make sure there was an educational element to 7-year-old Evelyn’s summer. Fetters found two week-long programs, one a climbing camp and the other a chemistry camp, for her daughter.
After four months of figuring out plans, Fetters recently finalized paperwork and payments for her kids’ camps.
It’s tough, even for good planners
Andrew Rubinstein, Chippewa CountySenior director of advancement at Lake Superior State University6-year-old Allaire, 4-year-old Jack, 1-year-old Salem
Andrew Rubinstein, 36, and his wife plan ahead. They planned summer care for their three kids last fall and finalized it by January, Rubinstein said. They also planned their careers around their kids. Both became licensed real estate agents to gain the flexibility they felt would be necessary for life with kids, though Rubinstein works currently in athletic fundraising at Lake Superior State University.
“There’s that gymnastics of you either have one parent who’s not working or has a really flexible schedule or you have to have parents or grandparents that aren’t working that can help,” he said.
Even though much of Rubinstein’s wife’s family lives near their home in Sault Ste. Marie, they all work full time. “They can help us if we need someone to drop a kid off at practice, or pick them up, but like middle of the day, if a kid is sick, or we don’t have childcare in the summertime, we’ve got to kind of figure it out on our own,” Rubinstein said.
This summer, Rubinstein’s oldest, Allaire, will attend an eight-week summer day camp that starts in June and costs $1,500. Because the camp doesn’t cover the full summer, there will be three weeks when Rubinstein’s wife will take care of Allaire. But if her real estate job gets too hectic during that time and she needs more support, Rubinstein has ample vacation time at Lake Superior State which he can take to help cover. His prior employer in Pennsylvania offered only five personal days.
Rubinstein’s middle child, Jack, will stay at the preschool where he just finished GSRP. Since GSRP only runs through the school year, the couple will pay $550 a month for summer tuition — that’s up from the $190 a month they pay for wraparound care during the school year. “It is too bad GSRP doesn’t run in the summer,” he said.
One-year-old Salem will continue at the in-home licensed daycare a block from their house, which will cost $750 per month. At Lake Superior State, Rubinstein is also able to take $5,000 dollars out of his annual paycheck before taxes for dependent care, a benefit that saves the couple around $80 dollars in taxes monthly, he estimated.
The couple has also already begun planning for summer 2026. Because of a family vacation they’ll be taking in June 2026, they’re opting out of summer care that they’d usually lock in ahead of time. “So now we’re kind of rolling the dice,” Rubinstein said. But he’s not too worried, he said, given his family has the luxury of driving across the bridge to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, a city of around 70,000, where they’ve enrolled their kids in gymnastics and swimming programs in the past and where they’ve seen day camps offered at places like the YMCA.
Beki San Martin is a fellow at the Detroit Free Press who covers child care, early childhood education and other issues that affect the lives of children ages 5 and under and their families in metro Detroit and across Michigan. Contact her at [email protected].
This fellowship is supported by the Bainum Family Foundation. The Free Press retains editorial control of this work.
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