If you are concerned that your child’s summer is starting to unravel, our practice in Williston Park is open through the summer and offers in-office, in-home, and teletherapy sessions across Nassau County. Reach out at (516) 523-1626 or dr.comiskey@behavioralconsultingli.com.
When the last school bus pulls away in late June, most Long Island parents feel a mix of relief and quiet dread. Relief, because the homework battles are over. Dread, because nine weeks of unstructured time is stretching out in front of a child who, frankly, does not do well with unstructured time.
If your child receives ABA therapy, attends a special education program, or has been working through anxiety or ADHD with a therapist during the school year, summer is the season where families lose ground. Educators call it the “summer slide.” In behavioral health, we see it too — the regression of skills that took months of consistent work to build.
The good news is that the slide is not inevitable. With a little intentional planning, the summer can actually accelerate your child’s progress instead of erasing it.
Why summer is harder than parents expect
The school day is, for most children, a thirty-five-hour-per-week behavioral intervention. There are predictable transitions, social demands, sensory inputs, expectations, and consequences. When that scaffolding disappears overnight, kids who depend on structure — particularly those with autism, ADHD, or anxiety disorders — can become disorganized, irritable, and avoidant within days. Sleep schedules drift. Screen time creeps. The skills you worked all year to build start to soften.
Parents often tell me in late August that their child seems to have “lost” months of progress. What actually happened is that the practice opportunities disappeared, and behaviors that were never fully extinguished came back in.
Build a summer schedule before June ends
The single most protective thing a Long Island family can do is map out a realistic weekly rhythm before camp drop-off becomes a daily crisis. This does not need to be elaborate. A simple visual schedule that includes wake time, a morning anchor activity, lunch, an afternoon outing, screen-time windows, and a consistent bedtime is enough for most children. The goal is predictability, not perfection.
For children with autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, predictability is not a preference. It is a regulator of behavior. When a child knows what comes next, the brain can stop scanning for threats and settle.
Keep therapy on the calendar
Families sometimes pause therapy in summer because schedules get complicated. I gently push back on this. Summer is often when we make our biggest gains, because we have flexibility to work in real-world settings — the grocery store, the park, the family barbecue, the airport before a trip. Generalization of skills happens in the messy environments outside the office, and summer hands you those environments on a plate.
If your child is on a school-based IEP that included related services like counseling or behavioral support, ask whether extended school year (ESY) services are available. Many Nassau County districts offer them, and most parents do not realize they have to be requested.
Watch the three things that quietly erode
In my Williston Park practice, I see the same three skills slip every summer when families do not plan for them.
The first is sleep. Bedtime drifts later, wake time drifts later, and by mid-July a child who used to fall asleep at 9:00 PM is wired until midnight. Sleep dysregulation feeds anxiety, attention difficulties, and emotional reactivity. Hold the bedtime within thirty minutes of the school-year norm.
The second is independence. During the school year, kids practice executive function constantly — packing a bag, following a schedule, finishing tasks. At home, parents hover. Use summer to deliberately step back. Let your eight-year-old plan a picnic. Let your fifteen-year-old manage a public-transit trip to Eisenhower Park.
The third is social practice. Without classmates, socially anxious kids and kids on the spectrum often go weeks without meaningful peer interaction. By Labor Day, they are rusty. Sign up for at least one structured social experience each week — a small camp, a library program, a co-op group.
The opportunity hidden in the slide
Here is what I want every parent to hear: summer is not a threat to your child’s progress. It is the most powerful generalization opportunity of the year. The skills your child practiced in a quiet therapy office or a classroom in May only become real when they hold up at a crowded Jones Beach parking lot or a cousin’s birthday party. That is the work of summer.
Plan the structure, protect the sleep, keep therapy in the rotation, and let your child do hard things in the real world. By the time September arrives, you will not be picking up the pieces. You will be ahead.