When the school bus pulled away from my house last Tuesday morning and took away my four oldest kids, you could feel the vacuum of their energy leaving the house. In many ways it had been a hard summer, with many different needs happening for everyone in our family. But it was also a really good summer, and one I’m going to remember.

This summer I tested a theory. If I signed up my kids for nothing, made zero commitments to getting our twins in and out of a car to take them to something that would stimulate them from the outside, they would be able to get bored.

And if they got bored, they might have to listen to their insides.

And if they listened to their insides, their own mental chatter, they might have a glimmer of who they really are, and be able to sit with that person. They might actually engage with their insides long enough so that for the rest of their life, they would have a memory of who they really are.

I think a lot of moms instinctually try to do this, to slow their kids down. The world moves so fast. I remember listening to the writer Anna Quindlin years ago talk about kids, and how they need to stare off into the midspace sometimes. They need to be free enough to let their mind wander to know what it tends to wander towards.

Of course my kids got bored and wanted to watch TV. But we had all screens off policy between 9:30 am-5:30 pm. Inside these hours you could read, play games, play outside, anything but fight with your siblings or watch a screen. Halfway through I signed up three of them for the local soccer camp. On most days I had an outing – the pool, the beach if I had a sitter for the babies, a movie, a shopping trip, going to a museum or nature center – that would take up some of the day. But the rest of the time it was choose your own adventure.

Here’s what we learned: Lucy really likes music and loves to make slime. Sophie can whip up blueberry cobbler, brownies or pancakes on a whim and is in that chrysalis-like season where she is starting to leave girlhood behind in moments and in others cling to it. Her own type of midspace. RJ has encyclopedic knowledge about sports and is beyond passionate about airplanes and flying them and learning about geography. He had his first flying lesson for his birthday, and even his 5-year-old brother knows that his favorite overnight flight is Dubai to LA on his flight simulator app. And Andrew got to marinate in that summer before Kindergarten, where he can be a cop one minute and a rock star the next. Where books are enormous windows to another world and into their minds. And he fell in love with nature so much we are now the proud owners of an ant farm and an aquarium.

Here’s what else we learned: Like most kids, mine have a lot of energy and it needs to be directed somewhere. This experiment was actually really hard, and I will likely throw in a little more structure next year. I put in forced reading time for everyone when ever it got too hard (for me too!) which did help to get the kids hooked on books (see what boredom can do!). I was crawling to the finish line of the start of school because I was so depleted directing all that energy. Particularly when babies woke up at 6 and big kids wanted to stay up until 10. Minus the 10 hours a week I had a baby sitter to write and breath and run, I was on 16 hours a day.

I thought about when I was a kid, and how mothers weren’t in charge of directing that energy. Kids directed it outside, with friends. We could ride around the neighborhood at any given time and find kids to play with. We would hover over bridges dropping sticks for fun, swing a rope over the Itty Pitty, play hide and seat, and generally create universes out of our tiny wills that were fascinating. Now, kids are booked. They are really structured and have a lot of camps and activities.  And I get it. Kids have a lot of energy. Channel away, fellow parents. But I can’t help feeling nostalgic about our roving bands of free-range kids and wishing our kids could have a taste of that because it was awesome.

Still, we all have to bloom where we’re planted. And they did in so many ways. Sometimes they got on their bikes and got lucky, and found a friend at home. Often they played with their baby brothers. Each of them will have major memories of the twins as babies because we went slow enough that we had a lot of time to play with them. That was the highlight of summer. The year of the babies was entertaining for everyone. And the best parts were when the big kids actually played with each other. Dance parties, and pretend school, and hide and seek and baseball in the back yard.

I recently read an accomplished photographer describe their style of photography, and in it they said that most of their work is done by instinct. It got me thinking that maybe parenthood is like that. The next few challenges or choices I was faced with, I tried to pay attention to what my instincts were telling me. And you know what? It works. Except for that detour with the ant farm (instincts, where were you on that day?), I realized that I am better at parenting when I listen to my instincts.

Like most parents I am generally winging it most of the time, and whenever I hear people who feel the need to share that their baby was exclusively nursed until 12 months (not a drop of formula!), or are eating the same thing as their parents by 10 months, I know that that parent is still trying to pretend like they have control over their child (an illusion that is really shattered after your third kid). When you are not parenting by outside scripts of success, and you are listening to what your instincts are telling you, you tend to instantly prioritize. You tend to ask yourself, “do my kids feel loved? Have I made eye contact? Have I uttered words of affirmation? Have I nipped that bad habit in the bud?” Then, if all those things are for the most part happening, and you leave the house and everyone has shoes on, you know you are #winning.

More than that, you know that each one of your kids is a totally different person, who needs to be treated individually, and who will go off and do all kinds of amazing things without you. I hope they don’t do those things because of a race to keep up with peers, or because of forced expectations. I want them to be called to them. And in order for that to happen they have to be able to know what it’s like hear a call. They need silence and quiet. Stillness and space. And they had plenty this summer.

So I am trying to give my kids opportunities to listen to their voices, to their instincts. To even just recognize them. It means I have to slow down – so I am not rushing them, so I can ask them questions that help them tune into their instincts. To have the space so that they can solve problems on their own.

This summer’s slow speed let me cultivate things in my kids’ hearts. Character building, perspective building, confidence building. Was it in between putting out fights and cleaning up messes? You bet. Did I yell sometimes? Double yes. But it was worth it. I’m hoping to hang on to this lesson as we navigate the rapids of our fall schedule, which with four kids committed to sports is non-stop.

And while I am rejoicing that the school bus now comes to my house every morning, and that they’ll be tired enough to go to bed at 8 (praise hands), I can still remember watching them swim in the ocean on our last night of summer, and feeling like I deep down knew them all, and had snapshots of who they are at these ages. I thought about how we spent this slow summer, and I my instincts said, yup. That’s just what we needed.

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