Parents can’t help but feel the pressure of the summer schedule. Working parents, especially, go to great lengths to manage camps, babysitters and playdates to keep their children busy, happy and occupied.
Megan Spivey and Megan Petrik created Summer Sanity, a platform to help families lean on each other to coordinate summer activities.
They got the idea after creating a Google spreadsheet to share with fellow daycare families to stay connected over the summer. In two years, from 2021-2023, they went from sharing it with eight families to 40.
The concept crystallized for Spivey one morning when Spivey’s then 8-year-old daughter refused to go to a triathlon camp. She’d been excited about it months before, but when her mom admitted she hadn’t coordinated any friends to go, too, she didn’t want any part of it.
“This is not a toddler situation where I can wrestle her into the car seat,” Spivey says. “I just didn't have the capacity to do all the coordination. I think as they get older, that matters.”
Together, she and Petrik, fellow corporate moms and daycare friends, decided to create Summer Sanity to make it easier for parents to connect without long text chains. They’d seen the benefits of youth sports apps like Game Changer but wanted something where individual users could supply their own schedule information.
For the next 18 months, they searched for a developer and found a great fit in Brian Moran, a father of three with his own appreciation for the challenge of coordinating kids’ summer schedules. Together, they launched Summer Sanity last year and signed up 150 families. The platform, which is complimentary to use, had 450 families in January.
The growth will continue, Spivey says, because they’re working with both Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and the YMCA to spread the word.
Summer Sanity also offers a camp directory, like other platforms, but its focus on a social component is unique, Spivey says. Parents can invite friends, as they would on social media, to view their summer schedules. Moran used the tool to invite 10 friends from his son’s baseball team to a basketball camp. Spivey has used it to share babysitting.
The platform is great for families whose children live in different neighborhoods from schoolmates, travel for sports and activities, and for parents trying to resist giving kids technology to coordinate with friends themselves.
“We really just want to serve and connect parents,” Spivey says. “It can be so lonely trying to figure out summer schedules. The magic of parenting is when you can do it with other people and not put it all on your shoulders.”
The camp guide focuses on Charlotte, Raleigh and Charleston, but calendar-sharing can apply anywhere. Summer Sanity has users as far as New York and Texas.
Spivey says they’re exploring expanding to “Fam Sanity” after realizing parents need help coordinating all year long, especially during breaks in the school calendar or for homeschool families.
Learn more at SummerSanity.com