Instead of spending money on camp or day care, I kept my daughter home this summer. We got more quality time, but it was harder to work.

• This summer, instead of sending our oldest to summer camp or day care, we kept her home.
• I got a lot of quality time with her and it was nice to have a slower pace to our days.
• But it also was hard to work sometimes, and she got more screen time than we’d have liked.

Sometime in mid-spring of this year, my wife and I started to panic.

“We have no during the summer. The other part of the theory that didn’t translate into practice was that most of my daughter’s friends would be in camp themselves, or otherwise on vacation. There were a few play dates, but a lot of the time, no one was really around.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having an old-school summer when no one else is having one.

So, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that my daughter ended up watching a lot more TV and having more iPad time than we initially planned for. After all, I have a flexible job as a blogger, freelance writer, and author; but at some point, even I had to buckle down and get some work done. With no friends around and blazing temperatures outside, TV became a big help.

I also have to admit that while I cherished some of the quality time we had together, there is such a thing as too much time with your kids. I got frustrated and claustrophobic at times, having my daughter on my hip all summer when I was trying to juggle work and other household responsibilities.

Ultimately, our family didn’t totally thrive during our summer of no childcare, but we did survive. And we saved a fortune by avoiding summer camps — which only worked for our household because my wife and I both work from home, and I have a lot of flexibility.

The ups and downs of this summer already seem like a distant memory as we get re-acclimated to the hectic school schedule. Next year, both of my girls will be out of school, and we’ll face the same conundrum again — only double! I don’t know yet exactly how we’ll handle it, but this summer experiment was a great learning experience for our family.