How to Reparent Your Inner Child This Summer by Making Time for Play
The older you get, the more it can feel like time flies by. The novelty of our childhood wears off as we grow up and begin to focus our adult years on responsibilities. We lose the wonder that we once held as children when the world was full of possibilities and newness. Many of us spend this period of life trying to obtain perfection and congratulating ourselves for being hyper-productive. This leaves little room for the parts of ourselves that once enjoyed curiosity, joy, and connection.
But there is a way to bring back the joy of childhood as an adult and summer is the perfect time to slow down and reconnect with ourselves. Even if your childhood wasn’t particularly sunny, you can still cultivate a brighter you through reparenting. How do you reparent your inner child? By intentionally giving yourself the care, guidance, and support you may have needed growing up, and play can have a major role.
What is Inner Child Work?
In our adult minds, it’s tempting to think play is “just for kids,” but actually it is useful for healing our inner child and reparenting ourselves. If you’re feeling resistant to the idea of play as an adult, that’s likely because of your past experiences that have made you feel that enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake wasn’t important. Maybe you had to grow up fast and didn’t have time to nurture those parts of yourself, so now taking time to do so feels like a foreign concept. Unfortunately, you might be realizing that as an adult all work and no play can leave you feeling burnt out and empty.
We all have an inner child shaped by childhood experiences that formed our beliefs about ourselves, relationships, and emotions. However, not every pattern we carry from our childhood is helpful in our adulthood. Inner child work can help bring awareness to those patterns that need reshaping and an understanding about where they came from.
What Does it Mean to Reparent Your Inner Child?
Once we can identify those patterns and behaviors that need attention, reparenting helps us learn to care for ourselves to promote healing our inner child. Even if you didn’t have the nurturing, wise, and protective caregiver you needed, you can learn to be that for yourself.
The process of reparenting means offering yourself compassion for your past along with your present self, letting go of the harmful behaviors and patterns that you once clung to. There are many ways to reparent, and summer is an especially wonderful opportunity to focus on these three areas: making time for play, developing meaningful connections, and creating routines that promote safety and stability.
Learn more about reparenting here in a previous blog.
Reparent Through Play
How do you begin to reparent your inner child this summer through play?
Re-shape your narrative around play
As mentioned earlier, you might have discovered that previous messages you’ve received about play have spilled over into your attitude towards play as an adult. These negative views toward play could have been anything from feeling like play is a waste of time or being lazy to feeling like you had to be productive in order to earn fun. These internalized messages can now make it difficult to have enjoyment without guilt, which impacts your physical and mental health.
What are your feelings about play? Ask yourself:
What messages did you receive around play?
When did you stop making time for fun?
Rediscover what brings you joy
Thankfully, with some inner child work you can begin to shift into a more positive attitude about play in your life. Begin by reconnecting with what interests you and brings you joy. Think back to your childhood and reflect on these questions:
What did you love doing as a child?
What made you lose track of time?
What activities, sports, or hobbies do you enjoy doing now?
To get your juices flowing, here’s a list of hobbies and activities that you might’ve enjoyed as a kid or might still enjoy today:
Game nights
Reading fiction
Swimming
Pickleball or tennis
Hiking
Coloring
LEGO
Crafting
Painting
Dancing
Baking
Gardening
Photography
Playing music
Puzzles
The benefits of play
As you begin to rediscover your joy, naturally, you’ll begin to return home to yourself. By participating in play and hobbies just for sheer enjoyment, you become more present in the current moment. Your curiosity dials up while your mind quotes down. You allow yourself to reconnect to what has long been neglected and the whole picture of yourself comes into view as you build an identity that exists beyond work and productivity. You enjoy yourself for just being you.
An added benefit backed by science is that creative activities also engage different parts of the brain than analytical thinking. Play can also keep our brains healthy as we age, so it’s important that we don’t neglect it in our lives.
Reparent Through Connection
Play can help us reconnect with ourselves, but we also need healthy relationships with others to help with reparenting and healing our inner child.
While inner child work is mostly done alone as we build an awareness about ourselves, reparenting benefits from the fact that humans heal in relationships with one another. Everyone connects with others in different ways, and this is often shaped through childhood experiences. How you approach closeness, trust, vulnerability, and asking for support reveals a lot about how to work on reparenting your inner child in this area.
Beliefs that hold us back in relationships
It’s important to understand your beliefs about relationships so that you can have a starting place on what needs tending. Do you feel like you need to handle everything alone, or do you ask for help? Is it easy to accept love from others, or does it feel like you need to earn it? Do you ever berate yourself and feel like something is wrong with you or that you’re too much?
If you have a mostly negative perception of how others see you and tend to isolate yourself from asking for help when you need it, then you’re not experiencing the full joy that comes with doing life with other people who love and care about you. You’re also depriving yourself from sharing your care, support, and love with others.
Ways to create connection
Relationships in your life can be strengthened through time and intention. If your inner child is still healing from past hurts and is sensitive to being vulnerable and open with others, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make those connections. If you don’t already have those people in your life, a great way to meet others is to just be in spaces with opportunities to connect. Join groups and community events for activities you already love doing and you’ll meet others with the same interests to start building a foundation with.
Try these summer activities:
Game nights
Picnics
Walking with a friend
Outdoor concerts
Book clubs
Recreational sports leagues
Volunteering
Coffee dates
As you begin to meet more people and get to know them, you’ll start to get a feel for who is emotionally safe. Invest your time and energy into these relationships. Practice sharing parts of yourself with them. Build reciprocal friendships where both of you feel safe to share and be seen as well as ask for and receive support when needed.
Learning to set healthy boundaries in your relationships is also a must. Many of us grew up believing it wasn't safe or acceptable to say "no," so we learned to put others' needs before our own. As you begin building healthy, supportive relationships, you'll discover that setting boundaries doesn't push people away. Rather, it helps create trust, respect, and emotional safety. Honoring your own limits is an act of self-care that can strengthen your relationships and improve your overall emotional well-being.
If you notice you struggle with people-pleasing, trusting others, or feel like your needs don’t matter, these may be signs that an insecure inner child is influencing your relationships. I explore these patterns more in this blog.
Reparent Through Routines
The slowdown that happens in summer also provides an opportunity for you to develop routines that can help with reparenting. Routines provide structure and consistency, both of which were probably lacking in childhood. The ones that you build can help make up for what you should have received from a nurturing or attuned caregiver.
To establish healthy routines, you will need discipline to make small, consistent choices over time. Think of your routines as a form of self-care rather than punishment, healthy choices that you get to make for yourself to help you feel grounded and cared for. Start with just one or two manageable habits, like having a consistent bedtime or spending a few minutes journaling each morning. Slowly add in the routines that will serve you best.
Here’s a few ideas of routines you could start:
Regular meals
Movement (taking a walk, yoga, etc.)
Drinking enough water
Weekly planning
Journaling
Reading
Scheduling downtime
Protecting time for hobbies
These practices signal that you matter, deserve attention, and can create safety for yourself. And if you miss a routine, give yourself grace and start fresh tomorrow.
Having Compassion for Your Inner Child
With all of this discussion about your inner child and play, it’s easy to confuse reparenting with recreating your childhood. In reality, reparenting is about meeting your current needs with intention and compassion. Reparenting means giving your present self the joy, connection, and safety that allow you to thrive. The healing comes from seemingly ordinary, repeated acts of care, like making space for play, investing in meaningful relationships, and creating consistency through routines.
So tell me, how will you choose to reparent your inner child this summer and what types of play and routines will you try?
