After almost 10 years of momming, I’ve trained myself to be a pretty cool-headed mama.
But there are three things that always make my blood-pressure rise:
- A shrieking, tantruming toddler,
- The dreaded “What’s for dinner?” question, and
- A beloved but whiny voice declaring, “I’m BORED!”
You guys. I just. Can’t. Even.
“Fixing” the Boredom
Before we get in to some real-world solutions, I want to take a minute to be YOUR advocate.
Everyone and their mom (literally) seems to be involved in our kids well-being. From the time they are tiny babies we have well-meaning grandmas asking “Where are your baby’s socks?” when we’re standing in the Target checkout line.
And while having a village available to help raise our children is wonderful and necessary, sometimes it makes us start questioning our own capabilities, intuition, and boundaries.
So let me make this suggestion: It is not your job, as a mother, to entertain your kids.
It is definitely your option. You can play with and entertain your kids to your heart’s content if that fits in with your mothering style and brings you joy.
But entertainment is not, in my opinion, a core requirement of motherhood.
Instead, I propose that our jobs might be this: to prepare our kids to live meaningful, healthy lives both while they are with us and when they are grown.
And part of that, to me, is helping them learn to cope with boredom when there is nothing and no one there to provide direct entertainment.
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Boredom = Opportunity
Think about the moments that you’ve had your best spontaneous, creative ideas. Did they appear while you were watching TV or playing Candy Crush?
Probably not.
For me, big ideas usually take shape while I’m away from the siren call of easy entertainment–when I’m in the shower, or driving somewhere with the radio off. When my brain is actively searching for something to engage with.
When I’m bored.
The Gateway
Where most of us–kids and adults–get hung up is in the initial discomfort of boredom.
I strongly believe that boredom is a gateway to creativity: before we can get to the wonderful creating part, we have to push through the uncomfortable, sometimes panicky feeling of being bored.
We have to give our brains time to change gears from consuming entertainment to creating entertainment.
But this also happens to be the stage when kids get whiny.
The discomfort stage is when you start hearing, “Mom, I’m bored.”
“There’s nothing to do.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Can’t I just watch a show?”
And that makes sense!
Kids don’t like being uncomfortable.
And when they face most types of discomfort–injury, hunger, illness–they come to us to relieve it.
But unlike bandaging a scraped knee or quelling hunger with a snack, staunching their boredom doesn’t actually serve them in the long run.
(Unsurprisingly?) Andy Dwyer was Right!
As I’m writing to you right now, my kids are completely absorbed in the creation of a Lego world, complete with individual narratives for each of their minifigures.
Over the years their characters have grown personalities and backstories, built houses and bought pets, changed jobs and gone on adventures.
When they wake up on Saturday morning, even before they eat breakfast, they head over to the Lego table to delve into a magical world they have created together.
Lately, my bored kids have made houses for stuffed animals out of cardboard boxes.
They’ve made up their own card games and created a general store in the playroom.
They’ve sat down and read books–often to each other.
They’ve piled a laundry basket with pillows and made a carpet-ride for their baby sister.
They’ve created their own coloring books and colored them in.
Basically, they’re proving that Andy Dwyer quote from Parks and Rec:
“Anything’s a toy if you play with it.”
The Pay Off
My kids don’t have any mystical talent that other kids lack. They’ve simply been forced to practice the skill of making it through the gateway.
Every time I’ve said, “I bet you can think of something,” or offered to “entertain” them by allowing them to pick a new chore, they’ve turned and gone into head-on battle with boredom.
Sometimes they lay around and stare at the ceiling for a while. Sometimes they crank up the whining to try to get me to give in. But once we’ve both soldiered through the discomfort stage, they eventually feel some little spark of an idea–and because there’s nothing else to do, they go chase it.
Mama, when we help our kids lean in to their boredom and power through the uncomfortable part, we give them the opportunity to discover that they are more than just consumers–they are creators.
What an incredibly empowering feeling!
They learn not to fear boredom, because they have seen that they can defeat it.
And if we get a hot minute to read a book for a second while they play? Well, I’d say that’s a bonus well-earned. 😉
xo,
Jamie
