I'm Bored

The Aish mom blog has caught my eye. The current article begins with these statements: "It strikes terror into the heart of every mother, paralyzes the best of teachers, antagonizes even good-natured babysitters. It's a short expression that packs a lot of punch. No one wants to hear their children say those dreaded words, "I'm bored."

The author is correct that many parents fear boredom. People I have met and articles I have read include possible boredom as one of the reasons camp is a must. Perhaps my opinion is not a popular one, but I welcome "boredom" in moderation. Capitalized upon, boredom can be translated into productivity.

The author writes, "It's particularly frustrating after all the money we've lavished on summer camp, the latest computer games, the newest toys...." A commentor hits the nail on the head when he writes "Could this be why more mundane activities are boring? They've been desensitized with so much of the latest gadgets and technology that traditional activities just do not suffice."

The author asks, "Do [our kids] see us flit from project to project, unable to sit down and really see something through to the end, excited by the vision and not the nitty gritty work?" and recommends that we take a more active interest in the world around us writing, "If our children see us enthralled with everyday vistas and experiences, they will learn to do the same."

This is fine no doubt. But, to tell you the trust, I can't ever remember seeing my own parents regularly and actively enthralled, nor were they always excited by the vision because the "nitty gritty work" is, well, work. And yet, I can't remember spending a summer bored, although by the end of break I was certainly ready to go back to school. As I recall, there was always something to do. I have no doubt that my mother welcomed boredom too. The result of my own "boredom" often ended up in learning something new, reading, exercising, bike riding, or just cleaning the house. And if I didn't find something, my mother suggested something. (In no way do I endorse letting children randomly roam the streets, although it is a shame that seeing kids bike ride around a neighborhood is a rarity today).

The real problem, in my very amateur parent opinion, is not so much that the adults don't demonstrate enough enthusiasm, although a little more probably couldn't hurt, but that we have engaged in over scheduling both our children and ourselves and that our children simply don't know what to do with "downtime." They are so used to being "entertained" and stimulated by the excitement of something, they have lost some ability to just choose some work and see it through. I have to say that if I see a topic in the Yated one more time about what to do to "entertain" kids, I will scream. I'm afraid all of the entertaining has worked against parents.

In the week between school and camp, conversations amongst mothers focus on how hard it is to have the kids home, how they are "bored" and how they are "driving me crazy." Perhaps I live in an alternative universe, but we haven't experienced any of the above. My kids have been occupying themselves quite nicely. The oldest seems to have found a new interest. And the kids have been so engrossed with reading each other books every morning this week, that I've been free to tackle some projects. I might be the only parent out there who actually is experiencing a small tinge of sadness that school starts next week.

Recommended book I read this summer: Hyperparenting: Are You Hurting Your Child By Trying Too Hard? which was later reprinted as The Overscheduled Child. These books are far too detailed to review in one sentence, but one recommendation was to let the child live amongst the parents in his life, rather than separating the child out into his/her own activities. The authors recommend abandoning the notion that parents' lives revolve solely around their children and revisits the concept of children being a part of the daily discourse of a family, where they learn a great deal more about living by having the opportunity to observe adults in an adult world. Today it seems that many children are removed from the day to day life of their parents. I imagine much of the difficulty the week between camp and school or school and camp is that parents and children don't have a regular non-Shabbat rhythm when they are together. And being together outside of Shabbat and Yom Tov is a rarity as boys have school on Sundays and then there are the Sunday extracurriculars.

Just some thoughts. As always, I await your comments.