Alice Cooper said it best with “school’s out for the summer, school’s out forever, I’m bored to pieces.” The accuracy in his lyrics is chilling. At least in my home. “I’m bored” repeats itself like an echo throughout the rooms and stays there for two FULL months. We went from finishing homework, rushing to and from practice, picking out clothes, baths and bedtimes to too many minutes and “nothing to do” so quickly I got whiplash.
We go on one beach trip a year. Usually in July. With five kids, getting ready for a vacation makes me feel like I need a vacation and doing it more than once a year sounds like torture. Outside of that beach vacation, my kids are constantly searching for “something” to fill their time. Hearing, “I’m bored,” daily will make a mom approach crash-out mode quickly if not careful. As my kids get older, and I have kids at multiple life seasons, I have realized that when my kids say, “I’m bored,” they are really saying something else. They are begging to be entertained, confused about how to sit quietly, and struggling with not being instantly satisfied.
To be fair, I can empathize with them. My husband asks me all the time, “can’t you just sit down somewhere?” It is not unlike me to be watching a show with him and folding laundry at the same time. Or to be working on school work and sitting at the table eating dinner. The art of multitasking has become part of who I am. If it wasn’t for my constant minimized thinking tabs, our lives would fall apart. It has always been difficult for me to sit in silence. So when the moments come, and I have nothing to do, I look for something. Afraid of what the silence may express or share. Recently, I have found the small slivers of silence comforting. In those moments, I am met with gratitude.
One day my son Axton was grounded from playing on his Playstation. He wasn’t happy about it and went to his room to sit in his disappointment. Slowly but surely he made his way downstairs and before I knew it he had been in the living room for hours with his three little siblings. The TV was off and all he had was pillows, a couch, and some blankets. I would walk through the living room and kitchen, as I did my cleaning, and just observed. He was building a fort for his younger siblings. Ever so often I would hear giggles. Sometimes fights. But not once did he ask me for help, entertainment, and not once did I hear, “I’m bored” from any of them. It was such a profound moment in my son Ayken’s life that he begged Axton for the next two consecutive days to play “fort” with him and despite Axton’s grounding only lasting one day, he didn’t touch his playstation for three.
My goal this summer break is to stop rushing to fill the moments, and to just live them. I want to teach my kids how to use boredom to grow gratitude in the moments where nothing is happening, nothing is planned, and there is nowhere to be. Am I teaching my children to crave constant entertainment? Or am I modeling to them the power in noticing the beauty, peace, and creativity in the silence? You see, when one of my kids says, “I’m bored,” they could be leaning into the doorway of imagination, creativity, rest, perspective, and most importantly, gratitude.
I think boredom is sometimes seen as a summer thief. But what if we as parents changed the perception of boredom, and realized its potential of making room for something far greater. My kids that day found gratitude in the nothingness. They made a core memory with essentially nothing and it was free of hassle and money.
You see, sometimes the Lord does His quietest heart work in the moments we are tempted to fill.