Summer vacation is the season of sprinklers and popsicles and sleeping in. It’s also the season when parents often have the most difficulty managing screen time. Trying to get things done while also keeping the kids entertained all day can be really frustrating. It’s so easy for screens to become the default solution because they zap summer boredom better than any other invention. Entertained kids = parents getting things done.
As a GenXer raised by Boomer parents in the ‘80s, I can’t help but notice a huge cultural shift around kid’s boredom in the last 40 years. Boomer parents trusted that we had the skills to deal with our boredom and didn’t consider it their problem to solve. Those of us who were kids in the ‘80s had hours and hours to develop these skills—boring car rides, a sibling’s boring T-ball game, boring adult conversations, and hundreds of other boring things were part of every day living because Silicon Valley hadn’t yet invented the Instant Boredom Zapper.
Things had changed by the time I was raising my son in the 2010s. Boredom was now considered a parenting failure. A bored kid meant you were doing something wrong. I felt this particularly acutely as the parent of an only child.
Then, I was given the best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten. When my son was young, I was a violin teacher, surrounded by my students and their wise parents. Three of my students, all siblings, were remarkable because they were always engaged in creative and imaginative pastimes. I asked their mom what her secret was and her answer changed my son’s childhood. “Boredom!” she said. “Kids do the most incredible things when they get fully, truly bored. But you have to be willing to let them get REALLY bored. If they’re not doing something amazing, they’re not bored enough yet.”
I’d heard this idea before of course, but hadn’t really trusted it enough to try it with my own child. But when I stopped handing over a screen to solve boredom, when I let my son get REALLY bored, he started doing amazing things. He invented board games and wrote long stories in blank notebooks. He started rollerblading and launching dry ice rockets. During Covid, he built incredible physics contraptions with paper towel holders, marbles, string and dominos that took up his entire bedroom. The boredom I had dreaded so much turned out to be the secret sauce to a childhood full of creativity, imagination and motivation.
Seeing this happen really shifted my thinking. Perhaps our kids’ boredom isn’t a miserable state we should avoid at all costs, but an incredibly powerful motivator we’ve culturally forgotten about. It’s undeniable that technology has added amazing things to our lives. But, if boredom is actually the catalyst for motivation then what are we taking away from our kids when they have constant access to Instant Boredom Zappers?
These days I work with families to help them manage screen time and I see the same thing. Motivation, creativity, and imagination show up after the boredom. Real 1980s level boredom. What we had in the ‘80s was a ready list of things we loved to do when we were bored, and it was always front of mind because we had to use it all the time. This mental list rarely gets made by kids today, and the motivation to explore off-screen pastimes gets weaker when they’re always grabbing a Boredom Zapper.
Changing how we deal with boredom in our families can be challenging in the beginning, especially if kids have gotten very used to being entertained by a screen. One of the best ways to help kids learn to manage boredom is to plan ahead. Sit down with your kids and help them think of at least ten screen-free things they enjoy. Write them down on a Boredom List and hang it on the fridge. This way, whenever someone complains of boredom and asks for a screen, you have an easy answer. “Go check out your Boredom List—it has all kinds of great ideas for you!”
All of our kids can develop the boredom skills we had in the ‘80s, it just takes practice. It won’t happen in a single day, or a week, but it will happen in less than a month. We just have to trust it, like our parents and grandparents did.
Summer is a great time to experiment with changing how you think about boredom in your family. I’ve created two handouts to make it easier for your kids to create their boredom lists. Go to the Printouts page under “Resources” on my website mindful-media.net and look for Your Bag Of Tricks for Boredom, and 50 Things For Kids To Do. In the wise words of a Southeast Portland mom, “If they’re not doing something amazing, they’re not bored enough yet.” Let’s make this the summer we remember that boredom is a motivator, not a misery!