Step 1: Have children.
Step 2: Do your best to keep them entertained all the time when they’re babies and then toddlers.
Step 3: Rejoice when they start preschool and then kindergarten, because although you adore your children and love spending time with them, that’s two and a half hours less (on 3-5 days per week) you’ll have to make sure they’ve got stuff to do, and two and a half hours more (on 3-5 days per week) you’ll have all to yourself.
Step 4: Do the Happy Dance when they begin full-day elementary school.
Step 5: Feel overwhelmed when that first summer vacation begins, because you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have your children around all the time. Mentally scream “Who moved my cheese????”
Step 6: Plan fun activities to share with your kids each and every summer, and try to balance the idea of entertaining them with the idea that it’s okay for them to be bored enough to make their own entertainment sometimes.
Step 7: Make sure that part of your “curriculum” all along includes important lessons on money management and saving up for things they’ll want, like a car.
Step 8: Rejoice when they turn sixteen. Encourage them to get a job, so they can earn more money towards that car.
Step 9: Do the Happy Dance when they get jobs. Dance harder if employers are willing to give them 20-40 hours per week, because that means that when they have time off, they’ll be too tired to be bored.
Step 10: Boredom eradicated.
(You’re welcome.)
4 Comments
Momo Fali
Oh, this is so flipping true I can’t even stand it! But, you know what? #6 is a bunch of crap, because MY parents didn’t do ANYTHING to keep us busy, other than buy me a bike and a pool pass. If I wasn’t at the pool, I was outside playing with sticks, or rocks, or whatever else we could use to make up a game. I find THAT most annoying of all. My kids don’t know how to just go out and have fun and leave me out of it!
Grandma W
Most important buy your book “Chicken In The Car” so you have things for them to do and they can’t say I’M BORED. About 200 things to do no excuses. Then after you read it let them read it so they can make a list of what they want to do first.
Love
Grandma W
Heather
This is a great list and I will keep it in mind in the next few years. I am with Momo– kids are bored cause they don’t PLAY OUTSIDE like we used to. I entertained myself all day long and never seemed bored during summertime!
Patty
So true! That’s what my mom did too…nicely put! 🙂