If ever there should be a class on maintaining your mental
health while raising children, a whole period should be devoted to
summer vacation.
If ever there should be a class on maintaining your mental health while raising children, a whole period should be devoted to summer vacation.
It may not be pretty to think about, but face it, summer can make an otherwise rational person desperate. I’m not sure why this is. Some people may think it’s due to all of the heat. Other people may attribute it to the lack of structured days. Me, I think it’s because I’m living in a house with two children who are “bored.”
And, believe me, nothing, NOTHING, is worse than being in charge of Kids Who Are Bored. (Well, OK, so maybe there are a few things like, say, living through colic and standing in line at the DMV and watching Love Boat reruns, but you know what I mean.) There is little that is worse mainly because once boredom sets in, there is nothing, NOTHING, you can do about it.
I mean, if you have children or teenagers, then you know by now that the number one rule of Kids Who Are Bored is that no matter what you suggest they do, your idea will automatically be rejected, whether this involves offering a trip to the moon, an African safari, revisiting places they loved way back in the spring. It doesn’t matter – you like it, they won’t.
“Hey how about going to the zoo to see the tigers?” I’ll say.
“No, way, that’s boring!”
“Then how about the museum?”
“Boring!”
“The park? Water slides? A nature hike in the country?!?!? ”
“Boooooooring.” (This extra long version is always said with the eyes rolled back in the head to emphasize the incredibility of someone even mentioning such places.)
Curiously enough, just when I’m almost out of ideas for them to shoot down, they’ll come up with an exciting, educational idea of their own.
“Hey, I know,” one will say. “Let’s play video games!”
“Yay!” they shout and then skip off hand-in-hand to the living room. (OK, no self-respecting kids skip off hand in hand with their sibling, but this is my daydream, and in my daydream, my kids get along.)
Let me just say, while this idea of letting your kids play videogames all summer may sound tempting, the big problem here is not only that it’s unhealthy and sign of lazy parenting and could lead to a lifetime of crime and all that, but that the sight of my children happily blowing each other up on the TV for hours and hours on end just feels, well, wrong.
Besides, every parent knows that once you give into video games, even for one second, you have to cajole, bribe, and plead with them to get them to go anywhere at all.
So I recently did the only thing I could think of: I put my foot down, unplugged the TV and said in my best I’m-in-charge kind of way, “You’re not going to just sit around and play video games all summer. We’re going to make of list of places we’d like to go and have fun together!”
Now to some of you, this may seem like a reasonable, and perhaps, noble plan. Others of you may think it’s just plain laughable. And, well you’re right. But only because after a lengthy process, we eliminated everything, except – well, you guessed it –staying home and playing video games.
But don’t worry. The second big rule about Kids Who Are Bored is that about five minutes before summer’s over and they’re due back in school, all of the boring activities previously scoffed at become terribly exciting to them. Suddenly the video games are tossed aside and they’ll willingly go anywhere you suggest: the grocery store, the shoe store, down the driveway to get the mail. ANYWHERE, as long as it is outside of the home.
No one knows why this happens. I brought it up to the Mom’s Psychoanalytic Society in the Park, and they worked on that one for quite while: does the video cable shock children somehow? Does the mere mention of school cause some kind of renewed enthusiasm for life? Is it the heat talking? And on and on.
After exploring all of the different theories, we finally came up with a professional conclusion: During the summer, kids make no sense at all.
