I hate when kids tell me they are bored. I had a teacher in high school named Mr. Hoobing who said, “When you say you’re bored, that means you’re boring.”
So you know when a kid is crying and you go, “Do you want me to give you something to cry about?”
When kids tell me they’re bored, I SHOW them bored by lecturing to them. I tell them how I was an only child and had no siblings to argue with or annoy or punch out. And how I barely had neighbor friends because my mean old parents had us living in places where there weren’t a lot of [normal] kids.
I tell them how I had no Internet, no video games, no texting, no cell phone, no computer.
I did have MTV, though, friends. Back when MTV actually played music videos around the clock. And VH1. And good summer daytime TV like reruns of Leave it to Beaver, Who’s the Boss, One Day at a Time, I Love Lucy and tons of others I can’t even think of.
What did you do when you were bored? Besides play with your rocks and sticks? When Eva is bored she likes to help put away clean silverware from the dishwasher.
aw, come on, mom! aren't they just expressing how they feel?
ReplyDeleteI'm absolutely sure they are, in their own subtle ways, begging to hear about when you were a kid, they just need to be taught how to better ask for old people story time to begin.
that said, I send my kids to clean when they express boredom. they do so increasingly less, the more this has become my standard response.
I miss Eva. Can I borrow her on my weekends off?
Love,
T