What’s so wrong with kids being bored?

I DON’T remember doing a single thing during school holidays, probably because we didn’t have a calendar of activities. Who decided parents have to be entertainment directors, asks Darren Levin.

AH, school holidays.

Those nice quarterly reminders to value teachers for doing the most emotionally draining, spirit destroying, back breaking job in the world — looking after your kids.

They’re also a good time to reflect on how the hell they do it. Because if you’re anything like me you will contemplate this and many other big life questions when you’re day five into the experiment and they’ve already done your taxes, gone tenpin bowling eight times, watched all 192 episodes of Full House, and reordered your record collection by genre.

“Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music goes in avant-garde not metal! Sheesh! Do you not remember a single thing I dadsplained?”

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Children burn through activities like you burn through true-crime podcasts. And you really need to have that entire two-week period loaded up with heaps of fun stuff kids enjoy for 12 minutes before moving on to the next shiny thing they saw on a YouTube pre-roll.

It wasn’t like that when I was a kid. I don’t remember a single thing we did during school holidays because in all probability we didn’t do a single thing. We made our own fun. Walked around in the streets alone. Got lifts from strangers. Snuck into ultra violent Jean-Claude van Damme movies. Ate McDonald’s for every meal. Just typical ‘90s kids stuff …

What happened to chucking kids in front of the television and hoping for the best? (Pic: supplied)

If you were bored you were boring, and it was up to kids — not parents — to make things fun. Now my kids just expect you to have all the answers to their entitlement, I mean entertainment problems. Can’t they just Google ‘Fun Things To Do Alone At Home These School Holidays’ and leave me here, on this couch, browsing Instagram until I reach the first ever post?

Like all problems associated with the general world these days it probably has something to do with the distraction machines we keep in our pockets — and Donald Trump. But it’s also the frantic pace at which we live our lives. Parents seem like they’re in a constant battle to win The Busyness Cup and doing truly nothing is completely terrifying because it forces you to confront the reality of your actual not-so-bad life. It’s why things like mindful colouring books were invented in the first place. They trick you into thinking you’re doing something, when in fact you’re doing nothing but switching your brain off and colouring in the lines.

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Louis CK said all this before in an interview with Conan O’Brien, but I’m reluctant to quote Louis CK because we all know what he did when he was bored. Instead I will quote someone more educated (and less problematic), psychologist and author Dr Vanessa Lapointe. She says, “Children need to sit in the nothingness of boredom in order to arrive at an understanding of who they are.”

To be honest I wish they would just sit anywhere for more than two minutes, preferably in a cool breakfast spot. But Dr Lapointe makes a really good point about the power of boredom as tool of self-discovery in a world that’s telling our kids who they need to be all the time.

So the next time your child says “I’m bored” these school holidays, instead of reaching for your car keys, or the remote, or your goddamn phone, why not shrug it off, and allow them some time to retreat into their innerworld.

Darren Levin with one of his three daughters. (Pic: supplied)

As a bit of a thought experiment I did this the other day, and here are the thoughts that rolled around in my mind.

Do grandparents ever get sick of grandkids or do they genuinely just like your children more than they ever liked you?

Is 4pm too early for bed? Surely they can just have a pack of salt-reduced seaweed crackers for dinner and put themselves to sleep?

Why did I agree to this play date again? I don’t even like this kid — or their parents.

God, I miss work. It’s so relaxing compared to this.

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How does Le Snak cheese stay fresh if you store it in the cupboard?

I’m pretty sure a small popcorn didn’t cost $18 when I was a kid.

Moana’s ‘How Far I’ll Go’ is an infinitely better power ballad than Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’.

Why did I dress them in their school uniforms this morning? Is school holiday brain even a thing?

How do teachers do this full-time?

Darren Levin is a writer, editor and wannabe dad-fluencer based in Melbourne. Find him on Twitter and Instagram.