I vividly recall a moment, at the beginning of last summer, when my then nine-year-old son came up the stairs first thing in the morning and asked, “So what are we going to do today?” I love summer. I feel like there’s a part of me that waits to come alive with the heat and the lush green. My summer countdown begins much sooner than that of my kids. But that morning, I looked at him with a sigh and silently wished for it to pass quicker. Filling his days with constant amusement (though it only been two) was already taking its toll.
That’s when I realized that it is not my job to amuse them all summer.
So we sat down. We had a talk, and I let my children know that summer was going to be boring and that I wanted them to be bored. We would go to the library one day. We’d plan something fun to do another day. The rest of the week was up to them. What could they do at our house to fill their time? Then I wrote my Knoxville Moms article about how we were intentionally planning a boring summer. Today, I want to follow up with how that turned out for us.
I’m not gonna lie. At first, it was rough.
If there’s one constant about kids, it’s that transitions are always hard. It’s hard to start school, and it’s just as hard to end it. I have three boys, all about two years apart, and while that means they have a built-in buddy, it also means they have a build in enemy. My oldest two, in particular, are polar opposites, and so unoccupied time led to a lot of fighting and whining and complaining. That first week, I’d often sit around and wonder, “Whose bright idea was this?” and question my own sanity.
When it got better, it got really better.
One week. That was the amount of time my kids took to transition off of electronic devices (like their school chromebook and their constant music) and begin to explore the world around them. They weren’t perfect, but explore they did.
First, my boys scoured the land, with shovels and sticks, searching for any kind of “treasure.” It was their luck that the family who lived here before us graciously left all kinds of gems to be discovered. Their collection of rusty nails, fragmented pieces of tile, and dirt crusted tools took a prominent spot in my oldest son’s room. (Not to worry, I have since disposed of it.)
Then they built. For about a week, my boys played in the back of our yard by the treeline. Using hand shovels, sticks, and any rocks they could find, they built houses and garages for their dump trucks and cars. Each house was a little more elaborate than the last, and they were proud to describe the unique, individual features to me.
Their creativity also turned to Legos. They’d often eat breakfast and head downstairs as a group to fine tune their creations. With zero instructions and a bin filled with random pieces, they’d bring up rockets and boats, or some sort of combination of the two to show off.
My children turned into artists, and my middle son became a writer. Sitting at the table, he would draw stick figures while narrating an elaborate story aloud. This progressed to him creating his own version of a Captain Underpants comic with a very detailed storyline, especially coming from a recent first grader.
I could go on and on. They read. They played. They created. They explored and got dirty. In short, they spent most of their summer bored on our half acre, and loved it!
