Boredom.

When I was growing up, I was not allowed to say the word "bored."  My Mom simply didn't believe in it, and refused to let us speak the word.  She figured, I guess, that there was always something we could be doing, and so we were not allowed to express boredom.  Interesting.

Just a few weeks ago, Mom commented (probably when hearing one of my kids say s/he was bored!) that we kids were never bored when we were growing up.  I looked at her in some amazement and suggested that this might be her perception because we weren't allowed to say the word, but that just because we didn't say the word didn't mean that we were never bored!  I laughed - inside and out.

Because of the strength of my mother's cockamamy conviction (sorry, Mom) about this word and its implantation in my mind, when I first heard my eldest child express boredom a couple of years ago, I was floored and didn't know how to handle it.  I don't know where he learned the word because heaven knows it never escaped my lips, but my ill-thought-out response was to tell him that 'boredom' was not a word I was comfortable with.

(Side note - so interesting to see how our upbringings can sometimes slide right into our parenting without us even thinking about it; it was so easy for me to spout this without a second thought.)

Silly me, I further suggested to Matthew that perhaps we could find a different word.

(Because, what, I thought I too could brag about his never being bored if, for example, he would choose an alternate word to describe his state - maybe a word such as doldrums or disinterested or lassitude or world weary??  Stupid, stupid.)

Matthew's response?  Ever so much wiser than mine.  "Mom, I don't get it.  I am bored...why should I find a different word for that? And besides, you always tell me to feel what I'm feeling."

Huh.  He was right, darn it.  I threw my hands up into the air and said "you're absolutely right."

It took that moment (and thankfully only the one) to produce clarity in my head and to overcome my silly baggage about that word.  The lightbulb got turned on.

The truth is that sometimes I'm bored, too.  Hear that Mom?  It was a moment of boredom that led me to writing this post and look how cathartic this is proving to be!  Whether or not I say the word out loud has nothing to do with how I'm feeling on the inside.

The further truth is that whether or not we grow up with baggage about that word, the word boredom often has a negative-sounding ring to it.  I know other parents who dread hearing the word from their kids.

But what's wrong with boredom??  Really??  Fill me in if you would because the more I think about it, the more I chuckle at the notion that boredom is a bad thing.

Sometimes boredom means that I am sitting on a chair feeling lazy and slightly discontent because I can think of absolutely nothing to do until the moment I realize that my boredom is pretty much the best feeling on the planet for an over-worked, never-a-slow-moment parent like me because it means that I can think of absolutely nothing that I have to do.  Sigh - how awesome is that?  And sometimes in those moments I come up with some pretty good ideas.  One such idea born out of boredom is the  schedule that I ended up planning for our fall h/school routine, which will see us h/schooling on a new and rotating schedule. The seed of that plan would never have come to fruition had I not had a moment of boredom about seven weeks ago, and I think it'll work beautifully for our family.

The other common-for-me reason for boredom is when I'm just a little tired of the everyday routine of my life and maybe missing having a professional (or other) life and really wanting a break from the day-to-day for just a little while.  On those days I'm a little bored of my life, experiencing some of the doldrums shall I say.  I am a bit world weary.  The thing is that when I'm in this more global mood of boredom, usually something pretty awesome rises up from that, too.  It was such a feeling, for example, that led me to decide, relatively spontaneously, to take the kids on our two-week road trip this spring.  And look how that panned out - we spent two great weeks visiting old and new friends in Alberta and creating some fabulous memories and friendships.  Another bored-with-life moment prompted me to lead the charge in developing our family's "summer fun list" - and we ended up with a list of over 40 things that we could do just for fun this summer.  How great is that??

These days, I tend to hear complaints of boredom from my kids on a fairly regular basis.  But I'm done with the baggage surrounding it.  It's just a word, for Pete's sake.

And denial never, ever works anyway.

Kids just get bored sometimes...or at least mine do.

These days, when one or all of the kids tell me that they're bored, I say ok and thank them for telling me.  I go on with whatever I'm doing.  Usually my response is followed by their next thought:  "But Mom, what can I dooooo? I don't know what to dooooo."

I smile - inside and out.  Feeling my own stretching happening and loving the feeling and knowing that I do not need to be the fixer of their problem with boredom.

Then I say something like "huh, well, it's ok if you're bored.  I'm not sure what you should do.  But I know you're a smart kid and if you don't like being bored I have no doubt that you'll find a great solution."

Then, no matter what activity I was about to offer them in the moments before they expressed boredom, I leave them to their own devices.  Because I know, I really and truly know, both from personal experience and observation of my children, that boredom in the moment or boredom with life in general can lead to great moments of creativity.  Consider the following outputs of boredom from my children - I could think of a hundred more, but these come most quickly to mind:

• The kids 'mowing' the grass in the backyard (by ripping out two wheelbarrows full of it by hand!) and then covering the deck with it so that their bumper-car trykes would slip and slide and kick up dust from the wheels as they drove and crashed them (this was an activity of last week); 
• Building a roller-coaster out of k'nex and an infinite number of lego projects; 
• Folding the tub of laundry that had been sitting in the family room for three days (yes, this was one of Seth's answers to boredom!); 
• Picking up a book and looking at/reading it; 
• Deciding on a more challenging puzzle and then completing it; 
• Building towers out of IKEA kids' chairs and seeing how many they could stack before the chairs came crashing down; 
• Constructing a blanket-and-pillow fort out of the entire basement rec room; 
• Drawing a picture for Daddy for when he comes home from work;
• Spying for pirates who continue to use the hidden passageways in our basement as a thoroughfare to our backyard;
• Matthew finding a pen and a sheaf of papers and writing a long multi-page story about a boy who found adventure in the forest; 
• Offering to help Mom with some baking; 
• Listening to yet another classic audio book while crafting in the bedroom; 
• Running for some flash cards (Lizzie) and demanding to learn more letters and sounds; 
• and so on and so on.  

The list truly is endless of the kinds of brilliance and fun and creativity my kids have demonstrated as a result of their experiences of boredom.

Quite frankly, more often than not their own solutions are far more inspired than any idea I would have come up with for them.  And aren't creativity and mental 'flexibility' things that we want anyway for our kids?

Bring it on, I say.  Bring on the boredom.  A great big serving of it.