The Benefit of Boredom

One of my favorite things to hear from my children is, "I'm bored."  I can usually tell when it is coming because they will hang around me and offer to do jobs for more screen time to play on the computer or watch a movie, which I will often deny.  Then they hassle their siblings, pester me more, and then finally it comes out...."I'm bored."  To which my only reply is "Good."

This may seem rather cruel - to enjoy the boredom of your children - but there is an amazing thing that happens to a bored kid....they eventually find something to do.  It sometimes takes a while.  Usually it goes through the common routine of driving me crazy, driving siblings crazy, driving the pets crazy and then...finally, they launch into something completely original and creative.  As a parent, it takes a little fortitude to survive through these stages, but the results are often amazing to observe. 

Today, as an example, I was a horrible slug of a parent. Unwilling to even engage my 6 and 7 year old in sorting out their conflicts with one another, I simply listened to their arguments run their course and when I checked in with them this afternoon, the entire table was covered with a mosaic of playing cards to look like a garden and the dominoes had been constructed into some kind of castle.  The game that they had devised had rules that only they completely understood, but they were happy as larks to be playing it together.  It continued  until sometime after dinner (we simply slid it down to one end of the table to allow a place for us to eat) and then they happily picked it all up before bed. At other times I have evicted all of my children from the house to sort out their boredom outside and then watch happily as one of them happens to find a Frisbee and a whole new sort of 'ninja Frisbee-kicking' game is born that eventually involves all five of them in a sort of strange one-on-one-on-three sort of set up with modified two hand touch tackling.

Periodically, I feel bad keeping my children in the technological dark ages, but then again, all that technology is always going to be out there.  Like Pandora's box, it has been released into the world and there is no way to contain it again, so they will have access to it and they will have to learn to use it at some point.  Entertainment is easy and always on these days, but boredom....that is harder to come by.  There are times when I, myself, get caught in a rut and spend entirely too much time in front of this screen and find my mind slowly dissolving into so much mush.  Opinions and news stories are all too prevalent, too dramatic, too polarized.  A person hardly has time to think for themselves anymore because they are being told so immediately and constantly what to think by news programs and "experts" who, ironically are employed or paid nicely by whoever or whatever they are advocating.

 I have been reading a fascinating book by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna which is a historical fiction novel about the time period in the 1930-1950s and deals with such characters as Lev Trotsky, Stalin and the McCarthy era in the US.  Her writing is so heartbreakingly beautiful and so thoughtful that there have been times when I simply have to stop and think about what has been said.  One of the points that stood out for me is that, at that time of history, the radio was the new media of the day.  It was the beginning of the constant barrage of 'the truth as other people see it' in which they would express whatever facts were available, and when the facts weren't readily apparent, they would embellish the truth to fill the air time to avoid a lapse in programming.  The whole "Red Communist" scare was mostly a news media fabrication to keep people in a constant state of fear and anxiety and thus listening to the news programing or reading the latest headlines.  Not unlike the news programing today.  Maybe we should have allowed the lapses and dead air as useful time to think and process what facts were actually available.  Maybe we should make time for those lapses now as well.  This is one of the main reasons that we avoid technology around here as much as we do.  What good has come from it, really?  It has made communication easier, but we are so busy with trying to be constantly entertained that we don't effectively communicate with anyone anymore. I love having good debates with people about differing view points - it gets my ire up, but it stretches my thinking, makes me see other sides of the issue, and forces me to state my own opinions as eloquently and succinctly as possible - something the news media doesn't give you a chance to do.

 Writing, reading, assimilating, synthesizing and creating something completely new and different are the hallmarks of a populace that can continue to advance.  Simply being a sponge and absorbing so much bad news and other people's opinions does not help to make a difference in the world. 
And so, at our house, boredom it is.  A lapse in entertainment in which the brain actually has to take in information and do something with it, make something of it, learn something from it.  When the brain is thought of more along the lines of a muscle,(rather than simply being a bundle of fatty neurons) - it requires work outs to become stronger.  And the brain wants and needs things to think about - as evidenced by the way it wanders while we struggle to get to sleep, or the dreams that it comes up with in the middle of the night.  But when we sit in front of a television screen or Wii and are being fed a constant diet of cheap entertainment that requires little more than a rudimentary ability to understand the English language and some kind of reflex activity....well, suffice it to say that the mental muscles are not being flexed.  It depresses me to see language being obliterated by 'texting'.  Beautiful, thoughtful lines of prose reduced down to "lol" or, if it is really good, "lmao".  Our world is now being run on information that is being communicated 140 characters at a time.  This depresses me.  But, as Pandora found Hope in the bottom of her box, I have five kids who never cease to amaze me with their ideas, creativity, energy, and eventual ability to play well together.  They are my hope in this crazy, media driven, entertainment seeking, technological world.

From One Mother To Another

I had a friend link this to me today.  Listening to this woman's story is so much like my own with Mara.  I can't help but post it here.  The word needs to be spread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&feature=player_embedded#at=1078

Please watch these 18 minutes of video....it just might save you from cancer and if not you, then maybe your child or grandchild.  And maybe....just maybe....it will change the way you shop for food and what you eat.

Unplugging The Kids

We move entirely too fast in society. We spend so much time with our technical devices - cell phones, computes, televisions, ipods, Wii, PlayStation....you name it and every house has at least one or two of these devices if not all of them. We are entertained at the simple flick of a switch and push of a button, but are we really any happier? Does watching movies, television shows and sporting events fulfill our lives, or is it merely a way of filling the time that we have in which we have nothing else to do? And if that is the case is there really nothing else to do?

When I think of the times in the last week of my life that I have been happy they are times that I have spent talking with people - face to face. Interactions with facial expressions, laughter, tears, hugs, and handshakes - not status updates or text messages. I think about these moments and then I consider the world into which my kids will grow up - how will they relate? and where will they find their happiness?

My daughter asked me the other day if television was around when I was a kid. Other than feeling somewhat old, I was sort of brought up short....when I was a kid we had one black and white television that we watched which quickly (during my childhood) was replaced by a color T.V. I remember fighting my brother, not for the remote, but for the "knob" that controlled the channel turner. You had to actually walk up to the television to change the channel and if we wanted to be sure that the other person couldn't change the channel, we stole the knob and hid it in the couch cushions.....juvenile, I know, but effective.

I don't remember computers being a big thing until I was in 4th grade and that was the year that my parents brought home the first "personal computer" upon which I loved to play the one game that we had which consisted of some very bad graphics of a plane that was to be shot down.

When I think of how far technology has come in the last 25 years, it is very cool and also very frightening. My kids, if left to their own devices, would love to play computer games all day, or watch movies....they would literally live in my room which is where both the computer and the television currently reside.

We do what we can to discourage this behavior.

We don't have cable. Last time I checked we get something like 5 television channels, 3 of which are PBS. We don't have a Play Station, Wii, or any other gaming system in the house and probably never will. The computers have a set time limit for the kids to be on and we do our best to limit that amount of time to an established amount based on the age of the kid. Being that the computer resides in my bedroom, all kids know that you simply do not wake Mom up on a day that she is trying to sleep in or you (and all siblings related to you) will suffer the consequences.

I have been known, when the weather is nice and I am sick of playing "screen time police" to simply switch off the breaker to my room. There is nothing quite so entertaining as seeing puzzled looks on the faces of five kids as they come out to find me and say, "Mom! The computer just stopped working! And the television doesn't work either!" To which I have to give them my most surprised look and say, "Oh, that's too bad! Maybe the electric company will turn them back on later. Why don't you go ride your bike instead?" It comes down to a simple phrase that my kids have heard entirely too many times...."Lack of options clears the mind".

There was a study done sometime recently that stated that the people that will influence you the most and shape you into the person you become are your siblings. Not your friends, not your parents, but the big brother that stole the knob to the television and then sat on it. Siblings are the testing ground upon which kids learn how to get along with others, how to share, how to fight, how to apologize, how to laugh and have fun. It wasn't clear where, exactly, that left kids that had no siblings, but in those cases friends and the siblings of friends seemed to play a bigger roll. But what about kids that now spend most of their day in front of a screen of some kind? I suspect we may find out in the next several years as those kids grow into adulthood and have to start making their way.

In the meantime, I do my best to unplug the kids. I love watching them play in the gardens, argue over who gets to play the part of the princess this time, and recently my favorite activity that the girls came up with was playing pioneers with their own covered wagon. Watching my oldest daughter, playing the part of the horse, pull the other three over the hill and then turn suddenly which led to a rather rapid capsizing of the entire wagon with three pioneers inside was, to say the least, rather entertaining. After the different body parts of the occupants of the wagon were sorted out and it was discovered that no one had been seriously injured, they went back to playing, but all three decided that they would now be the pioneer that walked next to the wagon instead of riding in it while they were on a hill. Many lessons were learned in that little adventure - how to make a cool wagon using woven wire fencing and a feed bag, how to travel in tight quarters with family, horses (even if they are your own sister) are not always reliable while pulling things, and the effects of gravity. None of which can ever be truly learned from a computer or television screen.

The Week Between

There is this weird and funky week between Christmas and New Years. Nothing of any great importance ever gets accomplished during this week. You sort of check into work to make sure things are still going alright, but no new projects are usually tackled unless you need a serious tax write off.

This is the assessment week. The week of the year when you kind of wrap up all the miscellaneous odds and ends that need wrapping up. What were the top new stories? What were the best movies? Was it a good year? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you stick to the resolutions? Do you even remember what they were?

I don't make resolutions anymore. Too much pressure and guilt associated with that practice. I will, periodically make a resolution in the middle of the year out of the clear blue, like "I will no longer drink pop except for special occasions", and then do it. I only tackle the resolutions that I am absolutely ready to do and know I can accomplish. Gives a person a feeling of satisfaction. It is like making the "to do list" and writing down the things that you have already accomplished for the day.

One of our spontaneous resolutions this last month was to not spend much (if any) money on Christmas presents. I am proud to say that we accomplished this resolution. With five kiddos - three under the age of 8 - this can be a little tricky. We did spring for a few nice gifts which of course came from Santa himself - a "multi-use" tool for my son, an art pastel drawing book for one daughter, water color paints for another daughter, and two webkins - which were the only two technologically advanced gifts we bought. Everything else required some imagination and/or work. One of the favorite gifts by far as been the five decks of playing cards that we then put to almost immediate use to play "Nuts" also known as "Oh, Hell!" in some circles - ironically, the 4 year old was kicking our butts last night. The rest of the gifts...., well let's just say that re- gifting is alive and well at our house and we keep the second hand stores in business.

Christmas has gotten entirely out of hand. There is simply too much STUFF that people feel they have to have. What does it do for us? Does it make us happier? Does it save us time? If we are in it to save time, what do we do with all the time that was saved?.....go out and buy more stuff? It is crazy! The thing that what scares me the most is seeing what it does to kids that think that they have to have all this crap and have really no idea of what it costs - both in money and in the destruction of brain cells.

We don't have a gaming system at our house. We do this on purpose. If I had my druthers, we wouldn't have a T.V. either. My kids sometimes tell me that we are very old fashioned compared to their friends. I asked my only son once if this bothered him, "Not really. There is too much other fun stuff to do." he said......he is my favorite son.

They seem to get it though, why we deprive them of all the crap....I mean stuff that all their friends seem to be inundated with and if they don't get it I just shove them out the door and tell them to go find two sticks and have a sword fight with a sibling. I just watched my kids have a blast all day playing cards with each other, painting, playing pretend dress up, drawing and putting a puzzle together. I have a feeling that when they think back to their childhoods, they will remember the crazy things that they did together rather than the time that they spent glued to a computer for their allotted 30 minutes of time. I know that is what I remember from being a kid. I remember blowing up army guys with my brother out on the driveway, I remember swinging on the swing set, I remember dressing up and playing house - those were the fun times. Sitting in front of a computer, although sometimes very cool.....like now..... it is also very lonely. What we humans seem to have made up for in technology we have lost in social connectedness and meaningful interaction.

This has led to a new spontaneous resolution for this new year that is rapidly approaching - I will be attempting to send out hand written, personal letters to family and friends. Each day or two I think of a person that I haven't written to in a while and sit down to write a few lines in a card to them and send it off. No cookie cutter holiday cards this year....there wasn't enough cash for that, but there is enough care and affection to take the time to write and let people know that I think of them. It may take me until June, but I will hopefully get through my holiday list before next winter. So far, two down and about 120 more to go.