Get Creative!

I know that keeping kids busy throughout the summer months can be challenging and frustrating for parents, but did you know that the best thing you can do for your kids in the summer is....NOTHING!  Sounds crazy, right???  But honestly, the best thing you can do for your kids during the summer months is to keep their calendar free and their days mostly unscheduled.  

Give them time to sleep in, play outside, ride their bike, toss around a ball, build forts, and stay up late!  If they're bored, let them figure it out for themselves.  Send them to the backyard, give them some notebook paper and crayons, tell them to pick 5 toys to play with - force them to use their imagination and figure out how to entertain themselves!  

The best thing we can do for our kids is to encourage them to #becreative to use their #imaginations, and to figure out how to exist in the world without the constant need to be entertained.  Let's face it, no parent has time to entertain their child(ren) twenty-four hours a day, and even if we did, doing so would be robbing them of this essential life skill of figuring out how to find happiness without busy-ness.  Bored kids end up as bored adults who are constantly seeking the next great thing to occupy their time, yet never seem to find the "one great thing" to make them happy.  We can keep our children from  turning into unhappy adults by encouraging their creativity and imagination now!

So, the next time you hear, "I'm bored" - give your child some chores he/she can do.  Clean your room, make your bed, pick weeds out of the flowerbeds, wipe down the baseboards - you know, the kind of things most kids don't want to do.  After a few times of their boredom leading to chores, perhaps they'll figure out being bored is not something they want to share with you....and they'll figure out a way to stop being bored all on their own!