The Full Suburban: Lessons learned from a heat wave – and boredom
We are two weeks into summer vacation around here, and the kids are … bored. All the better, I say! I am definitely a parent who is pro-boredom; I think boredom is the fertile ground where creativity can finally take root. That said, if one more kid flops himself onto the couch and asks me if he can please play “Minecraft” for just 30 minutes, I’m going to lose it.
“Find something to do, or I’ll find something for you to do,” is my frequent response, which usually gets my kids to high-tail it out of the room fairly quickly, as they know that an invitation to scrub a toilet, wash the baseboards or give the dog a bath is what’s coming next.
Some of my kids are better at dealing with down time than others. Jane, an organizational master and devotee of Marie Kondo, took the opportunity to deep clean the bedroom she and Lucy share.
She pulled everything out from their closet and under her bed and managed to get rid of at least two garbage bags full of items to either throw away or donate while also finding the one Chromebook charger we had borrowed from the school and thought had been lost forever.
George keeps himself busy by lifting weights with his football team in the morning, skateboarding in the afternoons and getting girls’ phone numbers while hanging out at the lake the rest of the day.
Lucy has reignited several hobbies, including playing the piano and sewing; she’s currently making a skirt to wear in her upcoming senior pictures. Henry and Emmett alternate between reading, playing with Legos and flopping onto the couch in the abject boredom described previously.
And Hyrum has taken to acting like he’s a baby Husky (we are very pro-University of Washington around here). In fact, nothing will keep him entertained in the basement longer than telling him to build a Husky den out of couch cushions and getting a sibling or two to play Huskies with him.
Sometimes, I’ll bring them a Husky snack of dry cereal in a bowl and buy myself another 30 minutes of quiet, which is just about all a mother can ask for in the summertime. This new unstructured timetable has also allowed for some time-management discoveries.
Lucy and George got summer jobs gardening and in farm work for nearby family friends who have a large barn, rolling fields, a small orchard and an extensive garden. It has been hard, tiring work – work that would probably make me weep if I were in their shoes. For one week, every time they got home and I asked George what he did that day, his answer was, “I dug a ditch.”
They’ve been coming home dirty, sweaty and tired but in good spirits because these are the kinds of benevolent employers who will bring you an ice-cold glass of lemonade or send you home with a freshly picked zucchini that your mom will turn into chocolate zucchini bread later in the day.
Normally, they head to work sometime in the afternoon or early evening. But last week, with its record-breaking temperatures, they decided to get their work done early in the day. Every morning, they were up and out the door by 6 o’clock, a feat that is absolutely unheard of when you’re a teenager in the summertime.
A few days into this new schedule, Lucy was telling us about the newfound hours in her day. “Now I get home and I’m wide awake and it’s still early morning!” she exclaimed in astonishment. “I have so much time! It’s insane!”
Logan and I laughed at this revelation from our most prolific sleeper that waking up early leads to greater productivity. I mean, really, how was she to know – besides the fact that we’ve been trying to teach her this very concept her entire life?
Experience might be the best teacher, as the saying goes, but I would add that a little bit of boredom and a historic heat wave don’t hurt, either.
Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.