When Parenting is Boring

A few weeks ago, my husband sent me a link to a parenting article that openly used the B word in reference to parenting.

Boring.

He was elated. It turned out there was someone else in the world who shared his dirty secret: that entertaining kids—particularly, preschoolers—was not the most intellectually stimulating or emotionally satisfying activity of his life.

When he told me this, the first words that came to mind were: “No duh?” But for the sake of not-being-a-jerk-ness, I went with “yeahhhh…?”

“Well, no one talks about this!” he said.

True. Parental boredom is a totally taboo topic, because how dare we not treasure every swiftly-passing microsecond with our precious dumplings?

But for the sake of honesty and transparency, here I am: officially talking about it.

Let me just give you a little glimpse into my daily life as a stay-at-home mom of two young boys. Right now, my 4-year-old son’s two favorite games are:

• “Monster trucks”: wherein each person holds a monster truck and drives it in circles around the room, skimming along walls and over various pieces of furniture. There is no objective to this game, nor any limitation to the number of times he could repeat it without losing interest. (And no, he CANNOT play this game alone—that’s ridiculous!)

• “Bear hunt”: wherein one person (the bear) hides in the dark bathroom, and the other person (after casually approaching the room saying “I wonder if there are any bears in here…?”) dramatically discovers the bear and runs away screaming. Then, repeat, times a million.

I play these games, almost every day, without complaint. (I mean, who am I going to complain to?)

I try to think of ways to enhance them, for the sake of my sanity (sometimes, um, the bear hides in unexpected places, and the monster trucks start driving backwards…) and I come up with new (equally outrageously simple) games.

But the days are long, and all the repetition is straight up mind-numbing for even the most resilient parent.

And so, for the sake of my husband, and anyone else who needs to hear it, I’ll just go ahead and say it: playing with kids can be wildly, painfully boring.

You are not a “bad” parent, or even an unusual parent, if you get zero joy out of driving a matchbox car up and down a ramp for 20 minutes straight. If 10 rounds of Duck Duck Goose literally brings tears to your eyes. If braiding and rebraiding My Little Pony hair for a full afternoon sucks the soul right out of your body.

You are an adult, with an adult brain, who enjoys adult things. It’s ok. Everyone knows you love your kids, deeply/passionately/whatever-ly, and the fact that you’re blatantly browsing Facebook mid-Hide-and-Seek-game doesn’t make you a failure—it just makes you a human.

I’ve found, though, that when I reach for my phone during playtime, desperate for some entertainment or stimulation—any escape from the moment I’m in—that it just makes things worse. My kids can somehow immediately tell I’m distracted (even if I’m hiding the phone under a table—so clever right?!) and they respond by becoming agitated and whiny.

More toys get shoved in my face, more demands for (boring) games get issued, and my anxiety levels shoot up. Phrases like “just give me one second” exacerbate the situation even more, and before I know it, we’re all a big, emotional, cranky mess.

In my experience, the best way to deal with the boredom is not to escape it, but to embrace it. Acknowledge that you’re bored out of your mind, and then just sit in that.

I think of it like meditation—it takes a lot of practice to just sit and do nothing. To think about nothing except what’s in front of you, and to be content with that. (In meditation, you literally think about breathing, which is about as interesting as Round 19 of the Monster Truck Room Circling Game.)

Just like with meditation, I think there’s value in learning how to be calmly, contentedly bored. To learn how to relax, without entertainment, and to be under-stimulated without the urge to fix it.

The more I practice this playtime-meditation thing, the better I get at it. The less my fingers itch for my phone and the less my mind wanders to my To Do list. I’m still working on it—and I still have my limitations—but there’s something weirdly freeing about realizing that you’re bored senseless, and just being cool with that.

Meanwhile, there are my kids, having a blast. Having no idea that my heart was only in it for about the first 4 minutes, and since then I’ve been mentally coasting.

Even if they knew, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t care. It’s not always aggressive interactive play they’re after—sometimes, I’ve noticed, they’re content with me just being there.

And if you think about it, regardless of how old our kids are, or whether we even have kids, we could all benefit from a little more practice at “just being there.”