Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 119 - Why Boredom Is the Best Thing You Can Give Your Kids This Summer

Transcript

Ep. 119 - Why Boredom Is the Best Thing You Can Give Your Kids This Summer · The Christy-Faith Show

• 0:00
  Christy-Faith: Hello, lovelies. How are you today? In my homeschool, this was our last day of school, and my kids are so excited. And let me tell you, so am I. I hear them outside making all these noises, but we're just gonna film this anyway.
• 0:12
  And I'm drinking my hot coffee on this hot day. Why? Because I'm crazy and perimenopausal, but I am so happy to be here. I am so blessed. I have the best job in the world.
• 0:22
  Alright. So let's get to today's show. It is that time of year again when parents all across our nation are basically spending their mortgage on summer camps. Sports camp, art camp, STEM camp, equestrian camp. There's a camp for everything.
• 0:37
  And at the same time, my social media feed is full of moms already complaining about having their kids home. Isn't that so sad? That always breaks my heart. Sad watching money fly out the door that could be used for such better things. Sad watching moms countdown to a fall that hasn't even started yet.
• 0:56
  But mostly sad because all of it, every dollar, every captioned eye roll is based on a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding about what kids actually need, and this misunderstanding is hurting children because boredom is a lost art. And if we don't give it back to our children and summer is the perfect opportunity to do it, I'm gonna say something here that I might regret later. A strong word, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It's hindering child development.
• 1:24
  Yeah. You heard that right. I'm so sorry, but I'm gonna come with receipts. I promise. I truly believe to the core of my being, why based on research, that the very thing we're trying to protect our kids from being bored is the exact thing their brain needs to grow.
• 1:40
  So today, I'm going to walk you through what the research says, why we as moms are wired to panic the second our kids whine, I'm bored, and what to do instead before you spend another $500 on that camp, ladies. I know who you are. Give me the next twenty minutes, please. I cannot wait to dive into this show. Alright.
• 2:12
  Welcome to the show. If you don't know who I am, I am Christy-Faith, and I care about you, mama. I care about kids, their development, educationally, psychologically, emotionally, all of it. I am a homeschool advocate. I love homeschooling.
• 2:24
  And every single day, I show up to help make you better at this craft and in turn, me as well. The fact that you're listening right now is not lost on me. Thank you so much. I will do my very best to make every second of today's show worth your while. Alright.
• 2:39
  So let's start out picturing the summers that you grew up with or think of the summers that your parents had. Waking up, eating cereal directly from the box when your mom wasn't looking. You go outside. You don't come back inside until someone bled or someone screamed for dinner. That was the summer assignment.
• 2:58
  You had a backyard, maybe a few neighbors, a popsicle situation for sure. We drank out of the hose. I think that's super dangerous now. And we had absolutely nothing on the calendar. I remember being so envious of the kids who got to go to summer camps.
• 3:13
  My family just couldn't afford it. But now looking back, wow, the gift that that was to have absolutely nothing on the calendar. And out of that whole bunch of nothing came forts, came elaborate make believe games where you were the horse veterinarian married to a spy. I know the plots were weird, but they were also our plots. There were bike gangs.
• 3:34
  There was roaming the cul de sac, bathing suits, roller skates, sibling warfare requiring parental intervention sometimes. But also came creativity, resilience, independence, the kind of childhood that built the adults who are now writing the books about how to recover from not having had one. Now, I wanna actually look at today because I think we've gotten so accustomed to what the childhood landscape looks like that we can't really see it with x-ray vision like we need to. So let's pull out that x-ray machine for a second here. By the way, this is the CDC, not me.
• 4:09
  Half of American teenagers, 50% spend four or more hours a day on a screen. Four. And the kids hitting that four hour mark are significantly more likely to have anxiety and depression symptoms. I'm not telling you this to scare you. My kids do video games.
• 4:25
  Okay? I'm telling you this because I want us to be honest about what's filling the space where boredom used to live in childhood. What used to be creativity, what used to be imagination, what used to be building a cardboard rocket ship in the living room is now a screen. And in the homeschool world, we have unique vulnerability here. Now hear me out.
• 4:45
  We have more white space than any other family in America. I mean, right? Think about it. That's one of the reasons why we homeschool. We know that this education thing doesn't take seven hours a day.
• 4:55
  Our schedules aren't dictated by a bus, and we have all this gorgeous, unstructured time. And a lot of us are so afraid of wasting it that we cram in the co op and the extracurriculars and the supplements and the online tutors and the field trips. And then we wonder why we're so tired and why the kids are acting weirdly clingy. Why nobody can play independently anymore. In that white space that we have been given as gifts as homeschoolers, that was never a problem.
• 5:22
  That white space is a gift. So let's use it how our kids need it to be used. This is just so exciting as my kids are outside doing yard work right now. Let's talk about the research on boredom and what we know right now. It's way more interesting than I expected when I was doing research for this show.
• 5:41
  So I'm gonna share with you three findings. Okay. Finding one, boredom activates children's brains. Actually, everybody's brains, but we're talking about kids today. There is a network in the brain called the default mode network, DMN for short.
• 5:55
  And it does not switch on while your kid is watching YouTube and playing video games. It doesn't switch on at a sports camp either. It switches on when your kid is staring at the ceiling with absolutely nothing to do. That is when their brain turns inward, and it starts doing the most important work of childhood. Creativity, memory consolidation, self reflection, identity formation, the work of figuring out who they are.
• 6:22
  Our kids can't get there through a tablet. We can only get there through stillness, which means every time we hand them a screen, the second they're bored, we are short circuiting the exact brain process we say we want to protect. I know. I had to sit with this one too. Finding number two, boredom is where creativity is born.
• 6:42
  There is a researcher named doctor Sandy Mann who has spent years on this question, and her work is so fascinating. She found that when people do what she calls undemanding tasks, so think folding laundry, taking a walk, staring out a car window, their minds wander. And when their minds wander, they get measurably more creative afterward. This is why we have our best ideas in the shower. I'm serious.
• 7:08
  Who knew that the shower was neuroscience? This is why your kid, after twenty minutes of complaining that they're bored, suddenly disappears into the garage and emerges with a contraption made of duct tape and a pool noodle and is very excited about creativity does not happen during the entertainment. The creativity happens on the other side of discomfort. What? Yes.
• 7:30
  So mind blowing. Discomfort required? Like, okay. Can we just stop for a second and sit with that? Think of how many parents nowadays go to the ends of the earth so their kids don't have to experience discomfort.
• 7:43
  But the research shows if we never let our kids get to the other side, they never meet the part of themselves that creates. So cool. Now finding number three, and this is the one that wrecked me. There's a researcher named Teresa Belton, and she studies how kids tolerate discomfort. And her work shows that learning to sit with boredom teaches kids to manage harder emotions later.
• 8:07
  Patience, frustration tolerance, emotional regulation, the exact skills that this generation of kids is famously struggling with. Think about that. We have an anxiety crisis in young people right now, a real one, a well studied one. Therapists are booked solid. Pediatricians are sounding alarms.
• 8:26
  And one of the things our kids have lost is the ability to sit with mild discomfort for ten minutes without reaching for a screen. If our kids cannot handle the discomfort of nothing to do at 3PM on a Thursday afternoon, how on earth are they going to handle real discomfort in life? When it comes to them at 20, at 30, in their first hard marriage moment, their first hard work moment, their first hard, dare I say, but we've all experienced it. Their first really difficult grief, which is coming for all of us if it hasn't already. What they're finding is that boredom, it's training wheels for everything hard that's coming in life.
• 9:05
  And we as parents, we're thinking we're doing the right thing, and we're taking these training wheels off before they even learn to ride because we're so scared of our kids being bored. Like, boredom is something bad or boredom is a failure moment for parents. And I wanna dive deeper into that because I think there's some sort of a there's something deeper there with parents going on because I feel this too. When we come back, we're gonna dive into that because I think that's where the big transformation for this show is gonna happen for both of you and me. Okay?
• 9:31
  I wanna stop and ask you right now that if my podcast series has been helpful to you in any way, would you stop and do something for me? Even right now, it'll only take you ten seconds and it costs you nothing. Would you hit that thumbs up? Give the show five stars if I've earned it, leave a comment, or maybe click that notification so that you get a little bell that rings when a podcast episode drops, and make a comment about the show or ask a question. Those little tiny things that can be done so quickly, they tell the algorithm, those robots behind the screen, that this show is worth showing other moms.
• 10:05
  There's probably a mom really overwhelmed right now that needs this podcast series, and just by you engaging in a little way, that can help her find us. And it also helps me give you oodles of value for free because when a lot of people watch the show, the sponsors are happy. And if someone comes to mind while you're listening, maybe a friend who's nervous about homeschooling, googling at night, not sure what to do, please go ahead and send her this series. And thank you so much ahead of time. Even if you only do one or two of those things, I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
• 10:36
  Homeschooling for kids means I'm juggling roughly 24 different subjects at any given time. And a few years back during a particularly busy season, I hit a wall. I needed some serious help with the heavy lifting of teaching everything myself and managing schedules for four kids. That's when I found BJU Press Homeschool, and we've loved their courses so much that we keep going back. Some families use them for everything and love it.
• 10:59
  I use them for certain subjects. Either way, total mental load relief. Here's what my mornings look like now. Let us take science for example. My three girls do that one together.
• 11:08
  They fire up the lesson taught by a real teacher, well produced, actual teaching, not just click through busy work. And I sit there with my coffee, watch them, or make breakfast, and we discuss the big ideas. Every BJU Press homeschool course prioritizes critical thinking, a biblical worldview, and hands on learning. I just guide the conversation and pick which activity or pages or projects we want to do, and everything's already planned out. They have an online platform included for you called the Homeschool Hub, and it keeps everyone on track, both me and my kids, without micromanaging or nagging.
• 11:39
  And when I have questions, I call my HomeWorks consultant. These people don't just help you get set up. They're available for you whenever you need them. It's like having a homeschool expert on speed dial. Go to bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes to find out more.
• 11:54
  People are always curious what curriculum I use for my own family, and honestly, it changes. We've tried a lot over the years. Some work for a season and some completely miss the mark, but there is one that's stuck. CTC math. It's a full k to 12 online math curriculum, and it's won oodles of awards for a reason.
• 12:13
  It's just that good. I use it for all four of my kids, and they couldn't be more different when it comes to math. Finding one curriculum that actually works for all of them, that's been nearly impossible. You know that pit in your stomach when you realize the curriculum that you just invested in isn't working again? Yeah.
• 12:30
  That was us until this one. The genius behind CTC math is that it's adaptive. The questions adjust to each kid's level in real time. So they're always challenged but never crushed. And mama, it does the teaching and grading for us.
• 12:44
  Yes. You heard that right. That's a homeschool mom's dream. Well, especially for me when it comes to math. I would think it's too good to be true if I hadn't been using it myself.
• 12:53
  And it's not just me. Here's why it's become the go to for thousands of homeschool families. Free diagnostics show you exactly where to start, access to all grade levels so your student can fill in any gaps or move ahead, short video lessons that keep your children engaged, automatic grading with instant feedback, and progress reports so you know exactly what's happening without hovering. Math used to be our hardest subject. Now my kids do it independently.
• 13:20
  Here's the best part. Our listeners get 50% off. Use the link in the show notes to do a free trial or to get that half off deal. Don't spend another year kissing math frogs. This one stuck for us, and I have a feeling it's gonna stick for you too.
• 13:33
  Okay. Welcome back. So if all of this is true, if the research is true, and the research happens to be pretty wildly consistent on this, then we have to ask ourselves a deeper, harder question. Why are we so afraid of our kids being bored? Because we really are.
• 13:48
  Let's be honest for a second. When your kid says, mom, I'm bored. Do you get a physical reaction? I used to. I used to tighten up, search for a solution.
• 13:57
  I wanted to fix it right now, quickly, before anyone melts down. That reaction is worth examining because I don't think it's really about our kids because coming to us and saying they're bored isn't misbehavior. I think it's more about us. So here's what I've come to believe. We have absorbed a story about what a good mom looks like.
• 14:16
  And that story says, and it's a lie, a sinister evil lie that says a good mom enriches every moment. A good mom creates magical summers. A good mom has the Pinterest backyard, the chalkboard with the day's activities written down on it. The educational outing scheduled for every day. And if her kid is just sitting there bored, we feel so easily like we failed.
• 14:40
  But friends, that story is a lie. It's not developmentally appropriate to believe it for our kids. And I don't even think this is a particularly old story because our childhoods were probably way different. Certainly, our parents' childhoods were full of slow summers. I think this marketing invention to keep our kids so busy in the last twenty years, probably from money, is making us and our kids miserable.
• 15:06
  It's making us second guess our parenting. Now the second layer underneath this, I think is a real one too. It's when our child is uncomfortable, we feel uncomfortable. Their whining can be physically activating to our own nervous system. Can I hear an amen?
• 15:21
  Raise your hand. I was in a Zoom call today, and we were talking about this. And I'm like, raise your hand if when your kid starts to dysregulate with school, does do you get dysregulated too? And, like, every person in the Zoom room was like, me, me, me. You feel it in your chest.
• 15:35
  You feel it in your jaw. We start scrambling for a solution. We get dysregulated ourselves. And the fastest way to make that discomfort stop is to give our kids something to do, whether it's a screen to solve their problem. And then all of a sudden, we become cruise directors for our children's lives.
• 15:52
  It happens so fast, and that relieves us in the moment. But what can happen is years of compounding developmental loss for our kids. Now I'm not saying this to shame anybody at all. I actually wanna say this to free you and free your bank account. And that's why I just wanna have an honest conversation about what our kids' brains need.
• 16:12
  When our kids get bored, they need the time and the space and the permission and the excitement from us to let them lean into that. We don't need to overcompensate for our kids. We don't need to be their entertainment cruise directors. That's not healthy for them. Am I saying never do fun activities and be the selfish mom who just doesn't do anything for her kids?
• 16:33
  No. That's absolutely not what I'm saying either. But we don't wanna pack the schedule like it's a defense mechanism. And I don't want you to feel like failure as a mom if you have an afternoon of no activities scheduled. And I know this is so countercultural.
• 16:47
  I mean, even in my neighborhood, in the area that I live in, kids' summer schedules are hacked. I've even had my kids come to me and say, why do all the other kids get all these summer camps and we don't? And I had to sit down with them and explain to them why. I didn't wanna speak negatively about parents in our community, but white space is not neglect. Okay.
• 17:07
  So you're still with me, and maybe you're nodding. Okay, Christy. I'm in. What do we actually do about it? What should our summer look like?
• 17:14
  I got you five moves. We'll get into them right after the break. Is your child struggling with attention, memory, reading, writing, or math? If you're experiencing this, you know how heart wrenching it is to watch them face these hurdles. You've poured love, time, and attention into their education, yet the struggle persists, leaving you feeling stuck and desperately searching for answers.
• 17:34
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• 18:02
  You chose to opt out of the conventional school system because you looked at it and how it measured kids and said, nope. Not for my family. Did you know that a lot of us can and have done the same thing with traditional health insurance? I wanna tell you about a different way to take care of your family's health care needs, and it's a way that's been around for over a hundred years. And it's saving families like mine a ton of money per month.
• 18:25
  For my family alone, it's a thousand dollars a month we're saving. So huge thank you to podcast sponsor and my husband's company, Summit HealthShare. So if you're not familiar with health sharing, here's the short version. It's not insurance, but it can replace it. What it is is it's a community of people sharing medical costs.
• 18:43
  With Summit HealthShare, families on average save 40 to 60 percent on what they were paying for traditional health insurance, and they have a 98% customer satisfaction. You can see any doctor you want, even crunchy ones. Love that. Love me some crunchy doctors. And there are different plan options.
• 18:59
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• 19:14
  It's actually how health insurance should work. So if you are on traditional health insurance, just do this one thing for me. Go to summithealthshare.com and do the savings calculator. It takes you, like, two minutes because it will tell you what you should be paying for what you need. And when the result pops up and you spit out your water, you're gonna be spraining your ankle running to the phone to find out more.
• 19:33
  And when you call, they will walk you through everything. Tell them you listen to the show because I've told them that you need to get the VIP treatment. Go to summithealthshare.com. A link is in the show notes. This podcast is also brought to you by The Christy-Faith List.
• 19:45
  Now hold up because I want you to know what this is. I'm really proud of what The Christy-Faith List has become. It started really scrappy just compiling recommendations because I was fed up with guessing which businesses and providers and doctors weren't gonna give me a hard time when I walked through those doors. And I had tons of friends and family members with nightmare situations where they felt like they were walking into an ambush situation just when they were trying to get help for their families. And I was sick and tired of the discrimination that homeschool families were getting.
• 20:16
  But since then, it has grown into a massive directory of colleges, businesses, doctor's offices, reading specialists, occupational therapists, homeschool graduates that are in business themselves now. You name it all in one place. Because why wouldn't we wanna do business with the people who share our values and actually want to work with homeschool families and not give us a hard time? It is completely free for homeschool families to search. And if you are a business owner or part of an organization that loves homeschool families and wants to reach more homeschool families and grow your business in that way, please sign yourself up.
• 20:49
  We wanna know who you are. It's the place where homeschool families support the people who support us. Go to the christyfaithlist.com today. Welcome back. Let's get into some action items for today.
• 21:01
  I'm obsessed with action items. Right? We talk about the big ideas here, but also we need to know, okay, what do I do tomorrow? So move one. This is huge.
• 21:10
  Expect early protest. This is the process. If you are in a moment right now where you need to detox your kids from constantly being entertained, expect a storming phase with it. Okay? I promise there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
• 21:25
  The first three or four days of letting your kids just be bored, it might feel awful. Do what you need to do to keep yourself regulated during this process. There will be whining. There will be wandering. There will be flopping on the couch.
• 21:40
  There will be, mom, there is literally nothing to do, which the irony of it all is they probably will be screaming that line to you sitting in a room containing approximately $4,000 of toys. I know. When your kids give you a really hard time and seem pretty miserable, please do not take that as a sign that your experiment is failing. Please. Please don't.
• 22:02
  It's part of the process. It is a sign that this is working. Their brain is hitting a wall, and that wall is where the pivot will happen. If you rescue them, you're gonna abort the whole thing. Please don't do that.
• 22:14
  The good stuff lives right beyond it, right beyond that line. Okay. Move number two. Please don't entertain them. Equip them instead.
• 22:22
  This was a game changer for me. It is not our job to solve their boredom. You know this already. It's our job to coach them through it. When your kids come to you and say, I'm bored, you could react with not not in a fake way, but say, oh, I'm so excited.
• 22:36
  I can't wait to see what's on the other side of your boredom. Or you can say, oh, man. I've been waiting for this. This is really neat. This is so good for your development.
• 22:44
  I can't wait to see what you figure out on the other side of your boredom. You're not being cold. You're not being sarcastic. What you're doing is you're teaching the planning, which is one of the most predictive skills for adult success by the way. So you're welcome kiddos.
• 23:00
  No. Don't say it like that. Just know in your heart that's what you're doing. Move number three, a fridge list. Sit down with your kids one at a time, ideally before summer hits in earnest, but anytime is not too late, and brainstorm 30 things that they're allowed to do without asking.
• 23:15
  Build a fort. Bake something with what's in the pantry. Even if it's weird, write a story. Set up an obstacle course in the living room, read in the closet with a flashlight, which for some reason every kid loves. Dig a hole in the backyard.
• 23:27
  Just dig one. Print the list, stick it on the fridge, laminate it if you're super fancy so that when the whining starts, you can just point. And you don't have to solve anything, just point to the list. And they're gonna complain. Think of it like our lives with working out.
• 23:41
  I don't ever really want to go work out, but once I do it, I'm in the middle of it. I'm glad I'm doing it, and I feel great afterward. That's what it's gonna be like for your kids. They're not gonna wanna read a chapter of a book, but once they start reading a really great book, all of a sudden, three hours later, you're gonna be like, where are they? They're gonna be reading a really great book.
• 23:59
  Okay. Move number four, protect the white space on your calendar. This is really hard because your friend's kids are going to all the fancy camps. Your kid might be only going to one the whole summer, and the group chat is making you twitchy. Get out of the group chat, please, ladies.
• 24:14
  Can I tell you how freeing it was to remove myself from group chats? Right? Can I hear an amen in the comments? One anchor activity a day, a co op in the morning, a play date, a swim, a library trip, a hike with another family, and the rest of the day can be wide open. It's not lazy mothering.
• 24:32
  I think it's intentional and actually harder to do than we think. We are protecting the soil where the actual growth happens. So please don't let comparison make you start tilling it under. That's the nurturing soil. Okay.
• 24:46
  Move five. And this one's for us. Mom, sister, friend, me, right now, needing to hear this myself in my own life. Okay? Let's look at our own habits.
• 24:55
  Our kids are watching us. I did this yesterday. I escaped into my phone. I was in a hard situation, and I just wanted to escape, and I did. Man.
• 25:05
  Yeah. If we distract ourselves with our phones, if we scroll through every empty moment of our day because we just can't handle our own discomfort with being bored, if we can't stand in line at Target without checking our phones, if we can't sit in the carpool lane without a podcast, not this podcast though, other people's podcasts. We are teaching our kids and loudly that boredom is intolerable. You know what makes me sad about it? I think about this in my own life.
• 25:31
  How many conversations with my kids I've missed out on because I was on my phone. I don't wanna teach my kids, and I think I'm guilty of this that a quiet mind is something to escape from. Oh, man. This is hitting me really hard right now. I think one of the best gifts we can give our kids in terms of a relationship with boredom is curiosity, not escape.
• 25:52
  Listen. I wanna leave you with something concrete because I don't want this episode just to be a vibe. Let's all of us, me included. Our summer just started. Let's pick one afternoon this week.
• 26:01
  One, block it off on the calendar like it's a real appointment. No screens, no activities, no camps, no rescuing, no entertainment, and let's just see what comes out of the other side. Because what's probably gonna happen is something really cool. In the first hour or so, your kids are gonna feel horrible. They're probably gonna complain.
• 26:21
  They'll accuse you of ruining their lives, and you will start to question every decision that you've made as a mother since 2016. And then somewhere around that second hour, there'll be a shift. The whining might quiet. A kid might just disappear into a room. You don't know what they're doing.
• 26:35
  That's not a bad thing unless they're a baby or a toddler where the quietness is an alarm. I'm talking older kids here. Maybe you're gonna hear a chair being dragged somewhere. It shouldn't be dragged. And you realized you just witnessed the very thing that you were trying to give them all along.
• 26:51
  And it came for free. You didn't have to pay $500 for it. All you had to do was just not interrupt it. So tell me, and I wanna hear from you. What's one thing you've witnessed your kids doing when they were bored?
• 27:04
  What did they make? Where did they go? What did they do? What did they invent? Please tell me in the comments.
• 27:09
  I wanna hear it because we are building a community of intentional parenting here. We are child advocates. We wanna be giving our kids what they need, and part of that is seeing that there are other like minded parents out there like us who wanna give our kids the best childhood that we possibly can, which is by letting them entertain themselves. Will you have a messy house? Yes.
• 27:31
  Maybe you're gonna need to schedule in a cleanup time. Totally cool. Thank you for joining me today, and remember that the most powerful thing in a kid's day might be the hour that we almost filled but didn't. I love you guys, and you know what I wish for you and for me? A really slow, glorious golden summer full of giggles and popsicles and books and water play and skinned knees and roller skating and watermelon stained mouths.
• 27:57
  In a nutshell, a magical summer with your kids. I'm so glad you were here today, and I will see you next week. You have my heart.