My kids and their boredom

Is your kid constantly complaining that they are bored? Are they glued to the TV and when the TV or the screen is off they always complain they are bored and have nothing to do? — NO !!! You are extremely lucky but for most of the parents and their kids the answer is a sad YES. I definitely have this problem with my kids and I am really pissed about this situation, this led me to find different ways of handling their boredom and here are some of the boredom hacks that have worked.

Bored Kids

What I have figured out when my kids say they are bored is that they don’t have anything fun to do instead what they mean is the options that they have currently in front of them are not stimulating or enticing enough for them so I tried to make things interesting for them, some of them are

1. Magic Basket— Create a basket with all the fun activity that your kid likes, what I do is. ask them to write down, in a chit of paper all the activities that they are interested to do and randomly pick chit from the basket and do that activity when they are bored. Some of the chits that my kids love from the basket are :- Making a Lemonade, Going for a cycle ride, Coloring
2. Dust the closet — One day while my first born was complaining of boredom, I picked up a cloth and started dusting the TV cabinet and handed her another piece of cloth and asked her to help. To my surprise, she took to the task and did it with so much happiness, I was amazed. If you want to kill 2 birds with one stone try asking your bored kids to dust a surface with you.
3. Cooking together — Kids love to help you cook, some of the wonderful dishes that we have cooked together during the boredom complaints are great coffee, lemonade, cucumber salad and small tiny designer dosas.
4. Who does it better — We play a game called who does it better, where we pick a task, lets say drawing a house and then challenge each other to make the best version and almost always but don’t know how though its my kids who win this challenge.
5. Bike ride — We go on a long ride on our bike, savor the fresh winds gushing through our face, have an ice-cream and come back home with all the boredom washed away with the winds. Try it, it will be fun.
6. Create a Story — Create your own stories, you start one line and your kids the next line of story, continue this and see where the story and creativity of your kids lead you. I have gone through space, volcanoes, under the water and over the moon. Its one of my favorite things to do with my kids as it kindles their creative juices and sometimes surprises me to see how our little munchkin’s brains work.
7. Happy Walk — We know we don’t want to increase screen time of our kids but one of the ways that I tend to cure their boredom is by doing 1 Mile Happy Walk. Its very simple and easy to follow, we put it up on YouTube and do a 15 mins walk which is both fun and healthy. It gets their boredom away and packs in some physical activity at the same time. Do try it once and let me know how you feel.