Abbey's Road: Basking in boredom

Well, it’s mid-July.

That unique laziness of Late Summer has begun to settle in the air, and over here we are in the throes of some unique cocktail of boredom and overscheduling.

What do I mean by this?

Every summer, our local school district puts on free day camps for Everything Under the Sun, and every year, all of my children want to do All The Things. Want to learn how to speak Mandarin? There’s a camp for that. Build your own guitar? Here’s a QR code, sign up today. Twiddle your thumbs while swallowing a fire stick? Circus-ready in five days!

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I have no problems with these camps. I think, generally speaking, they’re an excellent way for kids to stay engaged and, in many cases, be provided for during their time outside of school. As a district employee, Mr. Roy even gets a front-row seat to all the happenings, attending sessions to document them for posterity on social media. So, we are intimately familiar with All The Camps and have found them to be a fun way to keep things interesting in the summer months, as we are not world travelers and opt to spend our money on groceries.

I guess my problem isn’t so much the camps as it is that, when my kids spend so much time being hyper-engaged, they are missing out on a crucial life skill that I myself picked up during childhood summers: Boredom.

Thanks to a digital presence that wasn’t nearly so prominent when I was a whippersnapper, boredom is a skill that’s harder to come by in youths these days, and I sort of miss it.

Just the other day — probably while her sisters were at Volleyball Camp and Build a Floating Chair Camp — Tiny was toting the cat from room to room, arbitrarily plopping him down on a chair and then changing her mind and scooping him up again. (Because having a cat that allows her to do that is still a novelty in her 6-year-old brain.)

“I’m bored,” she remarked, looking pleadingly at me.

Being the youngest, she is not eligible for nearly as many camps as her big sisters (you have to have passed at least second grade in order to get into fire stick swallowing), so she is left to navigate summer boredom the most frequently.

Fortunately, she is relatively adept at this.

I quickly employed the tactics that are my default in situations like these.

“How can you be bored when you live in a house full of toys? Go outside and play with your hula hoop. Spray yourself with the hose. Play in your sand table. Watch the clouds. Read a book.”

She looked at me with an expression I know she picked up from her teenage sister.

“But I don’t want to do any of those things.”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “You could clean your room!”

She disappeared after that.

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Am I the only one who remembers being so bored by late summer that I made a Queen of Hearts costume from a gigantic roll of paper? Or staged Olympic Games in the backyard with my bestie because Kerri Strug inspired us to dig deep? Or played so many games of Racko that I was rearranging numbers in my sleep?

Pardon my nostalgia while I recall the time we hauled bags of “clay” from a creek bank four blocks to our home, where we did our best to make them into pots and figurines.

Or when we rode our bikes downtown to the Ben Franklin store to buy magenta nail polish and felt a rush of independence we had never known.

So many adventures, all inspired by boredom.

In this summer of camps, I am thankful for all the folks who put thought, time and effort into making sure our children are challenged and looked after. These are good things, and there is most definitely a time and a place for them.

But boredom will always hold a special place in my heart, too, and I promise to make sure my children have ample opportunity to experience a little bit of both.

Abbey Roy is a mom of three girls who make every day an adventure. She writes to maintain her sanity. You can probably reach her at [email protected], but responses are structured around bedtimes and weekends.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Abbey reflects on how boredom can be beneficial for kids