Let Your Kids Be Bored
Hello and happy summer, loyal Mom & Caregiver readers!
In the past, I have championed all the fun things you can do with your kids in Southwestern Ontario during the summer. For those who don’t keep a carefully organized collection of Mom & Caregiver magazines on hand like I do, you can recreate that list by following London’s Pretty Cool on Instagram and subscribing to Tourism London’s monthly newsletter.
This summer, however, I’m flipping the script. When my kids were younger, my wife and I spent every available minute entertaining them whenever they weren’t in camp or daycare. We did tons of fun things. Beaches, hikes, road trips, splash pads, festivals and picking every local crop known to humanity while paying three times retail for the privilege of doing farm labour for free.
Looking back, it was wonderful. It also may have created a problem. Now that our kids are 9, 11 and 13, we’ve realized they have very little idea how to entertain themselves if it doesn’t involve a friend, a screen or one of us.
This summer, we’re trying something different. We’re taking it old school and intentionally giving our kids more opportunities to figure things out for themselves. To use their imaginations. To create games, solve boredom and make plans once we’ve fired their devices directly into the sun.
So far, the results have been surprisingly encouraging. Last weekend they spent an afternoon kicking a ball around and inventing games and competitions. The next day, we bought them bags of marbles from Canadian Tire, and they spent over an hour outside playing together. They touched actual dirt instead of watching someone else touch dirt in a YouTube Short.
Our goal is simple: make 2026 feel a little more like 1996. If you’re willing to tolerate a bit of whining at the beginning, you might be surprised by what happens when boredom is allowed to do its job. Your kids may become more creative, more independent and more resourceful.
And if you need recommendations on the best earplugs for that first hour or two, feel free to message me on Instagram.
Jeremy McCall is a married father of 3, a social services case manager, and known as “The Dadfather”, being the founder and Past President of Dad Club London.
