The Bored Jar - Tip for Moms. At our house, boredom is not allowed and is never an excuse to watch TV or complain.
My children know all too well that complaining “Mom, I’m bored,” is a fast way to get assigned an extra chore or two. Recently, while visiting a friend, I saw an awesome system she used to help encourage imagination, cleaning skills and healthy habits in her children. She called it “The Bored Jar” and I asked her if I could borrow her system and share it because it works so well.
The Bored Jar The basic idea of a “Bored Jar” is a jar, box or bucket of some kind filled with ideas of chores & activities that children can do if they complain of boredom. At my friend’s suggestion, I created this as something to send my children to if they got bored, but they ended up loving it. I filled our jar with wooden tokens that I had written activities, exercises and chores on. Bored Jar Activity Ideas The activities will vary by your family’s needs, but here are some ideas from our jar: Why Children Need Chores. My friend breastfed my baby. We were on a summer double date under the string lights in the garden at Frankie’s in Brooklyn when Miranda told us she was pregnant.
I was pregnant, too, we crowed, and just about as far along. Our husbands beamed. I’d only recently met Miranda, but I didn’t know anyone else expecting a baby: I was delighted to count her as a new friend. Throughout that autumn, we walked to prenatal yoga, discussed midwives and backaches and cravings and marriage and hopes and family, and made our respective preparations. Miranda’s son was born in a birth centre on New Year’s Day, after three days of labour.
Two weeks later, I gave birth at home, after a 13-hour posterior, or back-to-back, labour, which the long-practising, well-respected midwife did not bother to attend. We wept with joy, held him, kissed him, named him. In the days that followed, I entertained a parade of well-meaning but exhausting relatives and friends. At a week-and-a-half old, my baby began to lose weight. We rushed over. Revolution from Home » Blog Archive 17 Modern Myths That Are Making Motherhood Miserable. I was seventeen when my eldest daughter was born. This fact, along with the fact that I am now thirty-seven, combined with the fact that my youngest daughter is now seven, in addition to the fact that I was born in 1977 (hello sevens!) All add up to one fairly unique reality: I’ve raised young children both with and without the internet. Which means, of course, that my mothering experience has straddled the single most influential shift in human awareness the world has ever seen. Wow, right? As you might expect, early childhood parenting of my firstborn felt quite different than the experience of raising her sisters.
Back then, I had approximately four places to turn with my parenting questions: the librarythe pediatricianthe copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting I was given by my pediatricianmy parents That’s right. Unbelievable as it may seem to today’s search-happy, post-internet parents, this reality felt surprisingly adequate. My confidence boiled down to this: How can this be? What Would My Mom Do? (Drink Tab and Lock Us Outside) I’m about to tell you the truth: parenting has become very precious in our generation.
This very morning, a mom posted how on her son’s birthday, she assembles a comprehensive “time capsule” including items, photos, and products related to that particular year, stores it in a set of antique trunks, and plans to present them all to him on his 18th birthday as a tribute to his entire life.
Holy. Crap. Cannot. Deal. When I think about upping the joy in parenting and diminishing the stress, I propose that much of our anxiety stems from this notion that our kids’ childhood must be Utterly Magical; a beautifully documented fairytale in which they reside as center of the universe, their success is manufactured (or guaranteed), and we over-attend to every detail of their lives until we send them off to college after writing their entrance essays.
It becomes this fake pressure, which results in its trusty sidekick: guilt. So here is my trick for keeping the joy and losing the stress: Is this safe?