It's that time of the year again. School has ended, camp hasn't begun, and parents don't have as much time off as their children do. What are some good suggestions for activities that your children may enjoy when they come over to you and say, "I have nothing to do!"
I remember some of the things I suggested to our children when they were little.
You could mow the lawn, you could pull the weeds, you could plant the seeds you wanted to buy when we were at the store a month ago and have been sitting on the windowsill in the dining room ever since.
Dad, it's way too hot out to do that stuff. What can we do inside
Well, you can find some place to put those seeds so that they're not in the dining room anymore; you can sort through all the papers, folders and projects you brought home from school and decide which ones you want to keep and where you'd like to put them; you could organize the playroom and put all the game pieces back with the games they belong with that you always tell me you don't have time to do when you finish playing a game; and you could ask mom if there's anything she'd like some help with.
I was always amazed that my kids didn't think these were wonderful ideas. But they didn't. They'd find some things to read and play a game with one another. And so the days went by. Until, at last, it was time for our vacation, the pursuit of "fun for the whole family."
Baruch HaShem, we occasionally found it! Sometimes we even found it where we had been looking for it. We thought we would all enjoy a visit to our siblings where our children could enjoy some rare time with their cousins, and we were right. The 10 hour drive was well worth it. Five hours a day on the road each day went by pleasantly when we played family trivia games we had made up and had plenty of food and drink on hand. Having a "party" of snack foods and soda every night we stayed in a motel made bedtime a little less difficult, not so much from the food as from the camaraderie.
There were other times that we had a wonderful time together because we let things happen. Driving through Pennsylvania, we thought we would find picnic tables along the road but all we found was an outlet shopping mall parking lot. We parked under a tree in a far corner where it was not unbearably hot. We had, thanks to my very organized wife, bottles of water for washing, sandwiches, fruit, and assorted dessert items. What we didn't have was any place to sit. Until our kids realized that the hood of a 1985 Caprice station wagon affords spacious seating for many children. My wife and I opted for the tailgate, a little less of a climb.
I am tempted to lament the shape of minivans. The hood slopes too steeply to sit upon it, and the back of the car opens up, not down.
I hope you'll find some other unconventional places to sit and eat a picnic lunch with your children this summer. I hope you'll make up a family trivia game or let your children make one up.
When our youngest was six he asked some trivia questions about things that had happened during school a month before that none of us could possibly have known about. It gave him the opportunity to tell us about some things he had found interesting. None of us was in a rush or too busy with something else. Yes, what he told us was trivial. It was important to him to be heard, and we listened. It was all part of the game, it was fun, and everyone had a turn to try to stump the rest of us. And there were prizes! Each correct answer was worth up to three cents!
Another way for your whole family to have fun together is to tell stories. Not stories from books; stories from your life. Some of our children's favorite stories were the adventures and minor misadventures of our childhoods.
Like the time I went with my friend to the World's Fair, and got lost on the way home because we had gotten off the train and gone outside and only then realized that the IRT to 142 St. that we were supposed to have taken and the IRT to 141 St. that we took cause we figured it would only be a block further to walk don't actually take you to places just one block apart and we had spent all of our money at the World's Fair keeping only the 15 cents we needed to get home so now we couldn't get back onto a train and we asked a policeman to help us and he escorted us underneath the turnstile and made sure we understood how to get to the train we needed.
My wife told our kids how she took the train to school and back every day from the time she was in 7th grade.
For our carpooled, suburban children these were amazing tales. Trivial details of our younger lives became memories to share with our children, opportunities to enjoy some time talking with one another. When we found ourselves with nothing to do, what we did was to create memories for ourselves and our children of the time we spent together when they were young.
Ben Azzai said, do not minimize any person, and don't discount anything [in your life].
When you and your children have nothing to do and nothing important to say, cherish them and the time you have together. Tell them your stories and listen to theirs. It can be wonderful for the whole family.
Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with specialties in marriage, relationships, and parenting. He works with parents and educators, and conducts parenting groups for men and women. He can be reached at 718-344-6575.