Dad, I Am So Bored

today I’ll take a break from the lessons for living an authentic life. Instead, I’ll talk a bit about how it is going with a kid at home and you want to work.

I am Germany-based and our schools closed a week ago. Since then, my 9 yo daughter is at home. And around noon on the first day, I heard the well-known words “Dad, I am bored, what should I do?”.

Who doesn’t love those words? They are as lovely as “Are we there soon” three seconds after we closed the car doors.

As we are probably not alone with that, I am sharing how we handle it at home. Maybe you get some inspiration from it.

We have a clear rule. It is a school day, so you have school. Luckily, her teacher gives out a weekly plan for what her students have to learn and to do. This ranges from German and Math exercises, Sports you can do at home, reading, checking the news on a page for kids, etc.

Once she has finished her school day, she can play. However, the regular weekday rules are still in use, which means no screentime, movie watching, tablet or anything she is only allowed on weekends.

Which can lead, of course, with the lack of friends and other kids, to some boredom. Luckily, Amazon did ship earlier and so we could get started with learning to program with the Dot robot (https://www.makewonder.com/robots/dot-creativity-kit/) this week. Sure, there is screentime involved but it’s for learning, so it is fine. Greatly, the boredom was gone for a couple of days and instead, she works through the programming exercises.

But that kept not going forever. Yet, surprisingly since then the “I am bored” never came again this week. So, what is she doing know you might wonder?

In the morning she does her school work in one go. Then she either plays with her toys, reads a book or comics, works on some robot exercises, or works on her own comic book story. Yep, she always loved drawing and now decided to make her own comic.

Overall, the major boredom is gone. And with that the major distraction for my working time. Sure, she still comes over and talks or shows her latest drawings or whatever. But that is fine. I still get sh!t done.

I also love having her around :-)