Did your parent(s) consider it their responsibility to keep you entertained?

[Rilchiam]

Good point, Manda JO.

Born 1970. No siblings at home after 1975. No same-age neighbors, and since this was a country road with no sidewalks, nowhere to walk to and no way to get there on foot if there were. I messed around in the woods, read books, built things, and in general Used My Imagination. But I also did a lot of work inside and outside the house. Washing dishes, learning to bake, folding laundry, raking leaves (and leaves and leaves and more leaves), and any number of random jobs like rolling pennies.

This was neither a punishment nor a character-building exercise, and certainly not a hardship. It was just what I did. But unlike many posters in this thread, whatever I did, I was going to be doing it alone. Perhaps I’d have felt differently if I’d known the whole gang was in the vacant lot, blowing up coffee cans. As it was, the creek and the tire swing weren’t going anywhere, so I happily counted out pennies and washed glassware. It may be true that only boring people are bored. What I know is true is that lonely people are lonely.

If you were bored as a child, you were expected to find something to do, lest you be handed some chore to do.

As a matter of fact, we got out of our parents sight as soon as we had the chance because if we were hanging around, looking bored, my mother would make us do chores.

We learned early on that if we told Mom we were bored or didn’t have anything to do, she’d hand us a dust rag.

As others have said you didn’t dare say you were bored because my mother could find plenty for you to do and you weren’t going to like any of it.

(That’s what made me wonder about the nature of these chores. The only task I really didn’t like was cleaning the windows, because of all the small panes and the wooden framing that had to be cleaned too.)

Our mom worked part-time and would push us out of the house (on threat of housework) on her days off during the summer.

The boring are bored my mother would say, and point out a series of things that needed to be done. It was more - the mother finds work for idle hands.

Complaining about being bored was a good way to get assigned household chores.

As my mother and most of my friends’ mothers said, “Find something to do or I’ll find something for you to do.”

My mom never ever played with us and saying we were bored got us a housecleaning job assigned.

Okay, I guess the intended tone of these posts was “Aw, man, not chores, what a bummer!” But I can’t help picturing a kid reacting to the threat of chores the way they might to the threat of the belt. “No, I take it back! I swear I’m not bored!” And as I said earlier, it might be that mom really could have used the help.

Also, this:

We were lucky though, we could come in to get something to drink, the kids next door had to drink from the hose or get sent to their room for the rest of the day.

Are you serious? What, was mom inside boffing the milkman? And I assume they had to pee in the yard too.

I think the title of this thread is a bit loaded. During the good years, my parents were pleasant to me. No, they didn’t “entertain” me, but they liked having me around. It was my home too, y’know. It’s when things started unraveling and I became the scapegoat that I was unhappy. And it still had nothing to do with being entertained or not. It was a matter of being given the cut direct, not only in my own home, but also in other people’s homes, where my parents dragged me only to act as if I’d invited myself and was best ignored. “Ignored” is also a loaded word to me. For me, ignoring a kid did not mean “leave her alone and let her do her own thing.” It meant the silent treatment, straight up.

I understand adults not wanting to interact with kids, but I didn’t want to be the center of attention. I wanted to interact with people, my family, and be social. And since there were only adults, I didn’t get to interact with anyone. I don’t think it’s wrong at, say, age 11, to want to at least be acknowledged, for people to say “Good morning” and engage in a bit of light conversation, as they might with a co-worker. Five minutes of positive interaction would not have spoiled me. It would have made me feel welcome, and therefore less tense and better able to “find something to do.”

Lastly, ThelmaLou, have you read Where Did You Go? Out…? Yeah, RPS and his pals entertained themselves without parental assistance, but that entertainment included smoking stolen cigarettes and looking at girlie magazines stolen from the drugstore. Plus, it was humor, not a sociological study. According to him, his younger son was a heathen because “He doesn’t know Mark Twain is God. He thinks Walt Disney is.”

[Silence_Lenore]

Go outside and find something, anything, to do, or do chores? Hmmmm.
Chores: dusting, vacuuming, putting away toys, washing dishes, cutting four fold paper napkins in half (twice as many napkins that way) and then folding them in a triangle, setting the table, folding laundry, ironing (started with handkerchiefs and progressed up to my Dad’s shirts) washing windows, putting all my clothes in neat rows in my dresser drawers, polishing the floors my mother waxed with a big, heavy-brush-on-stick-floor-polisher thing, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the finger prints off the edge of the doors & corners of the walls, and more. My mother was very neat.
Some stuff I liked helping with, like making jam & baking.
We had it easy. My mother started cooking for the family (german farm family, growing up during & after WW2) when she was 5 and did farm chores.

[MyNameIsNotBrad]

Hell nah, my mother ain’t think it was necessary for her to entertain me. She worked too much for somethin’ like that.

We had to entertain ourselves with TV, video games, writing, or reading a book.

[RTFirefly]

Born 1954. (Damn, that’s a long way back in the rearview mirror nowadays. Didn’t used to be. WTF happened? ;)) Other than cards or a board game after dinner, the 'rents didn’t entertain us. There were a whole gang of us on our street who played kickball and tag, and explored the woods.

The big difference between then and now, kidwise, is that back then, other than out in the country, kids had other kids around to play with. Baby boom families tended to be largish, the suburbs were mostly new and couples having kids were the people moving into them, and even the kids of those young families in the city could probably find other kids to play with because there were a lot more people per square mile in the city.

When we moved into the neighborhood we live in now, kids were abundant. There was no point in sitting down to dinner on Halloween night, because it would be kids nonstop on the doorstep. But it took us longer to get to parenthood than we expected, and meanwhile the neighborhood was aging. There is no gang of kids for my son to be a part of. So playing with him is, of necessity, part of what it means to be a good parent to him.

If I don’t explore the woods with him, he would have nobody to do it with. So we find trails in the woods, spot the deer tracks, throw gumballs in the stream and watch them float downstream, chuck rocks into the deep part of the stream below the dam to see what sort of splash we can make, walk across the stream on a fallen tree, and stuff like that.

I know there are other kids in the neighborhood around his age, because the school board tried to redistrict our neighborhood, and we saw the stats on how many elementary school kids live here. But there are ~250 houses in the neighborhood, so there’s a lot of room for them to be a good ways away for a kid that’s just turning 6. As he gets older, hopefully he will find some of those other kids as the ranges that they go on their own get bigger.

[ThelmaLou]

@RTFirefly

…lf I don’t explore the woods with him, he would have nobody to do it with. So we find trails in the woods, spot the deer tracks, throw gumballs in the stream and watch them float downstream, chuck rocks into the deep part of the stream below the dam to see what sort of splash we can make, walk across the stream on a fallen tree, and stuff like that…

It sounds like your son is a lucky boy.

[kushiel]

@nonacetone

Nope. I grew up out in the country, on a farm. There was never any time for my mom to play with me, since she worked a full-time job, then came home to cook dinner, and do farm work. When we weren’t doing chores, we entertained ourselves.

Pretty close to my experience, but Mom would take some time to play Go Fish or humor me by assisting with craft projects like those beads you need to melt in the oven and thus require adult supervision. My brother is 10 years older than me so I felt like an only child a lot.

I think my parents felt a little guilty about it and I never lacked for material things to entertain myself. I always had toys, books, outdoor play equipment and video games. I think that’s the main difference between me and older generations. You’d have to improvise a game with sticks and rocks and whatever you could find but I’d get the actual game equipment.

26, Canada.

[Shodan]

Male, 57. My mom and dad played with us once in a while, but dad was at work all day and mom was busy doing mom stuff. So it was mostly our job to entertain ourselves. It was not a wise idea to tell mom you were bored, for reasons already mentioned.

But being outside all day long was rather different from what it is today, because
[ol][li]There were lots more kids outside than there are now. There were ten or twelve families with kids in the 6-12 year age range in my subdivision alone, so there was always a group to play with. And[/li][li]There were a lot more moms at home during the day. And by default the mom of the yard we were playing in was In Charge. If you were doing something wrong or noisy or dangerous, she would yell at you and stop you. And every other parent backed her up by reflex. [/ol]I don’t know if we got injured more than kids do nowadays. Probably, although there was a lot less traffic.[/li]
Regards,
Shodan

[ThelmaLou]

@kushiel

…You’d have to improvise a game with sticks and rocks and whatever you could find but I’d get the actual game equipment.

26, Canada.

Dinosaur bones made pretty good improvised sports equipment. Of course, you could break one if you hit that rock out of the park.

[ITR_champion]

I’m 30. During my childhood it was some of column A and some of column B. My dad took us to Cincinnati Reds game, took us camping, played sports with us in the backyard, and so forth. My mom would paint pictures and help us put on puppet shows. We also had a lot of time to roam freely and play on our own.

When I have kids, I intend to use the same approach.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@johnpost

the drive-ins had great bronto burgers.

Yeah, but the orders of ribs always tipped your damned car over!

@Rilchiam

What were these household chores that were so terrible you had to flee from them? Cleaning floors with a toothbrush or plucking chickens? If you were genuinely bored, why not do something domestic? It sure staved off my boredom. And your moms might have needed your help. Got to do whatever you wanted all day, and fled from responsibility. You had it better, all right.

Oh, never fear, we had plenty of regular chores to do if we wanted any allowance (weeding the garden, watering the garden, sweeping, washing floors, helping make supper, doing dishes, helping with the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, dusting, general cleaning, etc.) - you just didn’t want extra work assigned because you were moping around the house, whining about being bored.

[Anaamika]

@ThelmaLou

Thanks for these replies. It’s kind of what I thought.

I’m also curious about the experiences of people who live or grew up outside the USA?

I grew up here, but my parents had an odd dichotomy. I was often shoved out the door with instructions to “don’t come back until dinnertime” but I was also expected to spend a LOT of time with my parents. They never played with me (or rarely) but I was expected to spend the majority of my time in the main room. I wasn’t allowed to go sit in my room by myself or anything. I went to 99% of my parties and events with my parents. It really wasn’t until I moved out and went to college I started doing things separately from them.

It is SO weird for me to hear about free range kids. And don’t get me wrong, when I was a kid, I did hear about other kids - white kids - having that kind of freedom. I never did. I remember biking to the edge of our apartment complex to the convenience store and getting beaten - and I mean a beating for it.

[astorian]

I’m 52, so my childhood encompassed most of the Sixties and the early Seventies.

My parents spent a LOT of time with us. It’s almost a cliche among New Yorkers to say "I’ve lived here all my life but I’ve never been to the ______ (fill in “Empire State Building,” “Statue of Liberty,” “Metropolitan Museum of Art,” whatever). That was never an issue for my family. My Dad took us to see almost every cultural and/or historical attraction in the city (even when we kids would have preferred to stay home and watch TV).

And yet, my parents spent far less time with us than I do with my son, and they gave me far more freedom and less supervision than I give my son. My parents regularly told us, “Go play in the schoolyard, and come home when it gets dark.” My friends and I were totally unsurpervised… or at least, it FELT as if we were. In those days, the great majority of the neighborhood women were housewives, and we were ALWAYS closely watched by SOMEBODY’S Mom, even if we didn’t know it.

[ThelmaLou]

@Anaamika

I grew up here, but my parents had an odd dichotomy. I was often shoved out the door with instructions to “don’t come back until dinnertime” but I was also expected to spend a LOT of time with my parents. They never played with me (or rarely) but I was expected to spend the majority of my time in the main room. I wasn’t allowed to go sit in my room by myself or anything. I went to 99% of my parties and events with my parents. It really wasn’t until I moved out and went to college I started doing things separately from them.

It is SO weird for me to hear about free range kids. And don’t get me wrong, when I was a kid, I did hear about other kids - white kids - having that kind of freedom. I never did. I remember biking to the edge of our apartment complex to the convenience store and getting beaten - and I mean a beating for it.

How old are you? I can sort of understand your parents wanting to protect (over-protect) you by keeping you close to home, especially if you lived in a bad area (did you?). But not even wanting you to be out of the room…that seems odd. Why did they have this requirement?

You mentioned knowing of white kids who were free range…are you white? Are you an only child?

(If you’re a writer, you might get a novel out of this. I’d read it.)

[rhubarbarin]

I was born in 1985, my mother was a stay-at-home mom who didn’t much enjoy it for much of my childhood, my father was a workaholic, and until age 14 I lived in safe small towns and rural areas. I was expected to come home for lunch, dinner, and bedtime in the summer, and other than that, my mom never had much idea where I was or what I was doing when I was out of the house, from age 4 until my teens. She would often kick me out of the house to ‘go play’.

I have almost no memories of spending ‘quality time’ or doing anything I found fun, with my parents.

When we moved into a big city my mom suddenly became much more controlling and annoying, but I still had loads more freedom than most kids.

I was always exceptionally cautious and responsible. I credit my childhood freedom for a lot of that. I always took good care of the younger kids, never got into much trouble or got hurt, despite having some troublemaker friends later on. If things got too wild, I’d just leave. I didn’t even become sexually active until I was 19 and living in my own apartment.

[ThelmaLou]

I wonder if being a free-range kid short-circuited SOME (not all) of the need for later rebellion and testing of boundaries?

[Sudden_Kestrel]

@ThelmaLou

I wonder if being a free-range kid short-circuited SOME (not all) of the need for later rebellion and testing of boundaries?

Hee! Not in my experience. My poor mother! It most likely did, however, make it possible for my siblings and I to survive the trouble we did get into, and I think it made it easier for us to grow out of our rebellious stages naturally instead of carrying those behaviors on into adulthood.

[WhyNot]

@ThelmaLou

I wonder if being a free-range kid short-circuited SOME (not all) of the need for later rebellion and testing of boundaries?

If anything, I think it made it more likely/dramatic for kids to rebel, as they knew the taste of independence and had lots of practice making their own decisions. I know, that’s generally a good thing, but it does lead, in some instances, to kids thinking, “I’ve been taking care of myself since I was a kid, I can decide to party all night if I want to,” and/or cause parents to reign in on free-range kids abruptly when they hit their teenage years and can get into “real trouble”, reversing some freedoms they previously had - which leads to anger and resentment.

Or at least, the one thing I can say in favor of helicopter parenting is that the kids don’t seem to rebel much. Why would they? Their parent/s have been their best buddies and defend their poor choices and clean up their messes (literal and figurative) for them. The teen years of many helicopter families really don’t look all that bad…it’s the young adult years which can be scary, when the kid should have formed self sufficiency and independence and never did, and their parents are exhausted.

[Orionizer]

43yo.

No, I was expected to entertain myself as well and I try to do the same to my 7yo son. We do things together, but, for the most part, he entertains himself.

[ThelmaLou]

@WhyNot

…Or at least, the one thing I can say in favor of helicopter parenting is that the kids don’t seem to rebel much. Why would they? Their parent/s have been their best buddies and defend their poor choices and clean up their messes (literal and figurative) for them. The teen years of many helicopter families really don’t look all that bad…it’s the young adult years which can be scary, when the kid should have formed self sufficiency and independence and never did, and their parents are exhausted.

My bold.

Those troublesome “young adult years” when the kid has not yet learned to be self-sufficient now extend to age 40 in some cases (that I know of personally).

[RTFirefly]

@ThelmaLou

It sounds like your son is a lucky boy.

I feel like I’m the lucky one. But yeah, I guess he is too.

Besides, I like messing around in the woods and stuff, or picking raspberries off the bushes that come up to the road on a nearby street, or stuff like that. Now I’ve got a kid who likes doing that stuff with me, and it gives me more of an excuse to do it.

And it’s fun to see him grow in confidence, and take the lead when we go on our adventures. The other night, we were going down a familiar path that we hadn’t been down in a while, and there was a place where a new path that deer had made angled off our path, so he decided he wanted to follow the deer path, and led the way, pointing out the deer tracks along the way. You can’t beat moments like that.