You've Got Some Splainin' To Do

Remember the time on I Love Lucy when Lucy decided to go to Grauman's Chinese Theater to steal John Wayne's square? Or the time when Lucy and Ethel decided to wallpaper Lucy's apartment? A lot of episodes ended with, "Lucy, you've got some splainin' to do!" With time on her hands Lucy just seemed to get into a lot of trouble. Perhaps you've heard "Idle hands are the Devil's playthings" or some variation of the famous saying. Today is the first day of summer vacation and I've already discovered something we won't be doing a lot of this summer because it brings out the very worst in my children. Gaming. Apparently it makes my children temporarily lose their minds and decide to do weird things. One child demands that everyone play a certain game, another child wants to play alone without the others, resulting in some unkind words. As soon as the game was turned off there was no more fighting and some very imaginative play took place. I think a lot of parents understand that unlimited gaming isn't good for their children and results in idle hands (figuratively, not literally). The problem is, it is such a good babysitter and keeping kids occupied is such a chore, that umlimited game time is what we revert to. After the game and TV were turned off and there was nothing electronic to keep them occupied, the kids figured out on their own how to keep themselves occupied. They discovered that boredom can actually be quite stimulating. Two children are now playing with a long lost set of Legos and one child is playing with army men. Now, of course the day is not over and we have a whole summer to go, but I'm going to see how long this experiment works. I'm going to let them be bored with interspersed outings to the beach and the water park nearby. It has to be better than an entire summer of hearing them be selfish about who's turn it is on the Wii or which Looney Toons they should watch.