Like so much of 2020, there are parts of Thanksgiving this year that are a bit sad. We’ve canceled our family trip for reasons you can probably guess (thank you, COVID).
But this year continues to fling doors wide open in raising resilient kids.
THE AWKWARD MOM
because uncomfortable conversations are the ones worth having
Category: Ideas (page 2 of 9)
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Reading Time: 5 minutes
My husband and I recently slipped through the mountains on the way home from a soccer game, the sun at our foreheads. The conversation meandered toward politics, then toward economic issues.
I confessed to him that as a buyer, correcting ethical issues through my purchases feels challenging without shifting some of my life priorities. (Yikes. Maybe I’ll make you overwhelmed with me.)
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Missed Part 1 on writing? Grab it here.
The English teacher of my junior year could have, at varying points in the year, landed squarely in both “Wisest Writing Mentor” and “She Needs a Pat on the Back…Off a Cliff” categories.
She scrawled Blah over my paper titles. Castigated my writing publicly. Scoffed at my conclusions.
Reading Time: 6 minutes
The first time I met her, I entered my friend Kristen’s shop jittery as a triple espresso. She’s a multi-published author who didn’t know me from scrambled eggs. A mutual friend simply knew my resume, knew I was beginning a blog.
I was on “home” assignment from our post in Uganda (“home” while living overseas = weirdness. Every dang time). Perhaps I was most embarrassed that stress sweat tumbled off me in waves; I remember thinking I smelled like a packed African minibus. (Despite my insistence, my mom says I can either have 1) natural deodorant or 2) friends.)
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Heartrending news landed in the New York Post this week: Divorce rates spiked 34% between March and June this year.
According to the article, 31% admitted quarantine caused “irreparable damage” to their relationships.
Reading Time: 2 minutes
I heard a few months ago Google was experiencing a surge in the terms “beach vacation”. (This was three or so months into the Year that Will Live in Infamy for its Terribleness.) I still have one friend living on the same tank of gas when her state locked down (five months to the tank = problem). So if your phone has been providing a bit of an imaginary getaway lately: I get it. But maybe you’re worrying, “Am I addicted to my phone?”
Even simple excessive screen time reshapes the brain’s structure and function. It inhibits our emotional processes, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control.[i]
Reading Time: 4 minutes
They’re socially-distanced, hormonal, maybe driving someone crazy. Grab 71 ideas for the quarantined, bored teens in your life.
Bored teens? Start here.
- Make lip balm, lip scrub, or bubble bath with stuff you have around the house.
- Start a devotional or journal. (My daughter and I are trying The Courageous Creative. Sometimes we double it with face masks.)
- Pedicure thyself.
- Play the Name Game.
- Play the Newlywed Game for families (grab it here).
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Camp in your yard.
- Help out a parent.
- Play Charades or Pictionary.
- Go on a bike ride.
- Clean out the thing that used to look like your closet.
- Create your own memes or social media graphics on Canva.com.
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Create a “Quarantunes” playlist to share with other bored teens.
- Read to one of your sibs using a book you loved as a kid.
- Try out computer games the ‘rents might not mind you playing, like Simple Planes or Simple Physics.
- Plan a video scavenger hunt with friends: On a group video chat, a parent/moderator gives a list of items around the house to gather one at a time.
- Have a strategy game marathon. My kids like the usuals: Risk, Diplomacy, Dominion, Axis & Allies.
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Purchase a pogo stick for big kids/adults.
- If your child is a writer, have them sign up for NaNoWriMo.
- Make dinner. Crush it.
- Order supplies for henna tattoos, and make easy designs on each other.
- Read a chapter book together.
- Design artwork for your room; maybe start with a canvas.
- Read up on tips to great photography. Challenge yourself to post one of your photos on social media every day.
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Solve a digital escape room.
- Find a great audiobook. If you want, make the number of books absorbed a competition with someone else.
- Memorize Scripture for a reward.
- Download (um, and use) a free workout app, like Down Dog’s HIIT, Barre, or 7-minute workout apps–all free until May 1, 2020.
- Take an online course for something you’ve always wanted to do: martial arts, guitar, drawing, architecture, cake decorating.
- Practice the instrument you wish you were good at but aren’t yet.
- Do at least one positive, productive thing toward social justice: Write a senator. Find out how to be more green. Create a meme. Research what organization doing great stuff in your area you could volunteer for after all this is over.
- Hang tissue flowers or origami at different lengths of thread from your ceiling.
- Go on a hike.
- Make a Tik-tok video.
- Make this 5-minute ice cream. Add your best mix-ins.
- Walk the dog of a neighbor.
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Paint terra-cotta flower pots to plant something you like–a salsa garden?
- Design elaborate chalk art on your sidewalk. Or learn to make your own chalkboard mural like a pro.
- Paint your room.
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Make rock candy.
- Pull out colored pencils for an adult coloring book.
- Reach out to someone you know is isolated or freaking out.
- Create a collage on your bulletin board.
- Hello–weekend movie marathon. Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, The Bourne trilogy, Star Wars. You got this.
- Write down your bucket list.
- Finish a jigsaw puzzle.
- Start a one-line-a-day journal, like this one that lasts 5 years.
- Make slime.
- Ask your parent to begin teaching you something–like woodworking.
- Make a good movie. Or make a bad one, and laugh at it.
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Perform a totally covert act of kindness.
- Create the best recipe for pizza or nachos.
- Decorate your own T-shirt with glitter or upcycle it with some easy alterations.
- Make a bag out of an old T-shirt.
- Find a watercolor tutorial on Pinterest.
- Learn how to make no-knead bread in like, 10 minutes. Shock your family.
- Go fishing.
- Make a time capsule.
- Make a photo book (Flickr, Chatbooks, etc.).
- Challenge a sibling or parent to a paper airplane competition.
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Start a podcast. (Research how to do it well.)
- Create a killer smoothie recipe.
- Learn to grill. Create your own rub (spice) recipe.
- Make popsicles. (My daughter likes berry cheescake ones.)
- Make a copycat frappucino.
- Go on a run.
- Pray for someone.
- Create your own bath bombs.
- Pick a free workout video on Fitness Blender.
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Learn hand lettering.
- Surprise someone in a good way.
- Make your own kite. Fly it.
I want your ideas, too. Share ’em below!
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Reading Time: 4 minutes
Kids crawling up the walls? Need ideas for a little creative, active play? Let’s get to it. (I’d love your own ideas added to the comments section below!)
- Play restaurant–maybe with a little bit of real food (today’s snacks, perhaps? Water, anyone?). Make a menu, set the table.
- Give them something to clean or organize–like whatever that gray mass is under their beds.
- Family game night.
- Facemask with your daughter.
- Race toy cars using a board or cardboard box propped up at an angle.
- Check out books and audiobooks from the online library.
- Practice an instrument.
- Have an older child make dinner.
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Tell them to design their own flag.
- Put a mattress on the floor for somsersaults and wrestling.
- Camp out in the living room.
- Let them decorate their bedroom door.
- Pick out one of these 50 role-playing ideas.
- Play dress-up (dudes can play, too: pirates, army guys). Fashion show optional.
- Take a bubble bath.
- Paint faces. (Maybe do this before #11?)
- Make an obstacle course–indoors or outdoors.
- Make a movie with your phone.
- Have a dance party.
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Play with shaving cream on a cookie sheet.
- Finger paint (you can make your own).
- Get out the toy winning the prize for “haven’t played this in the longest time”.
- Find an online class or tutorial for something they’re interested in: guitar (um, you should have a guitar); art; cooking.
- Send them outside to play soccer, baseball, kickball, or my kids’ favorite, Calvinball (from Calvin & Hobbes).
- Play with playdough (you can make your own).
- Play “store.” Line up your pantry items, grab grocery bags, set up a “cash register” cardboard box, make some paper money and pricetags. (This is great for early money lessons! You can even make pretend “checks”.)
- Take photos with your phone (perhaps using siblings or stuffies?), and put them in their own “book” to tell a story.
- Find a podcast they’ll like.
- Create a prayer paperchain of people you love.
- Memorize Bible verses for prizes. (My kids like to make it easy by downloading songs from SeedsFamilyWorship.com.)
- Read out loud one of the Chronicles of Narnia, or R.J. Palacio’s Wonder.
- DIY Pedicure with your daughter.
- Make and send cards for someone isolated or anxious.
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Get on Marco Polo with a friend.
- Give them a small budget to create a worship-music playlist.
- Feeling ambitious and homey? Make your own soft pretzels. Kids will love to choose the toppings!
- Let them pick a craft on Pinterest.
- Make a fort.
- Play library.
- Make a parade using stuffed animals, bikes, musical instruments, posters, streamers…
- Have a Nerf war. (I personally prefer outside.)
- Make a sensory bin. (Tip: Put it on a shower curtain or sheet for easier clean up.)
- Put on a play. (You can make one out of your favorite story.)
- Call Grandma or Grandpa.
- Play post office.
- Make a photo Chatbook–maybe even for someone else. (My husband adored the one my daughter made for him for Christmas, full of photos of him and the kids.)
- Camp out in the living room. Have hot dogs and/or s’mores for dinner.
- Make a scrapbook.
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Make muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast.
- Leave packaged snacks with a note for the neighbors.
- Make a maze on the driveway with chalk.
- Make your own mega-bubbles. Cut the bottoms from disposable water bottles or large plastic cups for instant bubble-makers (watch for sharp edges).
- Play “laundry” with doll clothes. You could wash them for real, or let the kids put them in a box-turned-washing-machine-and-dryer. Let them pretend to hang the clothes on a pint-sized wash line, then play-iron.
- Make sock- or bag-puppets, and maybe even a puppet stage. Put on a show!
- Build a marble rollercoaster or maze out of straws.
- Make spear-like building materials from rolled-up newspaper (start at the corner) and masking tape. You can make large structures and throw blankets over them for a hideout!
- Make your own secret code, and/or write something with Q-tips and “invisible ink” from things you have at home. (Milk works, too; let it dry and put near a heat source, like a lightbulb. Obviously, kids should be careful with that last part.)
- Make your own popsicles (No molds? You can use cups and popsicle sticks the old-fashioned way!).
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Grab an easel or clipboard and make an outdoor art-studio.
- Play veterinarian with stuffies.
- Make tissue-paper flowers to hang from your daughter’s ceiling.
- Line up chairs to make an airplane, race car, canoe, Magic School Bus…
- Make your own instruments from recycling.
- Make (or print) and color your own paper dolls (there are some for boys, too).
- Play BINGO for small prizes using at-home reading accomplishments.
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11+ Low-prep ideas to occupy kids on Christmas break (with FREE printable!)
Reading Time: 5 minutes
So maybe like me, you got the automated notice from the school yesterday that your kids–surprise!–have an extra week of spring break next week, because #coronavirus.
And maybe like me, a member of your family braved Costco this week. Or maybe you now possess a weird amount of toilet paper–which according to a meme I saw yesterday, is now the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Reading Time: 7 minutes
My daughter’s headed to winter camp soon, which she adores. This morning, over an increasingly plain-looking Greek yogurt parfait, she gushed about camp’s breakfast buffet. She loves the free time, the reconnecting with old friends.
But in light of her anxiety issues, and apparently a night last year when she laid awake till 2, she’s already nervous about getting to sleep.
(All those suggestions in the Help! My Kid Can’t Sleep post? Those are hard-won, peeps.)
Pull up a chair for practical ideas and discussions on the parenting, relationships, and spirituality we're all army-crawling through every day.
After five and a half years in Uganda, my family and I returned to the U.S., where I write and speak professionally, and we continue to work on behalf of the poor.
My first solo book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids' Hearts (Harvest House), released October 2021.
#instagoodness
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