Giving Your Kids a 90s Childhood in a 2026 World

It wasn’t too many years ago that I realized my boys (now ages 8 and 11) actually had no idea how to be bored.

“Mom, I’m bored,” they would whine over and over again. It was my immediate reaction to start scanning the room for options or solutions.

I’d encourage them to grab their bike. I’d text one of their friend’s moms to see if they were available. I’d go outside with them and play basketball. I’d essentially give them 25 ideas. But then they’d still respond with, “nooo, that’s boring!”

Since that day, I have learned a lot about the importance of boredom. I have come to realize that if I solve boredom for my children every single time they experience it, they never have to learn how to solve it themselves.

And I desperately want them to learn.

I have become increasingly convinced that the ability to tolerate boredom may be one of the most underrated skills we can give our children in a world specifically designed to ensure that they never feel it.

There’s always something available: another video (I am so anti-15-second-videos, I cannot begin to tell you), another level to reach, another game update, another notification, another person across the world doing something more entertaining than whatever is happening inside of the living room you’re all currently in.

Our children have access to more stimulation in an afternoon than many of us had during entire weeks of our childhood. I’m not saying that we should romanticize the 90s as though everything was healthier and every childhood was wonderful. From the stories I’ve heard, many of you were locked outside for most of your life with workaholic parents, and that isn’t great, either. There’s a balance.

However, we did experience things that our children in this generation have far less access to:

Empty space.

We could sit in cars without watching screens.
We could wait in restaurants without tablets.
We stood in grocery-store lines without phones.
We stared out windows.
We wandered around outside.
We made up completely ridiculous games because there was literally nothing else to do.
We used our imagination.

Boredom eventually forced us into creativity. It also pushed us toward discovering our gifts and talents.

This is the childhood I’m trying to preserve pieces of for my boys. Let me be very clear: I am not doing this perfectly. Sutton and Saxon play Minecraft far more than I would like and have watched nearly every cartoon movie known to man. We’re working at it every day. And also, I don’t believe that technology is inherently evil; it can be useful, educational, creative and fun, but all in moderation.

But the issue is what the screen is replacing. It is the possibility that we’re raising children who become deeply uncomfortable once life stops entertaining them. They’ve never learned how to just sit with themselves.

Boredom is Not an Emergency

There is actually emerging research around children’s ability to experience and respond to boredom.

A 2024 study of children ages four to six examined what researchers call ‘trait boredom’, or the tendency to experience boredom frequently and struggle with it. The results showed that children who didn’t experience boredom often had a much more difficult time regulating themselves.

Children need opportunities to practice managing uncomfortable internal states like frustration, waiting, disappointment, and restlessness. The American Academy of Pediatrics specifically warns against routinely using screens to calm children when they’re frustrated, sad, or bored. Why? Because those uncomfortable moments are opportunities for children to practice regulating themselves with support. If a screen consistently removes the discomfort immediately, the child gets fewer opportunities to develop those skills.

So what do we do?

Let Them Participate In Your Actual Life

One of my favorite books, Hunt, Gather, Parent, discusses how modern parenting creates unnecessary stress and conflict by making the child the center of attention, whereas in other cultures, children are raised calmly and cooperatively by naturally integrating them into the shared, daily life of the family community.

It encourages the TEAM method:

Togetherness: living life alongside your children rather than entertaining them
Encouragement: acknowledging a child’s helpful contributions simply and naturally, avoiding excessive external praise that can undermine intrinsic motivation to help
Autonomy: trusting children to govern their own actions, make choices, and learn from natural consequences without micromanagement
Minimal Interference: stepping back, talking less, and avoiding long, escalating arguments or nagging during moments of misbehavior.

Simply put, if they’re bored while you’re cooking dinner, they can help cook.
If they’re bored while you are cleaning, they can fold towels.
If they’re bored while you are gardening, they can come outside.
If they don’t want to help, they are welcome to find something else to do.

For most of human history, children participated in the life of the home. They learned by being near their parents. That is what I desire to continue doing as I raise my two boys.

I love this reminder in Deuteronomy 6: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

It’s relatable to me in that we need both word and action to raise our children in the way that they should go. We live out our faith in God, our relationships with others, and the excellence in which we do all things.

They experience that by living life alongside of us.

Stop Answering Boredom Immediately

One of the simplest things we can do is to stop reacting the second our kids are bored.

One phrase I use often is, “I love you, but your boredom is not my concern. You are responsible to find something to do.”

You can also say, “It’s okay to be bored” or “You’ll think of something”. And at first, y’all, they’re going to hate that. They will absolutely hate it, especially if they’re used to being their ‘cruise director’ and providing every activity. They will complain, wander around, whine, and repeatedly tell you how bored they are.

That’s okay. Let them. You don’t have to make their discomfort disappear. Allow them to be bored. They will eventually find something to do.

Give Them Fewer Options

If your children genuinely struggle to initiate play, you can help them without becoming responsible for entertaining them.

Stick to three categories: “You can ride your bike, read for 30 minutes, or bake something”. And that’s all you need to give them.

It obviously also helps to create an environment in which independent play is not difficult to figure out. Keep your art supplies accessible, leave books out where they can easily grab them, have balls, bikes, legos, puzzles, dolls, dress-up clothes, cards, board games, chess sets, baking ingredients, or building materials available.

If they refuse to do any of these things or continue to complain, I have a short list of chores or physical exercises that my boys will be required to choose from if they can’t find something to do on their own.

Resist the Urge to Fill Every Silence

Our culture has come to fill silence immediately because noise is so easily accessible to us. We listen to music in the car, play a podcast on our walk, look at phones while we sit and wait for literally anything, and keep the T.V. on in the background.

But silence and stillness are a gift that we often take for granted.

Some of the most important moments in scripture happen in quiet places. Jesus withdrew to pray, Elijah encountered God not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a gentle whisper, the Psalms repeatedly call us to stillness, reflection, and meditation.

If our children never experience quiet, how can they learn that quiet is not something to be escaped?

This thought has convicted me so many different times. I cannot honestly and reasonably tell my boys that they don’t need external stimulation while checking my phone every ten minutes.

They learn from what we act on and what we normalize.

Don’t Confuse Happiness with Good Parenting

I love my boys so much, as you love your own children, so this one is tough for me. I want them to be happy. I want their life to be full and joyful and exciting, so when they are disappointed with me or my parenting, it makes me sad. But Hebrews 12:11 reminds us that discipline “seems painful rather than pleasant” in the moment, but later it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.

Parenting is full of choices our children may not appreciate until they are much older.

Sometimes our love is displayed when we create joy, other times it’s when we refuse to remove every difficulty from their lives. Our job is not to simply give our children a happy childhood, but to help build and shape them into adults who can wait, who can create, who can tolerate discomfort, who know how to be truly present with other humans, who know how to participate in a family instead of constantly needing to be entertained.

We get to be parents who give them something better than constant entertainment. We are teaching them how to be fully alive in an ordinary, beautiful, God-given life.

With love, Lindsey Maestas

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