Let Them Be Kids: Adventure, Boredom, Innocence, and Other Gifts Children Need

by Jessica Smartt

I had to toss one of my houseplant casualties in the trash yesterday. It didn’t make it. But that’s okay; no big deal. We will all move on. Children, on the other hand, matter immensely. These infinitely complex human beings have been gifted to us to steward and nurture. The stakes are extremely high. Our calling to care for them is one of the greatest we will ever receive in this life. As

Kids need to experience thrill, and they will, one way or another. You can either provide the space and example for healthy outlets, or they will find it in other ways.

Have a zero-tolerance policy for sarcasm. I guess as they grow up, you can lax this policy, but have you noticed that small children do not understand sarcasm? It is hurtful and confusing to them. I tend to enjoy sarcasm, personally, and I remember the first time I tried it with one of my kids. It was a giant flop. I remember the hurt in his eyes. What this also means is that you don’t invite company over via TV and YouTube who are mean and sarcastic for humor. Adults understand this but kids do not. Same thing goes for laughing at someone’s expense. Your home should be a safe place from mean humor.

“Studies suggest that nature may be useful as a therapy for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), used with or, when appropriate, even replacing medications or behavioral therapies.”

Your daily in-and-out life needs to allow your kids to interact with (not just view) nature. They need to be able to touch and breathe and mash and stir and pick up and splash and dig in the earth on a regular basis.

In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trip to Disneyland but the common threads that run throughout and repeat: the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime . . . Saturday morning pancakes.

Loneliness, depression, and anxiety are skyrocketing in the uber-busy, highly connected generation.3 Our teenagers are highly entertained and occupied but deeply unfulfilled.

I believe that we shouldn’t toss our kids a screen at the slightest inkling of boredom or discontentment. (Important ancillary point: neither should we, as adults, gravitate to our own screens in the same angsty moments.)

What are we teaching kids when we bring them to events and hand them devices? We are teaching them that being entertained is more important than encouraging a friend.

Patience is crucial to adulthood success. Patient grown-ups are faithful to their spouses. Patient grown-ups don’t scream at their kids (well, you know . . . mostly). Patient grown-ups don’t explode with road rage or angrily bark orders to the Starbucks barista. We want the byproducts of patience for our world and our children, but it costs something; it is a skill that needs developing.

Saying yes to organic play means that you sometimes say no. We don’t do every club or lesson or errand that we could, because being home to play freely matters.

Your kids are their own little beings. What a tremendous gift you give them to mature and grow freely without you hovering above them at all junctures hoping they’re turning out to be specimens pleasing to everyone everywhere.

if you do not want to send your kid to preschool and prefer to keep him or her at home with a day rich in conversation and play—going to parks, making cookies, visiting the library, reading books, taking naps, mashing Play-Doh—I do not believe you are doing your child a disservice. On the contrary, your child is doing just precisely what a little three- or four-year-old should be doing: playing.

We can monitor and control things all we want, but our examples speak volumes.

More than anything, children need attachment to their parents and to other human beings. When they’re tired or lonely, Fortnite is a sorry substitution for a good friend or a mom to talk to. If we don’t build these connections, they won’t be there. Technology on the whole does not form relationships, which are crucial to healthy development; instead, technology impedes them.

Nevertheless, better screen time options have the following characteristics: • a small and limited time slot (one episode of a show versus binging or nonstop social media access) • a longer amount of time in between screen changes (Picture the slow tempo of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, which would be good, versus the frantic, busy, loud animation of The LEGO Movie, which would not be as good for a developing brain.) • coviewing events, like watching a movie or game as a family • passive watching versus addictive, active behavior that resembles gambling—you want to keep doing the action in order to get a hit. (An example of the addictive, active media would be gaming or even achieving likes on social media. Playing a baseball video game together might seem okay, but it is an immersive technology, where you have to respond and engage; thus, it affects the brain differently.) Watching a baseball game with your family is passive and observing.

Parents set the tone. This is extremely convicting for me, but such an important piece. They are watching how we do phones. They sniff inauthenticity from a mile away. We must be able to model healthy technology use, because one day they will have phones.

Keep your eyes ever focused on this fact: the most important thing is not success; it is character. Don’t gloss over that last sentence because it’s cliche and boring. Go back and read it again. Do you really believe that? If that really and truly is how you feel, are you living that way? Are we choosing activities based on ease for us? Or are we asking things like the following: • What hobby or sport is going to grow the character traits that my child is needing most?

Don’t we do our best to make wise choices, and then we lay our kids down before God begging him to show up and work in their lives?

I often see that kids, and their parents, have lost a tolerance for failing. As a result, you have kids who don’t know how to work through a loss, who are devastated by failure, who feel pressured to do things perfectly, and who lack the grit to try again.

A 2013 study determined that there was one single childhood characteristic that is most important in predicting success in life. It wasn’t wealth, intelligence, race, or socioeconomic status. Do you know what it was? Self-control. Children who possess this skill can be tracked to achieve career fulfillment and success, better physical health, and financial well-being.

All of us want our children to grow up and be pleasant humans. But as we interact with them, we must watch our words because how we treat them goes beyond the effect it has on their views of themselves; it models how they will treat others. If we want them to do it with kindness, then we must be authentically kind ourselves. How desperately we need the culture of kindness today. We can grow kids who are kind, and it starts with us modeling kindness to them.

Maybe part of letting them be kids means not interrupting their innocent acceptance with our own long explanations. Maybe letting them be kids means championing that childlike kindness toward those different from us.

Teach kindness to those who hurt you. It’s natural to want to hit back, respond with equal cruelty, or repay someone for being a bully. The real treasure comes when we can begin to grow in our children the understanding that those who are cruel often need love the most.

We parents are spending more and more time and money on parenting, but when you look at the results, things are getting worse, not better. . . . Here’s my diagnosis. Over the past three decades, there has been a massive transfer of authority from parents to kids. Along with that transfer of authority has come a change in the valuation of kids’ opinions and preferences. In many families, what kids think and what kids like and what kids want now matters as much or more than what their parents think and like and want. . . . These well-intentioned changes have been profoundly harmful to kids.2

“It is a misnomer,” Dr. Payne continues, “to think that we are ‘sharing’ with our children when we include them in adult conversations with adult concerns. . . . Too much information does not ‘prepare’ a child for a complicated world; it paralyzes them.”5

Parents are allowed to say, “I messed up. I thought I was doing what was right, but I have new information now. I understand you’re upset, and you’re allowed to be upset, but this is how things will be.”

Your success as a parent does not rest on your shoulders but on his. . . . He would never ever think of sending us out on our own. He would never coldly watch us at a distance as we go, work, and struggle. He would never sit idly by as we give ourselves to the single hardest, most comprehensive, most long-term, most exhausting, and most life-shaping task that a human being could ever take on. No, when your Father sends you, he goes with you. This means that in every moment when you are parenting, you are being parented. . . . In every moment when you feel alone, you are anything but alone because he goes wherever you go. . . . He never forgets you, he never turns his back on you, he never wanders away for a moment, he never favors someone else over you, he never gets mad and refuses to be with you, he never grows cynical, he will never give up, and he will never ever quit. . . . So your hope as a parent is not found in your power, your wisdom, your character, or your success, but in this one thing alone: the presence of your Lord.1

The job of the parent is to teach self-control. To explain what is and is not acceptable. To establish boundaries and enforce consequences.

How blessed we are that his mercies are always fresh in the morning and that we can begin again tomorrow.

We believe in adventure, embracing lives of wonder and joy. We believe in intentionality, in filling our time with things that matter—and sometimes that’s nothing. We believe in community, that real life is found with others. We believe in presence, in using technology as a tool to live well. We believe in stewardship, in using our stuff and money well. We believe in wisdom, enjoying media and books that make our lives richer. We believe in work, that there’s nothing like a job well done. We believe in integrity, that it’s okay to be different if it means you do the right thing. We believe in kindness and that friendship is one of God’s greatest gifts. We believe in respect, in treating others the way we would want to be treated. We believe in service and that the best way out of a funk is to help someone else. We believe in family and that we will always have one another’s backs. We believe in grace because we are forgiven, and we can forgive. We believe in purity and that real joy comes from obeying God. We believe in faith and that eternity matters most.