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My daughter is bored.   She is bored and she wants to be entertained.   As parents of a blind child, it is very hard sometimes to know where to draw a line   We want our child to understand that people don't just drop everything to play with her anytime and every time she wants.  And believe you me, she wants that all the time.   But we also want to spend time with the children, doing meaningful activities that will make memories or provide an educational opportunity, or that serve a purpose like contributing to household chores.  Figuring out where that line is with my daughter has been very challenging. 

With COVID-19, she's home for much of the time she'd be on campus in school.   She has only one or two friends she can play with in relative safety outdoors or in the garage with the door open if it's raining.  Online play dates don't interest her in the slightest.   Today, there was a welcome back Google meet with her class and she didn't want to attend, fighting the mandate that she would in fact be on the call and would have her hair brushed for it.  

During that very same time when she would shortly be hearing her classmates, talking to them and catching up on what people did over the break, she was complaining to her father that he hadn't done anything with her, "in a long time" and that he played with my son online in Minecraft.   This wasn't true at all.  Her father had spent hours and hours with her putting together some LEGO sets.   He had taken her to my parent's mountain home for the night and then a day of skiing the following.  He, in contrast, is worried about the time he hasn't been able to spend with my son, having only played a single game with him for a half-hour one night.   But to my daughter, it's not the same.   

There has to be more underlying her need for attention.  When she got home from picking her brother up from school this afternoon she picked one of the biggest fights with him I've ever seen—because she wanted to sit in his chair (presumably so he couldn't play Minecraft.). I lost my temper with her and finally got her to admit the reason for her acting out so much recently was that she was bored. 

We already knew this.   It's what to do about it that's the problem.  I had a long chat with her after I'd cooled down, saying she wasn't alone in this feeling of boredom and that we were all doing our best with COVID-19 changes.   I told her also that she was not going to get all of our attention and that she needed to come up with things to do herself.   We talked about things she could do, many of whom she'd forgotten.   She had bitterly told me in the conversation that all of the things in the house were "seeing" things and she needed help.   

Still, it's hard to come up with things that will occupy her alone, that are fun and that don't need our help.   My husband came up with one tonight that, upon hearing her answer, neither of us believed.  How many chairs do we have in the house?   "Did stools count?" she asked.  We said they did.  What about small children's chairs they say in when they were younger that were now in storage?  Yes, those counted.  Outdoor furniture and camping chairs?  Sure, we said.  If you can sit in it or on it, count it. 

She came back with an answer in a short while and neither my husband nor I believed her answer.   We mentally walked around the house with her and finally agreed, she was correct.   We have an unbelievable ninety-two "things to sit on" in our house.  

Now, she's off counting cabinet doors.   I don't know how long we can keep her occupied with quests like these, but we'll keep trying to do that or come up with other things she can do that are fun.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is currently in Minecraft, waiting for an invitation from his classmate and neighbor to see if they can get into the same world together that Nicholas plays in with his cousins.   My son is pretty excited about playing with some friends instead of all alone. 

The TIny Girl Chronicles:  I had been trying to get an hour alone to get this blog post and some other correspondence work done and had said I was putting my earbuds in and would absolutely not be available unless it was an emergency.  No "Mommy's" would be answered.   It wasn't forty-five seconds later that my daughter was crying out my name and saying, "help!"   I looked and she was sprawled on the floor at the bottom of the steps to the basement, just like she'd been when I said I was starting my hour.   Only she'd fallen down the steps and hit her ribs on the railing.   It was only half-way down, but she was scared.   I got her an ice pack and gave her the one thing she said she wanted: a kiss.   She's okay now.