Source: Bored Kids are Annoying Kids Publisher: Cartoons Hate Her | Author: Cartoons Hate Her Published: January 5, 2026 | Archived: March 21, 2026

A while ago, I wrote an article called Let Kids be Bored, as I flirted with the idea that maybe it wasn’t my responsibility to keep my kids entertained 24/7, at home and in public. My argument was basically that if you don’t want your kids to be addicted to an iPad, it’s unrealistic to expect to replace that degree of dopamine intake with bespoke napkin and fork puppet shows at restaurants (which will be annoying for you, and pale in comparison to an Elmo’s World episode.) Ergo, to remove (or avoid from day one) the iPad, you must tolerate boredom.

A few months after I wrote that article, I was on a plane ride with my two kids—then four and one. Something happened that challenged my pro-boredom stance. My four-year-old, already a travel veteran, was quietly watching TV (we were on a plane, okay? I refuse to go screen-free on planes. That’s cruel.) My one-year-old, on the other hand, was uninterested in TV or movies and strapped in a carseat. She was exhausted, and desperately needing to fall asleep but understandably freaking out that perhaps we now lived in the back of a Boeing 737 ordering $15 cubed cheese and salami boxes from an “a la smarte” snack menu, and this was how life would just be from now on.

She might have been bored, but boredom wasn’t the issue. The issue was that she had skipped her nap and she really, really needed to fall asleep. But she was one, so she did what any one-year-old would do when either tired or bored: cry inconsolably.

Picking her up and bouncing her wouldn’t have helped. This would have prolonged her awake-time and made her even more pissed off in the long run. I had already attempted, in vain, to “cheer her up” with snuggles and hugs. I knew, unfortunately, that the only thing I could do would be to let her cry in the car seat—not leave her there, not ignore her, but sit with her, hold her hand, and wait until she tired herself out and fell asleep for the rest of the flight. (It also feels relevant that the seatbelt sign was turned on, so, yeah.)

Everyone repeatedly turned to glare at me, and I knew exactly what they were thinking because before I had kids I used to think this too—that stupid mother, she isn’t even DOING anything! She’s just LETTING this baby cry? If that were MY baby, I’d be picking it up, singing songs and playing games with it, which is obviously what she needs to do! She’s just IGNORING the baby because she’s LAZY!

Sure enough, the clown brigade soon showed up. One woman came over and threw some giant cylinder of M&Ms that she got at Duty Free store in my baby’s face, offering that maybe this implement would “entertain” her. I told her, as politely as I could, that her problem wasn’t a lack of exciting branded candy merch but the fact that she needed to fall asleep. Later, just as she was almost asleep, a flight attendant came by and loudly declared, “Hi! She seems so bored, so I made her a rattle out of this old water bottle that she can play with!” She then shoved an empty water bottle full of sugar packets at us.

For some reason, people had decided A.) that any crying baby must be BORED and B.) that if I wasn’t willing to “do my job” and entertain the bored baby, it was on them to step in and parent where I had clearly failed.

People will say that parents are too intensive and stressed about constantly needing to entertain our children. They say we are raising our kids to be unable to tolerate any dip in stimulation because even if they aren’t iPad kids, they’re constantly being stimulated by helicoptering, neurotic moms who refuse to let them experience even one minute of adversity. People will decry how child-centric everything is, and urge parents to “just bring kids along to adult activities,” or better yet, expect children to derive all their entertainment from helping parents with chores. Of course, we shouldn’t give them any screens—not iPads, not TV, not movies, not anything—or we’re lazy and neglectful, but it’s not just the screens. Some people will even argue against the importance of children’s activities and toys at all, since kids don’t really need those things when cool adult objects like spatulas and skillets exist. I like the idea, I really do. But I think these people have a very different idea of how a bored, screen-free child at a boring adult place behaves.

Recently, my family did some holiday shopping which included adult-coded stores, in addition to some more “fun” child-oriented stores. I reminded myself that it was okay if my kids were bored. It wasn’t my job to entertain them. Coming along with us to run errands could be fun for them! New sights and sounds, right? It could be an adventure! They had each other, after all (they’re now five and two, so they can play together a bit.) I promised I would not placate them with screens. (They have Fire tablets with pre-downloaded movies, but we have a strict rule about using them only on planes or in hotels while traveling, so we didn’t even have screens with us.)

Of course, they were bored. In one store, my five-year-old began licking the mirror on the wall, as if to say, “What are you gonna do about it?” My two-year-old joined in. And of course, people stared at me as I tried to get them to stop, first by attempting to distract them, then by gently telling them to stop, next by sternly ordering them to stop (which they found funny—I am not a naturally strict person so when I try to be a hardass they probably see it like if they were being scolded by Spongebob.) Nothing worked, and we ultimately had to leave.

The best part about people who stare at misbehaving (bored) children in public is that they would also stare if those kids were on an iPad. And they judge you if you appear frustrated or raise your voice, even though instilling correct discipline often means your kids will scream and cry because they aren’t getting their way. Your kids are supposed to be perfectly quiet and compliant, without any strict discipline (or screen) making them behave that way. Even the proponents of strict discipline expect that the discipline phase be completed already, whenever that may be, and if they see you scolding your child in public they assume it means you’ve never imposed proper discipline at home because you “can’t control” them. Eventually, I did about the worst parenting thing I could have done: threatened to revoke access to the cookie that was promised later that day, knowing that I was never going to revoke the cookie because it was the only leverage I had in the moment. Also, I had emptily threatened to revoke it three times already that day.

As we brought them to different stores (we definitely did not linger at any one store longer than necessary) they continued to poke and prod merchandise (I pulled them away every time, don’t worry, they didn’t actually damage anything) make loud noises, chase each other around, and search for dressing rooms where they could make more mayhem in private. I strongly suspect the dressing room obsession was a way to circumvent the new “no licking mirrors” rule. I asked them to stay in the wagon/double stroller that I would push around. They refused. I physically placed my two-year-old in the wagon, and she escaped, even with the straps buckled. This process was not without lots of screaming, naturally. We brought toys for them—even had the pick their favorite toys before we left the house—but those toys immediately lost any appeal as soon as they were in a store.

In one particularly embarrassing moment in a home decor store, my son attempted to shoplift a tiny golden star that had broken off an ornament. While the object was tantamount to garbage, I didn’t want him to think shoplifting was okay, so I explained that we should never take things from stores without paying. Of course, he didn’t care, so I tried to grab the star from his hands as he pleaded, “NO! I NEED TO KEEP IT! IT’S SO SHINY!” all while I was carrying my two-year-old on my hip who was desperately trying to escape my clutches to tackle a wall of delicate, precariously hanging glass snowflakes. People stared, of course. No doubt they thought I had “failed to control my kids,” which I had, but I would be very curious to hear how they would have “controlled” them. Presumably, they would have just never brought them there in the first place, but I wasn’t about to hire a nanny so I could buy homewares (funny enough, we had actually come there to buy a throw blanket and we didn’t realize the store would have ornaments at all—I would not have intentionally taken them to Glass Ornament Depot.) And maybe it’s just me, but I find that if a kid is really excited about some kind of naughty antic they’re spinning up, “just telling them to stop” doesn’t really work. Often, even a threat of a privilege being revoked will do nothing, unless it’s an immediately-accessible privilege (and good luck finding one in the middle of a home decor store, especially if there is no iPad to take away.) Some of you may think the “obvious” solution is threatening to leave the store. Bitch, they want to leave the store! Ultimately, unless your child is placated with a screen or terrified of you, they have the upper hand in all these public scenarios. And good luck once they get too big to physically carry. On more than one occasion I’ve had to remove one of them by carrying them out like a skateboard, but already my son is too big for that.

Side note: speaking of “just leave” the store/restaurant/whatever, I have a story for you. When my son was two, we took him to a nice restaurant, but we decided to go early (5 PM) and bring things for him to do. As soon as we arrived, he started messing with the votive on the table and doing a bunch of other loud stuff, so we did the “good parent” thing and said, “If you do that, we go outside.” He kept doing it (“it” being a delightful melange of all things naughty) so we calmly brought him outside. Unbeknownst to us, taking him outside meant passing by a particularly interesting clear door, which he really loved. As soon as he had “calmed down,” we took him back to the table. Immediately he began acting up again, because he was excited to get “punished” with access to the cool door. And by the way, the cool door was the only way to get outside. Curious to see how all the perfect parents of Substack would have handled this one! I’m sure they would have just decided never to take a child anywhere until they no longer thought doors were cool, or something.

Anyway…

When some people see stories like this, they might reverse courses and say that actually we just shouldn’t bring our kids anywhere that has potential to be troublesome or dangerous, aka anywhere outside Chuck E Cheese, which means parents should stay at home, order everything on our phones, and only reemerge when we have docile eight-year-olds who can read Hemingway when they’re bored. People earnestly warn parents not to fly with young children at all, even though if you have multiple kids, the “young children” years could extend into a full decade. Regrettably, I used to think this! I used to think it was selfish for parents to put babies on planes given how little the babies enjoy it and how much it annoys everyone else. But for some reason, I just assumed that was a six month period of no-travel, not potentially years for multiple kids. I also didn’t realize for just how long a child could be annoying on a plane. I thought that if you told an 18-month old to be quiet it would “just stop crying.” Meanwhile, while my five-year-old is an absolute dream on planes, it took him a full three years to get that way, if not a bit longer. Hahahaha, I suppose I deserve this!

Older, well-meaning relatives of mine have a tendency to just push screens in these moments of discomfort. They find it extremely embarrassing when our kids are being loud in public, even in locations that are not upscale, adult-centric or fancy. And on the occasion we do bring our children to a nicer restaurant with older relatives, there will be several urgings to please just give them a phone or remove them from the restaurant entirely, which usually happens on and off for the entire meal. A few times, I’ve caved on the phone thing because one time I went to a fancy celebratory dinner with my kids and spent nearly the entire dinner outside with my then eighteen-month-old daughter, who was screaming for basically no reason.

So really, we have choices. We could just admit that we want children to be quiet and well-behaved at any cost, or tolerate kids like mine who huddle in dressing rooms at Nordstrom to make fart noises. Then, within that first choice, which I suspect most people would take, we have to ask ourselves: do we want kids to be quiet because they’re occupied with something (and probably not something wooden, Montessori and intellectual, which will hold their attention for all of five seconds) or because they’re afraid of their parents? Because really, if you don’t have a unicorn kid, those are the options. People give their kids iPads and phones in public because it’s either that, or their kids’ naughty behavior prompting glares from annoyed patrons, or using some form of harsh discipline to scare their kids into behaving (as it stands right now, there is no natural consequence I could impose that would make sense to kids who are two and five, other than “we need to leave the store,” which again, is something they’d actually prefer.)

I grew up afraid of my parents. They weren’t remotely abusive, but they would yell at me if I was naughty and I was really, really scared of getting them angry. As a result, I was generally pretty well-behaved in public, long before iPads existed. When people ask “How did kids behave in public before screens?” this is how, and “yelling” was a best case scenario! Lots of people my age had parents who beat their asses! Unless they were just very naturally compliant kids (and I refuse to believe everyone’s kids behave perfectly with no incentive except for mine) parents would have to scare them into behaving. I listened to my parents because I didn’t want them to scream at me. The threat of a time-out was somewhat motivating, but mostly, I just didn’t want to be yelled at. As much as I love my parents and think they did a good job, I don’t want to raise my kids to be afraid of me. I have boundaries, sure, and I’m trying to be tougher, but I will tolerate some age-appropriate naughty behavior, especially when I know they’re tired/hungry/bored, whatever. (Side note: a cranky hungry child doesn’t mean the parents were too lazy to feed them. My kids will sometimes just refuse to eat lunch for no reason, and the parenting experts strongly recommend against placating with substitutes or snacks.) But unfortunately, most people don’t actually tolerate this, even if they nominally think parents shouldn’t bend over backwards to entertain their kids or provide iPads on demand. What they really mean is that kids should never be entertained or make any annoying noises ever.

So next time my kids are being annoying in a store, just remember: I didn’t give them an iPad, and I’m not terrifying them into compliance. This is what you asked for!