It's 3:22 p.m., and I'm sitting in the clinic's waiting room. They send you to this place when you have an emergency that isn't urgent enough for the ER.

I'm here with my daughter, who needs to see a doc. (She's good now)

A few other kids are in the waiting room—all with only one of their parents. And every parent is breaking their neck staring down at their phone.

Fortunately, I realize this as soon as we enter the room and decide I won't pull my phone out of my pocket while we wait.

Instead, I will give full attention to my daughter.

Two minutes in, and we're having a silly discussion that makes us both forget that we are supposed to be bored.

Our children learn a lot from watching what we do. If we can't stand to be bored for an hour, will they? 

If you were a teenager in the 1990s, you might even remember browsing the old magazines on the coffee table of a doctor's waiting room.

We used to kill time by making shifts with whatever we had at hand. It didn't need to be super interesting or super stimulating. Which is nice because our brains need this; being constantly bombarded hurts our mood and (probably) our mental health, too.

Next time you find yourself waiting for something and your child is around, will you use this time to catch up? Ask your son about his life, what he wants to do during the next vacation. Or ask your daughter to tell you a funny story about what happened to one of her friends.

Show your kid that boredom is an invitation to slow down.