With so many parents stuck at home right now, lots of families have been forced into spending time together. Take it from Dr. Dad: unstructured family time is a nightmare just waiting to fall off a cliff onto a trainwreck.

Here are some fun games you can play with your kids while we’re stuck indoors – because you should never spend more than 15 minutes in each other’s company without either an activity or an exit strategy.

Reenact the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

Take turns with you and your DQ playing RFK and Sirhan Sirhan in order to determine if the assassin acted alone. If you have other children, one can be Rosey Grier, the NFL player-turned bodyguard that wrestled the gun from Sirhan’s hand and one can be the mysterious woman in the polka dot dress who may or may not have been the member of the Rosicrucians responsible for brainwashing the unwitting pawn.

This exercise teaches both a heathy respect for the past and a skepticism for those that attempt to control it. Give your kids an extra briny treat if they can match their actions to the bootleg audio that allegedly features nine shots instead of the eight that Sirhan’s .22 Iver-Johnson Cadet could hold.

Why the RFK assassination instead of the JFK assassination? Umm, are you trying to turn your baby into a basic bitch?

Monopoly

I know what you’re thinking: “Monopoly? Your hot tip for a cool new way to spend time is Monopoly?” Then, despite the fact that your point is made, you continue: “Monopoly? The oldest, and most boring board game in the history of mankind? Older even than Senet, the ancient Egyptian game of passing and trapping?”

I know that you were thinking that, but fear not – I can explain.

When the kids are stuck inside, you aren’t looking to maximize excitement levels, you’re trying to occupy time. We’re talking quantity over quality here, people.

Monopoly is so boring, so monotonous, that after only a couple rounds it feels more a meditative exercise than anything that could be called a “game.” The tumbling of the dice becomes a Zen koan that prompts reflection on the randomness and finitude of the universe.

At a certain point, the game becomes a sunken cost. Your kids know it hasn’t been worth it, but they keep striving forward in an attempt to extract some meaning out of this otherwise pointless task. “This all cannot have been for nothing,” their brains shriek with every tumble of the dice. “Perhaps in victory this whole exercise will have somehow been worth it.”

But there will be no victory. There will be no compensation for the hours twiddled away. The game will never truly end. Instead, the will of one player will be tested to the breaking point. Something inside them will snap and they’ll say they’re leaving the room to get a drink or something, but they’ll just never return.

Monopoly always ends not with victory, but quiet submission to the march of time. And in that moment you, as the parent have won, because during Monopoly time you were able to sit alone in the bathroom and watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on your iPhone.

That Knife-Hand Game That Tough Guys Play to Show That They’re Tough

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a scene from Aliens that explains it perfectly:

Now let me be clear: I have no idea how to play this, or really even why. All I know is that when Dr. Baby and I play, he prefers to use the knife from his SABLUE silicone tool-like dinnerware cutlery set, while Dr. Dad favors the Victorinox Forschner Fibrox 6” boning knife – but you use whatever makes you happy.

Watch TV

Sure, you may remember your old friend television as your lonely-times companion from back in your pre-children life, but now that you have kids did you know that he can be so much more than a substitute for human intimacy?

A babysitter, an educator, and a moral compass – the television is truly a marvel of indoctrination. And now, thanks to the miracle of the internet, you don’t even need a TV to watch TV. Just plunk your potato-pile of a child in front of a laptop, tablet, or telephone (I’m still figuring out how that works) and within seconds they can submerge themselves in an endless stream of content.

Just leave the room and let them watch away. TV has never let us down before, and internet TV is just regular TV but better. Who would have thought you could just stick kids in front of a screen for a while? Not you before reading this article, that’s for sure.

Pray to a Deity Long Forgotten

Many families are feeling a hole in their lives where regular attendance of religious services used to be. In many senses, however, staying home may turn out to be a blessing – in more ways than one!

Now is the chance to expand your theological repertoire by enacting ancient rituals that have been long neglected. Pray to the old gods. Bury the unwashed knives in the yard. Weave a different tapestry on your loom; your fingers will still remember the threading.

For those that are interested in performing long forgotten sacred rites in the service of some but don’t know where to start, try sharpening the teeth of your scratch-plow while singing the praises of Mithra. For those with toddlers and younger children, shaking typanons for Cybele can be a good form of cardio and a way to gently encourage the psychogenic fugue state of ecstatic rampage that she demands.

While fugue rampages are a great way to fill time, they can also be a pain to clean up afterward. Try making a game of it to help pass the time! I like to race Dr. Baby to see who can collect the most fragments of Achaemenid’s seal – winner gets to pick the movie we watch before bed!

Note: being larger and faster, you will always win the cleanup race, so this is a great way to justify why you’ll be watching The Deer Hunter for the ninth night in a row.

Other Fun Indoor Games for Kids:

Mommy’s Lil Mixologist

Learn QuickBooks

Mining for Cryptocurrency

Baking Cookies

Gator Baitin’

Ok, Once It Gets Dark Take This Package to Uncle Rico And Don’t Let Anybody See You. Also Don’t Tell Your Mother and Please for God’s Sake Do Not Open It Under Any Circumstances. If the Police Stop You for Whatever Reason Your Name Is Teddy Middlebrooks and You Live Over on Oakview, Got It? Now Who’s My Little Ninja?

Screaming at Clouds