How to Help When Your Kid Thinks Their “Create Your Own Kingdom” School Project Is Dumb
The crumpled worksheet hit the kitchen counter right between my half-empty coffee mug and my 7th grader Jax’s half-eaten plate of tacos, goldfish crumbs spilling over the edges. “I have this dumb project,” he mumbled, grabbing a soda from the fridge. “Create your own kingdom. For social studies. It’s so stupid.”
Jax is the kid who aces every multiple-choice test, asks for extra math problems for fun, and hates any assignment that doesn’t have a clear right answer. I’ve been here before: when his 5th grade teacher assigned a “create your own culture” project, he sat at the table complaining for 45 minutes before he even scribbled a single word. I almost did the usual thing that day, too—almost said “oh c’mon, that sounds fun, you get to be creative” before I caught myself. I remembered how I felt about open-ended projects when I was his age: it felt like the teacher just didn’t want to grade a real test, and they were making me do extra meaningless work for no reason. So instead I pushed my coffee aside and said, “Let me see the requirements. What part of it feels dumb anyway?”
He smoothed out the smudged worksheet, chocolate stain blurring the bottom corner. The requirements were short, almost too short: 1. Clearly show the four main roles of the feudal system in your kingdom. 2. Include a labeled map of your territory. 3. Write one paragraph explaining a unique rule your kingdom has that solves a problem you care about. 10 points total, due one week from Friday.
“See?” he said, leaning back against the fridge. “It doesn’t even say what we have to turn in. A poster? A diorama? A TikTok? I don’t want to build a fake cardboard castle. I already memorized all the roles for the quiz last week. Why do I have to do this?” He wasn’t wrong. He’d aced the feudalism quiz, so this felt like extra fluff to him, a waste of time he’d rather spend playing soccer or riding bikes with his friends.
I didn’t argue with him that it wasn’t dumb. Instead I said, “The requirements don’t say it has to be a medieval kingdom, right? It just says your own kingdom. You don’t have to build a castle. What’s a problem you actually care about right now? Something that bugs you every week.”
He thought for 10 seconds, then rolled his eyes and started talking about the basketball court at our neighborhood park. The high school guys show up right after school every day, take both hoops, and kick out any middle schoolers, even if we got there first. It’s been a month of him coming home grumbling about it, so it was top of mind.
“That’s your problem,” I said. “You just checked off requirement three. Now what’s your kingdom’s territory?” He blinked, like he hadn’t thought of that. “What do you mean?” “You know every street in this neighborhood, every yard, the park, the convenience store on the corner. Why not make your map that? You can just screenshot it from Google Maps if you don’t want to draw it from scratch.”
That clicked. He pulled his laptop to the counter, screenshotted our neighborhood, labeled it “Jaxdom” and snickered at his own joke. Then we worked through the roles, and he fit them right into our actual life without any fake medieval stuff. King was obviously him, that checked out. Lords were the neighborhood homeowners—they own all the land, pay to keep the park mowed and the lights on, which is exactly what lords did in feudalism. Knights were the teen police explorers who patrol the neighborhood and walk little kids home from the bus stop—they protect the kingdom, perfect fit. Serfs were all the kids who use the park: they pick up their trash, bring extra balls, follow the rules, and get access to the court in return. His unique rule was a simple rotating schedule: 3 to 4:30 pm is for middle school and under, 4:30 onwards is for high school and up. It solved the problem, checked every single requirement on the worksheet.
He ended up printing the map, gluing it to a cheap poster board, writing the roles and rule on the back. It took an hour and a half total, spread over two nights. No trips to the craft store, no hot glue burns, no all-nighter before it was due.
I’ve been thinking a lot about these weird open-ended projects lately. A lot of parents I know either rant about how they’re a waste of time or gush about how great they are for creativity, but what I learned from Jax’s “dumb” project is that when a kid calls a project dumb, it’s almost never that they’re lazy or hate creativity. It’s that the assignment feels unmoored. There are too many blank spaces, and they’re being asked to invent a whole fake world when they just want to show they understand the work.
The small, concrete things that worked here are things I’ve used for every project Jax has complained about since. First, when they say it’s dumb, don’t tell them it’s not. Ask what part bugs them. Nine times out of 10, it’s the open-endedness, not the content. Second, don’t push them to “be creative” or come up with something fancy. Just ask them to plug in what they already know and care about. If they love Minecraft, build the kingdom in Minecraft. If they’re obsessed with their soccer team, make the kingdom their club’s territory. If they’re mad about snack prices at the school cafeteria, that’s the problem your rule solves. Third, you don’t have to help them make it perfect. I didn’t suggest adding glitter or a 3D castle to Jax’s poster. He just needed help narrowing down infinite options into something that fit what he cared about and checked all the boxes.
Jax got a 10/10, and his teacher put the poster up on the classroom bulletin board because it was such a clear, relatable example of how feudal systems work for the other kids. He still thinks most open-ended projects are dumb, and honestly? I get it. A lot of them are thrown together with little guidance, and they leave kids who like structure feeling like they’re jumping through hoops for no reason.
This time, though, we got it done quick, he actually understood feudalism better than he would have if he’d just memorized terms for a test, and I didn’t have to clean up a mountain of craft scraps off my kitchen floor. It’s not a perfect system, and I still grumble about unguided projects too. But it’s way better than sitting around arguing for hours about why the project isn’t actually dumb, which is what I used to do.
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