I know we’ve touched on the topic of boredom in the past (in this post about after-school activities), but this new opinion piece on boredom in the New York Times really resonated with me and I thought it makes for an interesting discussion. The article touches on the fact that boredom spawns creativity and self-sufficiency, and that it’s important for children to accept that life isn’t always a ‘parade of amusements’. Sometimes it’s boring, and the sooner children accept that, the better off they’ll be.
I have to say, I completely 100% agree with this! I grew up on a farm in the countryside. We didn’t have cable TV, we didn’t have a skate park, shop or town hall we could walk to, we didn’t even have neighbours! Whenever we told our parents we were bored, we were told to go outside and play, or my dad would cheekily suggest a chore like pulling weeds or washing the car. We quickly learned that we were better off playing nicely and looking busy than admitting boredom to our parents. As a result, my siblings and I played for hours together every day, creating our own games and running wild and free in the surrounding fields. Of course we’d eventually get bored, but we’d then have to find something else to do: a new game to play, a craft to make, a play to perform, a book to read, etc. We didn’t rely on our parents to constantly provide entertainment.
As the article suggests, back then parents didn’t have as much pressure on them to over-parent. The article claims that ‘nowadays, subjecting a child to such inactivity is viewed as a dereliction of parental duty…every spare moment is to be optimized, maximized, driven toward a goal’.
Call me an old-fashioned under-parenter, but I simply refuse to buy into this kind of parenting. My kids play so well together when they’re home and bored. Of course there are the occasional arguments and whinging, but I’ve found the more uninvolved I am when they argue (within reason, of course), the better they play. We also don’t have a television and the kids don’t have any electronic games or devices, so there isn’t a quick entertaining solution in our house. Again, as a result, they end up playing more creatively, crafting more, reading more, being bored…!!!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave comments below!
Courtney x
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