Why Good Old-Fashion Boredom Is Good For Kids

As parents, “getting it right” for our children is often our most important objective. For a New York City family, that can mean fast-paced days that are packed with non-stop activities. These activities (to say nothing of plain old school!) range from soccer practice to piano lessons to tutoring, swim lessons, and birthday parties…and the list goes on and on.

With all this busyness, we hope to enhance our children’s growth and cultivate well-rounded individuals, but are we really succeeding? Are we really “getting it right”? Unfortunately, I believe we are missing several key ingredients—ingredients that, ironically, we probably had considerably more of in our own childhoods: self-reflection and, dare I say, old-fashioned boredom.

Every now and then, we need to hit the pause button in our children’s lives. When was the last time you and your children had a clear schedule to spend unscripted time together or even to spend alone? Stimulating activities are important, but so is time for reflection and simply being still. How else can we find the mental space to understand the significance and value of these many activities and the whirlwind of doing? Fortunately, self-reflection and being still are skills that we can both model for our children and consciously provide for in our daily lives.

At home, small adjustments can have great impact. A few simple solutions can include a rule that no electronics are allowed during dinner, forcing every member of the family to be fully present. We can designate regular family time for a walk around the neighborhood, during which we chat with each other or simply take some personal time to think. Or, we can pick a day where everyone cooks a meal together or works on a puzzle—or maybe find one evening every week or month to have a board game night (also without electronics).

The point is: we need to establish some time in all the running from activity to activity to do what many of us did as children—sit on the front steps, porch, or park bench and watch the world go by. One of my favorite expressions to use with my boys when they complain about being bored is that you cannot possibly be bored with a brain between your ears. After all, boredom breeds creativity!

It’s during those moments when the mind and body are allowed to relax that our children can reflect on their day, their week, their neighborhood, and their world. Everything we do has meaning, but we need to do a better job of carving out space to explore and reflect on what that meaning is. And what could be closer to getting it right than to help our children to develop into thoughtful adults whose doing has purpose and whose lives have meaning?

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