To think that the current vogue for allowing kids to be "bored" is a bit misguided

[Thepeopleversuswork]

Have been thinking about this a lot recently, prompted by posts on here and things in the media. It's become very fashionable for people to talk about how important it is for children to be allowed to "be bored" sometimes.

I totally understand and support the principle of this: which is that overzealous scheduling and helicopter parenting is not great for many kids. I think there is a place for not having your entire life planned out from dawn to dusk and for learning to entertain yourself.

But in reality I think this "leave them to get bored" is often quite unworkable. Once kids get "bored" these days they invariably reach for screens. Now, obviously it's up to us as parents to manage this. But there's a limit to how much you can police this, short of removing all devices. It would be great if "being bored" always meant directing kids out to rough and tumble play in the hayfields or making dens in the living room or finger painting, but that usually isn't what it means. It either means screen time or it means getting into things they shouldn't. Stopping this happening means endless policing of what they do. So, forgive me but given the choice I'd rather my kid was doing an after-school club than playing four hours of Minecraft (sorry Minecraft) or watching TV or being bullied by me to be "creatively bored".

"Constructive" boredom as its preached is one of these lovely ideas (a bit like "free range" parenting) that's much much easier to achieve if you have a huge five-bedroom pile in the home counties than if you live in a cramped two bed flat (from which you also work). It's pretty unworkable for most parents and I'm starting to find it increasingly irritating when people parrot this as if it were a solution to all parenting dilemmas.

He won't feel rejected if he understands it's because you're busy. Presumably he's welcome to come and pitch in with the chores you're trying to crack on with if he wants a bit of company? Constantly entertaining your DCs is a modern concept.
I'm an only child of a single parent. My DM did occasionally sit down and play with me, but she worked long hours and when we were home she mostly needed to spend her time on cooking, house keeping, gardening, and DIY. There were only 4 TV channels and by the time we got home the kids' programmes had finished, so I rarely watched it. I played with Lego & Sylvanians, read (lots!), did crafting, helped DM, and played out/rode my bike with my friends. I didn't outgrow Lego until around yr7/8, which was normal - I often see parents on here saying their DCs have outgrown toys much sooner and wonder why that is. Once I had grown out of toys, I was old enough to get the bus into town with friends, so would arrange things like that instead. My eldest is 9yo and, although she is pickier over what she plays with now, still very much plays with toys; I can't see that changing any time soon.

Disagree. I was bored as a child so I learned to tell myself stories - and, later, write them down. No need to use your imagination if you're always occupied.

OP, I agree that kids will reach for screens if not actively engaged in anything else, and the sort of 'creative' boredom which is beneficial is hard to foster in 2023. What you need is a formal, constrained type of situation where they don't have the option to look at screens.

The sort of thing I'm thinking of goes back to my youth, long ago. We had very formal assemblies in school each morning, lasting about 40 mins, with a hymn, a sort of 'Thought for the Day' sermon from a teacher, announcements and music on entering and leaving the hall.

Of course, everyone claimed to hate assemblies, but I remember that lovely feeling of staring out of the hall windows while the teacher was droning on giving their talk, sort of 'loosening your consciousness' and letting it wander anywhere it wanted to. All kinds of thoughts and ideas drifted through my head, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. I didn't mind it at all - I found it a great way to start the day, and I'm sure it had some of the benefits of meditation. Kids would also have got this experience in the days when they had to sit through church services (not child-orientated ones like today), and stay silent and not fidget.

When I was teaching it became the accepted wisdom that children shouldn't be subjected to any kind of formality, with expectations of silence and sitting still and listening. It was, and still is, very out of fashion. But I've always thought that's a mistake. There are huge benefits from a bit of enforced quiet and contemplation. Yes, they might think they're bored, but it's a pleasant kind of boredom where your mind takes a kind of holiday and goes off somewhere else.

I was going to post similar.

I think that the boredom threshold of children falls in proportion to the rise in the range of diversions available to them. I grew up in an era when there was nothing on telly between Watch With Mother at lunchtime and programmes starting again around 4pm, but I don't recall ever being bored.

Mind you, we were allowed to do things that would probably end up leading to social services getting involved these days - going to the woods on our bikes or swimming without any adults to supervise, getting the bus 6 miles into town to mooch around the shops, playing in old houses that were awaiting demolition.

It's a miracle any of us survived to adulthood.

Entertain themselves with what?

Entertain themselves with what?

Books, toys, games , activity, drawing, reading, the outdoors, you name it.

I mean, you're not locking them in a sensory deprivation chamber, right? Your kids have sometime in their lives expressed hobbies and interests, and they may have some things that cater to those hobbies and interests?

Available to my kids: books, library cards, Lego, art supplies, more books, games, puzzles, paper and pens to write a story, toys to make up stories around, playing cards, marble run, electronics kit, science kit, other stuff. We're lucky enough to have a tiny garden so add basketball + hoop, football, a bit of grass to play on/lie on.

Stuff I've come across my bored kids (4 years apart) doing: Parliament of stuffed toys, science experiments making 'potions', youngest makes almost homeopathic fruit juices by mixing trace elements of a raspberry in water, they both like making potions/seeing what dissolves/playing with baking powder, they'll bake a cake or biscuits with a small amount of supervision (but not me coordinating the activity/jollying them along - I'm there for advice), recreating movie scenes in Lego, making their own superhero movie, reading, writing stories, playing/making up music, occasionally they'll even do something 'wholesome' and straightforward like play a board game or card game together. I sometimes have to intervene when the basketball gets heated or whatever. And often I'll join in when asked but I'm not there filling every waking minute for them.

They're not particularly exceptional kids and it wasn't particularly easy when we decided to have stricter limits on screens. Youngest still whines 'I'm boooooored' two minutes after the iPad goes off. But ten minutes later he's just getting on with stuff.

That said, my kids also do a fair amount of clubs and stuff by choice.

I don't think there is any evidence that young children who are ignored by adults and left to find their own entertainment are more likely to read, draw, play outside when older than those whose parents read, draw, took them to parks and other activities. Quite the opposite.

But why would being ignored by adults and generally bored make them more able to entertain themselves with books or do the other activities?. When my children were younger I used to do those activities with them. It didn't mean they couldn't entertain themselves when older.

Straw man. No one is suggesting that parents should never do those things with their kids, or that kids should be left to their own devices all the time.

Only that filling every waking moment of their day with parent-led activities, or allowing screens to be the only thing that fills the gap in adult-led activities probably isn't the best for kids either.

So... you gave them access to those things, suggested things that were available to them when they were bored, helped them explore things and develop skills, so that as they got older they had lots of things they could reach for and felt confident exploring for themselves? You didn't just let them reach for a screen whenever the smallest amount of boredom hit? You suggested things that they could do? Some time in the preschool years you started leaving them to play solo for longer periods while you got on with stuff?

Yeah we're not a million miles apart. If my kids complain to me they're bored, I'll suggest things they can do, including helping me with whatever I'm busy with, jobs that need doing or many of the things available for them to play with. I spend lots of time playing with them, reading to them, doing stuff with them - particularly those things where they still really need or benefit from a parent's input. But I'm not going to drop everything the minute someone says they're bored. Five minutes later, they've found something.

No, I'm not micro managing them . I don't restrict screens either, they get board of them after a while and do something else. They are playing table tennis at the minute (without a table )

I’ve only ever heard this idea coming from myself. There’s definitely not a fashion for it.. in fact I don’t think kids know the meaning of the word bored nowadays and judging from parents I see and hear they haven’t subscribed to this notion and are still carting tarquin and Winnie to trombone lessons and dance at every opportunity.

That's amazing! My kids were much less good at regulating themselves when it came to screens without those limits in place; now they have enough other things to be getting on with that they don't always reach for the screens in the allowable times but they definitely do need those limits in place right now.

That said, there is currently a large box in the garden which is apparently more attractive than any screen right now.

I think it means that entertaining them 24/7 means making a rod for your back. I did this with my 4.5 year old because lock down. He then struggled to play alone. Rather than give him something to do every minute or playing with him all the time, I leave him and let him get ‘bored’ so he has to get his toys out. Sure enough he sits chatting away with his toys after five minutes!

I appreciate you are not suggesting that they are ignored all the time but you seem to think there is some advantage to being ignored to the extent they are bored. What do you think happens if parents lead the activities when children are young? Do you think they will be less able to entertain themselves as teenagers and still require parents input? I assure you that won't happen.

🤣 how old are they?

It really is not hard to control the use of screens.

Being bored prepares many dc for adult life - very few grown ups don't experience some form of boredom, even those that lead 'exciting' lives.

And when you break it down, a lot of stuff like chores, etc are very boring, and many jobs are too. Most grown-ups learn to deal with coping with the boredom of it all, so best that boredom is regularly experienced from a young age.

Or species... DCats would happily spend hours with a box in the garden 😸😸

My children are now adults so the only screens were TVs so no they didn't reach for a screen. I didn't leave them to be bored either though. I would do activities with them when they were younger and I don't remember them complaining they were bored.

Define 'young'?

I know a fair few kids (and you hear it on here) that there are a lot of kids who don't know how to entertain themselves without their parents doing the entertaining, or or without a screen.

From the preschool years I've been encouraging a degree of independent play - and as they get older, yes, figuring out what it is they were going to fill their time with rather than relying on someone else to do it for them.

So that when their brain goes 'I don't have anything to do right now!' they have the resources to fill the gap themselves rather than being reliant on someone else for it. To have the experience of letting their mind wander for a bit because

And yep, I think there is some advantage in not having someone fill every single gap in their mental lives so that they have space to let their minds wander, to figure things out for themselves, and he's, sometimes (horrors!) experiencing some fleeting boredom before getting on with it and finding something to do.

Perhaps we have different definitions of 'ignoring' and 'boredom'? To me, it's important that my kids know from a young age that other people also have priorities which are just as valid as theirs, and that their parents won't always drop what they're doing to cater to the child's immediate whim, so the child will have a choice - find a way to entertain themselves, or do a (to them) dull task with their parents.

Youngest is seven and calmly informed me that it was his home now, and the kid would keep foxes and robbers out at night.

But the eleven year old, though too cool most of the time, is certainly not above making the occasional foray into a furniture box.

I've had to promise to leave it there for the weekend as apparently it is a not-at-all-obvious spy base.

I would define young as preschool and maybe reception. I don't think leaving them to be bored benefits them. They don't need to be bored to learn how to entertain themselves or play with friends their own age. It will happen once they are at school anyway. Older children who spend a lot of time on screens do so because that is their preference rather than because they can't find anything else to do.