To think we’re raising kids terrified of boredom?

[BoredomIsHealthy]

Kids seem unable to sit with boredom - everything must be entertaining, instant, stimulating.

AIBU to think boredom builds resilience and creativity, and we’re avoiding it?

I’m 60 and love a day at home. As a child there were very few outings or activities. I was fortunate to live on the coast and be an avid reader.

My own DC loved being at home playing in the garden and if they ever said they were bored they were given a job to do.

The moment a baby opens his eyes there is an activity gym placed overhead. Every chair they’re put in automatically rocks. Perhaps they are being overstimulated almost from birth and this sets the future for them?

I tell my kids "boredom is good for you" 😂

I have one dc who cannot entertain herself but I think that’s a twin thing rather than a screen thing. When her twin is here they’re not glued together at all but when dtd1 is out dtd2 gets bored instantly. Other than that, they’re fine. I model it I guess by having the odd lazy day where I do minimal order than read a book and drink coffee. (I work full time, did a masters and raised 3dc so I’m allowing occasional lazy days).

I’m in my late 50’s now and I can’t remember Adults playing with me as a child. It just wasn’t done then. We played with friends and siblings. And God help you if you said you were bored! You were given something to do!

I think it's an individual thing. I'm a twin and was/am perfectly able to entertain myself for long periods even as a child!

I was recently talking to a childminder who said that she’s noticed in recent years that young children are incapable of playing by themselves, because they’re constantly entertained. They just don’t know how to amuse themselves, even with toys. They are never bored.

It’s quite scary. My (now adult) DS has autism, and one of the things they looked for back then was lack of imagination and the ability to pretend play. It made me wonder if (in part) we are moulding children to display these symptoms.

I do believe that parents are under so much pressure to keep their children constantly stimulated - frequent big days out, extra-curriculars (sometimes multiple) almost every single day, activities, crafts, play dates, park visits, etc, I don’t know how they cope. We criticise parents for thrusting screens upon their children but if the alternative is to be constantly entertaining them themselves, it’s understandable that they need someone respite.

We need to teach our children (and their parents) “to be”. It’s no wonder that there’s a mental health crisis.

This isn’t my experience of young adults at work. To be honest they have more hobbies than me! Running, dance, climbing, and socialising by playing pool and darts rather than getting shit faced drunk like I did when I was 25.
But my profession is very niche and competitive to get a position, so maybe they’re the minority!

I think it changes with age. When the kids were 7 and under I would leave "invitations to play" around and set up activities but then leave them to it. I still gave them enriching things to do but there was a framework there. We would still do soft play and those £1 playgroups in church halls but, honestly speaking, kids are awake 12 hours a day and a playgroup or library or soft play is an hour or two tops. There is time to do both.
Now they are older they would much rather stay here. They're 9 and 11 and I came down this morning and they were watching a film together but also had dragged the Lego box out and were making scenes from the film to use in a stop motion and then later drew some backdrops and cartoons.

Screens are not the enemy when used to inspire free play.
Soft play and playgroups and farms and enrichment opportunities are not preventative of free play.

As for the people who said families were always travelling and on holiday, I can't tell you how valuable that is. Spending time away from work with the kids in a school holiday is enrichment and inspiring for play on return.

I don't think play dates themselves are bad things. My eldest is 3 and we do a lot of play dates with friends and socialising is so important and this does benefit him. Even growing up, I had friends I played with in the street and others who i went to their house to play and I'll imagine it'll be the same for mine too. We're lucky to live in an area where kids play out. They all had massive water fight over the summer, it was so great to see!

In my workplace I definitely feel it's the older people who have the interests and more traditional hobbies. However when I look beyond that I can see you can't be too sweeping - if I think about something like my daughter's main sport, there are a lot of young adults of the same age range involved in the appropriate age level and also in the coaching itself, both as jobs and as volunteers. But I guess also a good few people my age never developed an interest in much beyond a bottle of vodka on a Saturday night.

Yep, dtd1 loves time entertaining herself. Dtd2 likes company. It’s personality over screen time impact.

I was a child in the 60s and an only child, living in a small rural town. I agree that when we did go somewhere it was memorable, and because it didn't happen often we really enjoyed it. When kids are constantly being stimulated and taken places surely they lose some of that joy of the unusual. I remember playing with my friends a lot, reading, and just finding things to do, and I look back on my childhood with great fondness.

Are kids are constantly asking what are we doing today?
DH and laugh and say nothing and remind them of our own 80's childhood where we went in a day trip once or twice a year.
In reality to will go for a walk, shops, visit friends but rarely on a paid activity. Possibly once per school holiday.
Today we made a gingerbread house and painted some pots we made last week. The kids went for a walk with DH, spent an hour cleaning and tidying and played Minecraft together for an hour. They are expected to entertain themselves for a few hours on a weekend morning while we have a lie in. They might watch TV or play a boardgame or Lego together.
Yesterday we went to a Christmas market and the kids are horrified at the prices. We came home and made hot chocolate and watched Muppets Christmas Carol.

Some of us gave the kids chores to do when they complained about being bored.

My takeaway is chores cure boredom.

Agree. Children don’t ’play out’ anymore, so they’re at home 24/7 and mums (and dads!) desperately need them to just occupy themselves for a few hours so they can do housework, shower, cook etc

So the screens come out

MIL always bangs on about this but her kids were out pretty much all day every day of the holidays and after school from age 8/9

The hobbies thing has always been something I’ve felt very inadequate about. I’m not sporty and don’t really enjoy team things. My UCAS personal statement was very sparse. I like craft but it has always been too time consuming to really call a hobby, and I’ve preferred to focus my time on academic/professional qualifications. Now I’m where I want to be career wise, but my free time is taken up with my two kids under 5 (who I do let be bored but it usually ends up with the house getting completely trashed).
Tbh I have no idea what I would do with my free time if I had any! Probably watch something on TV or doom scroll. Which is exactly what we don’t want for our kids 😅

Yeah, kids could do with more unstructured, social time with other kids to replace 'playing out', which isn't possible for many kids nowadays.

I think schools need to play their part as well. Many have cut playtimes and lunchtimes to the bone so kids have barely any time to interact with each other in an unstructured way. Houses are smaller, cost of living is higher, parents have more stress, screens are all over the place and difficult to avoid. The world is just different.

It would be a huge step forward if the curriculum could be restructured to allow for one "day of play" a week, where kids just play and engage in unstructured play and activities with adults supervising from a distance.

I'm not sure about the younger generation: I'll have to ask my brother how well his daughters handle boredom (I don't have any children myself).

This is an interesting question. I myself really value "doing nothing" time. When I was growing up, we had "quiet time" at weekends and in school holidays, usually an hour a day. The adults read books, and we children had to look after ourselves, usually separately. But my mum was somebody who always had to be busy, and in her retirement, she is still like that. She was a teacher, and in school holidays, she could never spend a day doing "nothing": and often, her bright ideas would involve the rest of us being busy: she gave us stuff to do whether we wanted it or not. Perhaps she had the teacher's instinct that pupils always had to be kept busy, or they would start playing up. She would decide (on a whim) that she wanted to repaint the entire house over the summer holidays, and of course we'd have to muck in, when the rest of us just wanted to enjoy the summer, not even asking for expensive activities to fill it with. When I was a teenager, I remember fighting for my downtime, pleading "can we just chill?". She was also very big on writing diaries, but this was presented as a chore, especially on holiday. "Have you written your diary about what we did today, yet?", when we wanted to relax at the end of a long day. (I also remember a realisation that school trips would always be followed by having to write about them.) And needless to say, lazing on a beach was not her thing at all: she would have to be doing something, such as swimming. She probably got it from her father, who was self-employed, and was very much of the view "time is money". She is lovely, but her mania to be busy can be exhausting sometimes.

My parents suddenly started going to church when I was nine, and I remember my annoyance at this, because it took valuable "chill time" out of the weekends. I stopped going as soon as I could.

If ever one of my chukdren dared say they were bored they found themselves cleaning the toilets!
The problem starts so young now. I read threads on here where mums are worrying about how to entertain their babies almost from day one. They do not learn to entertain themselves. Children do not need non stop parent directed activity ... they need to learn to amuse themselves.
I have GC and really feel that some of the problem does lie with TV .... children's TV is frenetic and over stimulating. I am going to sound very old now ... I'm not! ... but the programmes my children watched were much gentler and slower paced ... think Bagpuss style.
I occasionally look at clips of children on Fb ... they are being cute .... but in the background the TV is on in most of the clips .... just all the time.
I am not anti TV and it's great to use it while you cook, or to sit and watch with a child. But it is so in your face and wires up the young plastic brain. Programmes need to be selected with care.

Yes I agree we parents need to get better at allowing our children to be bored, or rather having our children at home with nothing to do (other than play with the same old
toys I suppose!) I'm guilty of it - I work 4 days out of 5 and wish I didn't have to, they're at nursery and in after school clubs until the minute they close so on the days I have with them I want to make them as fun as possible. I know I could do better and actually If they were at home doing nothing it would mean I have more time to tidy , batch cook etc! They don't need screens to get by, but I do find on a Saturday morning they say to me "mum what are we doing today?"

totally agree- I’ve got a lovely friend who constantly I think feels her only child (12) has to have an itinerary - and be doing stuff - and it’s now become an expectation

This thread is making me feel so much better about rarely having plans on my day off with the children.
I'm an 80s child and I do remember a lot of sad hours getting board games out and just playing with the pieces because I didn't have anyone to play with so I'm glad I'm slightly more engaged than that but I think my kids are quite good already at using their imaginations.
I gave my 4 year old a lanyard from work and it generated a good hour of play.

DS (12) is currently cutting and gluing paper into snowflakes. My DCs certainly don't lack in screen time, but they do have other interests too. They both do a couple of sports. DS1 likes his Warhammer and manages his modelling around his DoE award to pace it.

We are "doers" but a lot of it's been fairly low-key stuff like going to parks/ walks/ bike rides, and fairly spontaneous rather than booking more extravagant things weeks in advance. They had months of unstructured time around 7/ 9 in the lockdowns. They weren't so much into imaginative play like role play/ small world, but liked using random items and the classic toys of sticks and cardboard boxes.

Some of my favourite evenings with my youth group now are where we're quite unstructured; things like getting a load of craft supplies out and letting them release their imaginations, and that's so valuable in a world where safeguarding often cramps exploring and the curriculum is tight and risk averse (in terms of learning through mistakes) in under-resourced schools. Younger parents are increasingly micro-managing their children and can struggle to trust leaders with risk-assessed activities that have been age-appropriate for decades. That's far from all parents, it's a small proportion but it is increasing and there is a difference in the "covid toddler" cohort compared to previous cohorts.

I'm finding in secondary schools that the patience level and attention spans have declined significantly compared to 10-20 years ago. There were challenges then, but the number of self-motivated independent workers is a minority now when compared to other schools of similar demographic.

I grew up in the 90's. My parents would never have dreamed of spending money on expensive days out. A day out for us was a walk to a country park with a pack up, and if I was lucky, an ice cream!

At home I was largely left to my own devices. I spent a lot time playing out with other kids, reading, writing stories, and drawing/collating information about animals, especially different cat breeds. I engaged in a lot of imaginative play, most of which revolved around TY beanies, right up until I went to secondary school lol.

I think we over schedule children now. The concept of a child having an activity calender blows my mind. I think swimming lessons and one other hobby a week is enough 🙈 We fill every second with activity, and they don't have the chance to do things like draw. Or even do things like go outside and find fun stones to paint, like I would have!

My DD is only 18mo old, and I'm trying my best to raise her with plenty of unstructured time. I also don't bother bringing toys to places like the supermarket. I'm lucky as for her age she plays really well independently right now, but I think it will get harder as she gets older.

Everyone thinks they do it better than everyone else. Chances are, they don’t. Parents who give their kids plenty of unstructured down time (as a conscious choice or otherwise) may fuck up in different ways.
Most parents are just doing their best in the situations they’re in.