Advice wanted for my 5 year old son

[EveLL]

Can anyone suggest some interesting or enegy burning educational classes for us please? My 5 year old is extremely active and gets bored super easily. Atm he goes swimming and does roller skating on Saturdays and we’ve also tried piano, karting and horse riding had no luck. Apart from that we go out every week and holidays pretty often he’s still constantly feeling bored. Any advice would be appreciated, cheers

I think you’d do well to let him learn to be bored otherwise you’ll be constantly made to entertain him. Maybe you need to introduce proper quiet time so he chill and learn to calm himself.

Otherwise running, park, swimming. Or something that is mentally tiring.

Agree he should learn to handle feeling bored/entertain himself. Majority of 5 year olds are active and ideally want constant entertainment. Also sounds like a concentration thing if he’s tried stuff and given up on it, yet says he’s bored.

Agree there's nothing wrong with being bored. Building train tracks was a good way to engage concentration and encourage some self-made entertainment too. Being able to occupy your mind is a good skill to encourage and learn. Boredom breeds imagination. My eldest has adhd and was incredibly 'busy' so the trick is finding something that triggers that intense desire to focus. Brio train tracks were great for that for my son at that age and a bit younger

Lego.

Yes! Lego! I was struggling to think what else my lot lived that would inspire concentration at that age! It feels like a lifetime ago! My eldest is only 17. How time flies!

Thanks everyone for your advice and yes Lego does keep him quiet for a while I guess we’ll have to train him on entertaining himself. Can I say being a parent is so hard lol especially when you complain people start to judge you! I’ve only joined this site today and I found it really helpful x

I agree the focus should really be on learning to concentrate for longer, rather than encouraging the constant need for new activities.

Another thing we did was try to watch older films when we put one on. It's not a snobby thing because I personally enjoy the newer ones just as much, but older films are so much less flashy than modern films and take much longer to get to the point, which I think is part of why a lot of kids struggle to focus so much these days. When we were young we were used to watching films where you'd have to wait a good 15 minutes before anything exciting happened, and 5 minutes before the opening credits finish. Nowadays there's a fart joke, an explosion and a silly animal sidekick all within that time. A lot of kids don't know how to cope with waiting.