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"Mommy, I'm bored." That
seemingly innocent complaint attacks like a well-aimed artillery
barrage. The tone is demanding: "I need something to do."
It's accusatory: "You're not doing anything about it."
And defiant, "Just try one of your useless suggestions."
Now we start feeling irritated. What we wouldn't give for a little
of that unstructured time they seem to be frittering away in all
that boredom.
What Do Children Actually Mean….?
What do you do with a kid dying
of boredom? Before we can think about what to do, we need
to look more closely at what children might actually mean when
they say, "I'm bored."
They might be saying, "I haven't
been getting enough sleep," in which case high stimulus entertainment
is not in order. A more complex message behind boredom might be:
"I now have time to dwell on anxieties or fears that are
usually pushed aside in the flurry of activity and structure.
This is uncomfortable." Here too it would seem that more
flurry and activity would only postpone the opportunity for kids
to work things out the way kids do.
It may be that children need time
to submerge themselves in nothingness in order to unlock their
imaginations. We know that one way kids work out inner problems
is through imaginative play. They actually re-create themselves
through fantasy, make believe games or artistic expression. They
can play out emotions that might otherwise be too overwhelming,
e.g. by pretending to be their favorite superhero and fighting
their worst fear. They develop resourcefulness by replaying difficult
real life scenarios and generating solutions to problems. Or they
might just play in a way that enables them to recognize and accept
their feelings.
Dwelling in the imagination engages
a part of the brain that may not be used in school. Research on
brain activity shows that what we know as imagination is generated
in the right side of the brain where "open-ended ideation"
takes place (see Writing
the Natural Way, by Gabriele Lusser Rico). In contrast, the
left side of the brain is thought to be "linear and logical."
Performance in school, for example, tends to require intensive
left side activity. Thus, the right brain provides a refuge from
life in the "fast lane" left side, and a rest from the
barrage of external stimuli children are constantly processing
in the more structured areas of their lives.
The imagination provides infinite
possibilities for play, and some children just seem to be born
blessed with good imaginations. However, "Use your imagination"
is not a realistic command. How do we encourage and nurture this
way of being?
Imagination Needs Boredom
Rachel Carson tells us in her book,
A
Sense of Wonder, that each child needs at least one adult
who "can share in rediscovering the excitement and mystery
of the (natural) world we live in. "Look at the stars,"
I told my five-year-old daughter, the other night driving along
a dark country road. She answered: "The stars are bowing
down to us, like they did to Joseph in the Bible." Carson
instructs us to ask ourselves: "What if I had never seen
this before? What if I knew I'd never see it again?"
Here, I've been influenced by another
great thinker: the spider heroine, Charlotte, in the children's
classic, Charlotte's
Web, by E.B. White. When Charlotte is determined to save the
life of her dear friend Wilbur, the pig, she develops a plan of
non-action. As she waits to trap flies she will hang "head-down
at the top of her web….letting the blood (and hopefully some
ideas) flow to her head…."
We learn from Charlotte that good
ideas demand a certain amount of inactivity in order to develop.
Imagination needs boredom. Some of my best writing ideas
come to me while washing the dishes or walking the dog.
Treat Boredom as Your Best Friend
Indian meditation master Swami Shyam,
has been known to tell his students, "Treat boredom as your
best friend." Ordinarily, we greet boredom with discomfort
to which we reflexively respond with a novel activity. Yet in
doing so, we lapse into the habit of allowing the left-sided brain
to take control. Awareness of boredom brings us to a border crossing
from the last frontier of our conscious mind into unconscious
and imaginative regions. And if we can manage to stay with, even
welcome, that feeling of boredom, other ways of thinking and being
will naturally emerge.
It is not easy to be "inactive"
in a society that so highly values "productivity" and
being "goal oriented." So when we expect our children
to deal with boredom we must ask ourselves: How capable are we
of getting a little "bored" before rushing on to a new
activity?
I'd always considered patience a
dull virtue, until a psychotherapist I knew pointed out that patience
is not a mindless-kind-of-waiting-for-the-bus-nothingness. It
is, in fact, an interesting process of observing reality. We have
the opportunity to watch how life situations unfold before deciding
how or whether to act.
Despite everything I've said, I
know you're still waiting to hear what to do with your kids when
they're bored. So here are a few suggestions.
- Lie around on the beach
- Take a walk through your tree-lined
neighborhood.
- Read books like Charlotte's
Web or Dandelion
Wine, by Ray Bradbury about children who have mastered the
fine art of doing nothing.
- Hang upside down (figuratively
of course) and wait for some ideas to come.
- Don't look for the stars. They
will bow down.
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