Empowering Children to Embrace and Learn from Boredom

Show Notes:

Struggle with your child's constant complaints of boredom or felt the pressure to constantly entertain them? Feeling guilty about screen time and want to strike a better balance?

In today's episode, I discuss how to approach boredom with intention and provide suggestions to help your children learn to manage this feeling on their own.

I also tackle the challenge of helping children navigate boredom in our fast-paced, on-demand world and share insights on reframing boredom as independent play, creative thinking, or other forms of self-guided exploration. By doing so, you can take a step back and give your child the space they need to handle their own feelings of frustration, without constantly intervening. 

Transcript:

Tara's Take on Boredom

Hello, welcome to Tara's Take this episode is going to be very much one of the reasons that I changed and rebranded my podcast to Tara's Take. Over the last oh 10 years or so, maybe it's a little longer, [00:01:00] I get a lot of people who will actually reach out and literally that's what they say to me. Hey Tara, what's your take on.

What do you think about? Um, so it seemed really fitting to sort of rebrand as Tara's Take. Today, I'm really going to do sort of an element of Tara's Take on Boredom.

I think it's a conversation that is had quite a bit, that people have a lot of thoughts about, feelings about, and I think the way it's actually represented in the media is mis-guided, misleading.

What Parents Really Think of Boredom

Um, so today is going to be all about my take on boredom and what I think it means to parents. What I think it could mean what it should mean. I think what a lot of the sort of researchers and big thinkers in the area are trying to convey, and maybe it's not met with the same understanding because when I talk to parents about boredom,

I recently read an article in the New York Times about how parents are sort of, they [00:02:00] intentionally fill boredom, that boredom, makes them uncomfortable. And I think there's more to it than that. I think, I think parents don't just fill boredom because they don't have respect for it, which is kind of what the article.

Indirectly suggests is that we fill it because we don't respect it. And when I talk to parents, that's not what I hear. In fact, a lot of parents share with me that they really do value the importance of boredom that they think back about their childhoods. And they think about how important boredom was for them.

Boredom and Parent Responsibilities 

Now here's the thing. I also think it's getting confused with the idea that part of our role, our responsibility as parents is to make sure our kids are prepared for their futures. And that has become synonymous with filling their time with activities that are fulfilling them.

And I think. Those two things, um, are seen as one filling the other. And I actually think there are two separate things, and I will [00:03:00] often say, I actually think boredom is something we have to develop and think about with intention.

In a world that is high tech, high stimulating, where we have this notion or idea that as parents, we're not doing a great job, if we're not really building our children's skills in a whole bunch of spaces. Whether that's art spaces, sports spaces. Who knows. Right? There's the list of extracurricular ideas is like endless. Um, one cannot keep up with the options. One can not necessarily keep up with the financial obligations. There are so much, and the age and stage at which we introduce these is younger and younger. That's another topic I want to talk about. Just extracurriculars is a whole other topic. It's something that comes up a lot in my work. Why young children don't necessarily do super great at extracurriculars. Um, so I'll talk about that separately, but I do want to talk about this idea that a lot of parents I've talked to actually think boredom's important, but they don't know how to make it happen. Because they're so busy. And this is where I think the [00:04:00] mindset is super important.

Boredom as a Feeling

Where we actually have to stop and say maybe boredom is the thing we have to do with intention. There's a part B there's a part B to this. Boredom. Um, some psychologists call it a feeling, right? Boredom is a feeling.

I often wonder is boredom the feeling or is it the thing that we feel along with other feelings? Right. When we react to boredom when children react to boredom. It's not always a great reaction. Now in our busy world, we don't always have the ability capacity to make space for those really uncomfortable, big reactions.

Screen Time Guilt & Boredom As a Path to Independent Play

So I was talking to a family the other day. They really, really are struggling with how they feel about screen time. Right. They're really struggling with the fact that they know they're filling a lot of boredom with screen time. And the reason they're doing it is because they can't have big reactions, to facilitating something else, to [00:05:00] making space for some independent play.

Now this is not the bash screen time. That's not where this is going. This is to think about, okay. One of the reasons that we, even though we value boredom can't make space for it is because kids don't always have a great reaction to having to sit with it, to having to do something with it.

And there's ways to go around that. We've got to build some Boredom Buster lists . There's lots of the internet and Pinterest. It's full of thousands of suggestions.

I think we have to take one more step back. If we want to get intentional about boredom and making space for boredom, we got to think about what that actually means.

It means independent play. It means the ability to sit with your own thoughts without input, right? Without someone solving your feelings for you. We have to make space for reactions that might be a little bit louder or uncomfortable, right. We have to build tools for some emotional regulation to support [00:06:00] the reactions to boredom so that we don't problem solve the feelings as a way to avoid protesting. Which is what happens. Right. And again, it's not intentional. I think that's, what's super important about this conversation. This is not intentional. Parents really value boredom. They don't have the capacity to handle the reactions that can come from a child protesting, boredom. I think those two things are really important to distinguish the difference between.

How to Do This

So one of the things when I'm working with families is we have to take a step back and I say, okay, in the beginning when we're starting to intentionally foster spaces for boredom. Which by the way are also really important for parents. So I think one of the things that's happening in the world right now is we are over-parenting. We are over present.

I think that some of the shifts are amazing, but if you've been following my Podcast, you know, I talk a lot about this idea that like, we go from one extreme to the other, right. Emotional suppression to emotional free for all, under parenting to over parenting. And we got to, we got to [00:07:00] strike a balance.

We've got to find a middle space.

Boredom As a Skill

So when I think about boredom, I think about technology and I think about extracurriculars and I think about school and I think about all the layers of things that are happening in everyone's day. I now say, Hey, where boredom may have existed before there isn't much space for it. You kind of got to make space for it, which means you've got to think of it as a skill. We're going to build a skill.

When we build skills, sometimes there's some discomfort that comes with that. So I think what we actually need to support parents with is where are those spaces for boredom? What do they look like and how do we build our threshold to handle the pushback. And where does that sort of happen and how do we make space for some big feelings that we are not going to necessarily problem solve with our presence?

So here's the thing, when we're thinking about what happens when children are bored. Sometimes there's some yelling, there's some frustration, there's some crying. And we feel like, [00:08:00] oh, we got to fix that because it's loud because they're upset. But what about the idea that it's okay. This generation, and this is something I had to appreciate as a parent. This generation is used to constant input.

They don't have to wait for shows. There's show after show after show. They don't have to wait on the radio to hear the song that they want to hear and hit record on that cassette player, hoping to capture it. Right. They can just go to Spotify and click whatever song they want to listen to. And they can repeat it as many times as they like.

Right. It's on demand. They are trained for an on demand world. So when you don't have immediate input, it's annoying, it's frustrating. It's, there's a lot of feelings, there's a lot of feelings that come with that. And I think we try to problem solve that situation. And what we do is we unintentionally reinforce. That we will fix your boredom, but we're not actually fixing boredom. We're fixing the uncomfortable feelings that go with the boredom. And I think that's where the sort of [00:09:00] the headlines are misleading.

What's Holding You Back From Making it Happen

A lot of the articles do talk about this idea. They do talk about how boredom does is associated with some pushback, with some frustration, with some annoyance before problem solving. I think the piece that's missing is. Why do parents do that problem solving? It's because of discomfort with those big feelings. Right. So where are we building tools for those big feelings? And where are we saying? It's okay. It's okay for our child to be frustrated about this. It is highly frustrating for them. Boredom is really hard. Because they're used to super stimulated life. So there's like validation in that, right. Yes. It is hard to feel bored because you're used to a lot of input. Right.

And we all know, like when I talk to the parents, And all the research that keeps getting thrown out there, right? You need to make sure your kids are bored because this is where creativity happens. And this is, and there's a whole list of things that people are told are great reasons for boredom. And when I talk to parents and, and other caring adults, they can all [00:10:00] recite those things to me, they're like, I want my child to be bored. I want them to be creative. I want them to think outside the box. Right. They, they value boredom. They just can't figure out why they can't make it happen. And the reason they can't make it happen is. It's those uncomfortable feelings that are too loud for the conference call that you're trying to have while your child's having it. It's that uncomfortable whiny voice that's triggering you. And you're like, I cannot handle the reaction to your feelings of boredom, that we have to build some tools and skills for.

So I actually think that's the key point. We don't have to convince parents that they need to value boredom. I think they already do. I think they just don't know how to make it happen.

Boredom Busters & Other Tools

And that part of making it happen is actually stepping back with your own discomfort, with the sounds and behaviours that can come along with boredom before they get over the hump. Before kids get over the like, oh, you're not going to fix this for me, I need to fix it for myself. And that's where the active problem [00:11:00] solving can happen. That's where the boredom busters are so helpful. I have a, I have a chalk wall in my house that has boredom busters on it. Um, there's boredom jars. There's again, there's so many ideas out there for like, how can you help your child figure out? Without you giving that right, with very young children. How are you giving a couple of options to them? Not too many, because if there's too many, they can't actually make a choice.

Talk about that in my choice overwhelm episode.

So the idea here is part one is I think we have to stop and see why is it that parents can't handle boredom. It's not that they don't want it to happen. It's that they're uncomfortable with what happens. And then the part two is, okay. So if we're going to build this as a skill, I had this conversation this week, we're going to build this as a skill.

We can't build this skill while we're having a conference call. Because we know the outcome of trying to implement the skill is going to be. Very loud feelings of frustration, constantly pestering coming back. Right. We are, we're setting it up for a situation where we're going to get frustrated and annoyed and fix the [00:12:00] problem. Because we are focused on our work. We're focused on whatever the case may be.

So how do we do this on a weekend? How do we make sure we're starting to build this skill when it's not, when it's not going to impact our work so that we can actually be present to build the skill. Hold a little more patience for the big feelings that are coming along with it.

And setting it up with some positive reinforcement, right. Where we're showing kids. Hey. You can do this. And I appreciate how awesome this time was and what you've accomplished. Right. So there's some pieces that we have to put in place here. There's this idea that we, as parents have to be aware of the feelings associated with boredom, because I actually think that's the thing, holding people back from facilitating it.

Boredom as Creativity, Independent Play as Possibility

I think the other piece is realizing and recognizing that boredom. It's something we now have to facilitate. Our world is full of options and maybe the option instead of an extracurricular activity is. Boredom. Right. Independent play. Let's call it something else. [00:13:00] Independent play, creative thinking, whatever you want to call it. Right.

Something that doesn't, isn't organized by some adult overseeing. Or requires you to participate along the way in so many, right. Requires you to be an instrumental part of the play. .

But we have to think of that as like how. I'm going to intentionally foster this and how am I going to balance it? With screen time, not have one or the other. As like clashing against each other, but we got to create a balance there. Right. So that kind of thing. Um, so those are some of the things that I'm starting to think about and talk about with boredom.

And then the third piece is how are we actually building that as a framework? So if we're thinking of it as a skill, how are we implementing it? How are we using language to support it? How are we doing those pieces? And that's something I do a lot of work on with, with clients is this idea of like, here's some language we need to use. Here's how we need to reinforce it. And here's how we're going to build this skill out incrementally, because if you start too big, it's going to [00:14:00] fail. Right. And where's our threshold for emotional regulation in all of this and being okay with. Our kids are allowed to be frustrated about being bored. Because they're not used to it and they don't like it and that's okay. That's okay. We don't have to solve that problem.

We have to help them identify that they need to do something else with their frustrated feelings or with their angry feelings, right. Yelling and screaming and all those things. Maybe aren't the best tool.

But in the moment. That's going to happen at first. Because they're not happy about it and that's okay. We can't expect kids to always embrace everything. It can't be like you're going to be bored and I'm going to be excited about it. That's not realistic. All right. So those are some of my thoughts on boredom. I think I'll come back to it.

What Do You Think About This Format?

This is a very different episode for me. I just talked. Sometimes I draft my transcripts. You can see that probably if you're following me on YouTube, you can see, I draft them. Those are ones that are heavily sort of research backed. Where I really want to make sure I'm touching on very specific [00:15:00] points and I have some references built in.

I think that's a really important format for me. I also, as you can see in this one, have a bunch of knowledge inside here that I can just call upon. Um, and I'll just talk. So I'm going to do a little mix of both. Love to hear what your thoughts are on each style. Um, I'm just going to stick to doing both styles though, because I think sometimes I need to draft it out and sometimes I can just speak to a topic that, uh, I know people want to hear about. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to. Sharing a new idea with you soon.

Let me know HERE or email me at [email protected].