It’s school holidays (vacation) in Australia and we have 3 children at home all day every day for 6 weeks. (2 to go) It didn’t take long before they grew tired of the same activities and games and began looking for something different to do. This lead to the inevitable complaint – “There’s nothing to do around here.”
Of course there are thousands of things they could do if they put their minds to it, and if they can’t think of anything, we have extra chores to help fill in their time. Needless to say, they somehow manage to think up something.
In our house our children are banned from saying the word “bored” (shhhh - don’t tell them I said it) for one very simple reason. Boredom is a good thing.
Today’s generation, and in fact most people generally, want to be constantly entertained. Who wouldn’t. The downside of this is that in today’s society most people ARE constantly entertained, and children grow up expecting that this is normal. It shouldn’t be normal and in fact the brain is not well able to handle this kind of “normal.”
In Remotely Controlled: How Television is Damaging Our Lives a book by Dr Aric Sigman he show how research has proven that constant entertainment trains the brain not to think and not to be creative. We are raising a whole generation of people who are less creative and because they all watch the same kind of shows and movies – they are all starting to think the same way.
So Boredom is a gift to our children because it means they have to think, and it sparks their creativity. So this summer, my son (also called David) decided to catch a lizard. Not just an ordinary lizard – after half an hour in the yard he managed to find himself an Eastern Two Lined Dragon. Quite a Catch. Then he had the fun of finding food for it every day. Just because he was “bored” (oops, said it again) he was able to find enough entertainment and excitement to last the whole family a week. In addition, we all learned a lot about lizards along the way.
Next time you are bored – remember, it’s a gift.
