The Importance of Being Bored
The idea of encouraging your children to be bored in today’s digital world might seem a bit odd, but there are many reasons why being bored is important developmentally. With entertainment and information being just a click away, being bored has many positive outcomes including encouraging creativity, empowering self-discovery, and improving emotional resilience.
During school term times our children’s lives are packed full of extra-curricular activities, often resulting in very little true down time. Constant engagement in organised activities may mask your child’s own interests, hinder their critical thinking skills, and impact independent emotional management. By providing unstructured times when your child may become bored, you are providing them with opportunities to develop skills that they will use across their whole life. So, switch off those devices and cancel soccer training as we dive into how boredom can foster a more fulfilling childhood and assist with healthy development.
Why is being bored so important:
- Boredom forces your child to come up with their own entertainment through creative play. They may re-discover some old favourite toys they haven’t played with in a long time.
- Boredom gives your child permission to explore their interests. Maybe they love drawing but haven’t got a lot of time to do it with structured afterschool activities. Maybe they want to teach their dog a new trick (literally!). By providing unstructured time, your child will have time to think and try different things that they are interested in.
- Boredom encourages your child to develop their problem solving skills. Your child has to independently find something to do, so their skills to find solutions to a real-life problem become more developed. Weighing up the options of what they would like to do helps your child develop their decision making skills, too.
- Boredom supports the development of emotional regulation as there is no external stimuli. When they are bored, children often turn their focus inwards and evaluate their thoughts and feelings. This can help them to better understand and regulate their emotions as they improve their recognition of when they feel frustrated, restless, or impatient.
- Boredom allows your child to appreciate their involvement in structured activities – something that is often lost when most days have them darting off to various activities.
- Boredom teaches your child patience, reduces impulsivity and build self-reliance as they become less dependent on being entertained by others.
- Boredom can help your child develop their social skills. They may seek out peers to play with, or sometimes even siblings. You might even find your children getting along and playing collaboratively and cooperatively with each other. Oh my.
- Boredom gives your child permission to rest and relax. This is essential for their mental and physical well-being.
- Intrinsic motivation is when we engage in an activity or a task because we enjoy it and get personal satisfaction from doing it. Extrinsic motivation on the other hand is when we do something to obtain an external reward. If we lack intrinsic motivation and there is an absence of reward for completing a task for activity, the likelihood of finding motivation to complete the task is low.
Boredom provides your child with the opportunity to invent games, use their imagination, and explore new ideas without external expectations. Our role as parents and caregivers involves creating times for our children to have true down time to rest and recharge their batteries as it can enhance their mental and physical health and well-being while incidentally teaching patience, self-reliance, and time management.
While the appeal of having our children in a state of constant stimulation can be strong, there are definite benefits of providing opportunities for your child to be bored. While you may need to switch off to the dreary monotonous chorus of “I’m bored” from your child, take a deep breath and embrace the boredom void for what it is – an opportunity for your child to delve into their dreams and aspirations through their imagination and creativity.
If you would like additional information and support to encourage your children to be comfortable being bored, please reach out to our friendly reception team for an appointment by calling 0477 798 932.
Jacki Noney is a Provisional Psychologist at Progressive Psychology