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‘I’M bored.”
How many parents hear these words from their kids—after sitting a mere 10 minutes in the car, or waiting for their food to be served at a restaurant?
How did we manage boredom when we were kids? What’s the difference between then and now?
First, I feel that today’s kids expect “entertainment” at the drop of a hat. They are given more media to passively fill the time. Even during mealtimes, many kids need a tablet or a toy in front of them to peacefully finish a meal.
I also think kids’ today are not pushed to self-soothe. When my kids say, “I’m bored,” it often feels like a reproach, like it’s a problem of theirs I need to solve and resolve quickly, instead of them thinking first of ways to fight boredom.
That said, I see this “boredom” issue as an opportunity to guide my kids from needing external surroundings that provide only facile solutions, to exhorting them to think first and find their own creative solutions. I have tried my best to advocate self-soothing since my kids were a few months old. When my kids would cry back then, I would check to see if needed to be fed or a diaper change before I carried them out of the crib or the bed.
Otherwise, I allowed them to consume the silence in their own way. I remember my daughter would start making her own sound in the crib that seemed to me like labeling what she saw around her in her own words. When they were between 12 and 24 months, I would put their favorite toys safely in the crib during the daytime, so they could maneuver toward them on their own. I would then alternate this with their favorite books to encourage flipping the pages on their own. Soothing music or rhyme music or even audio books as a sonic backdrop also helped.
When they hit their toddler years, I learned that sorting different toys in buckets or crates really helped. Instead of just telling them it was playtime, with all toys scattered about, I sorted the blocks, toy animals, robots, etc., in buckets. This prolonged playtime and made packing away more fun for the kids. Consequently, I feel it also helped my kids become more organized as they grew older.
I will tackle this in later columns but, for me, utilizing technology at the right age, in the right quantity and use also affects how kids handle boredom. How can we handle kids’ boredom these days? To me, it boils down to 2 words: “interests” and “nothingness.” I set up different “interest” corners in the house for them to explore. I picked this up when my kids used to go to Montessori and saw different workstations. I see kids freely and quietly choose what to do on their own. I saw my son go from playing blocks for hours and progressing to getting his crate of cars and sorting them out by color. This, I followed through by forming a rainbow with the different colored cars.
Then at 5, he got his crate of animal figurines and his metal box of Animal Kaiser cards (cards from an arcade game), and he started matching them and forming stories on his own.
“Nothingness,” for me, is “forced” alone time. It is allowing the kids to acknowledge the void and creatively find their own zone. Since I only allow iPads and TV during weekends, my kids have had to improvise. My son loves to do his own “videos” (no camera) involving Yokai or Plants vs. Zombies. He also started to think of his own jokes and would share them to us when I got home.
My daughter, on the other hand, spends most of her time with books and music. This allows her to explore different genres, from Geronimo Stilton and biographies to now more contemporary titles, like Paper Towns by John Green. She also likes music and asked me recently if she could enroll in contemporary ballet. The common thread both my kids love is art. I always have boxes of art materials in different rooms. Because my kids are both a bit “highstrung,” I have found the added benefit of seeing the calming effect art has on them.
Below are some tips that might be useful in handling your kids’ boredom:
1. Always have paper and pens with you. In the car, kids love colorful whiteboard markers to doodle on the window glass.
2. Teach your kids traditional games. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tic Tac Toe and other games come in handy when you are in the mall.
3. Even if I did not like to, I used to just give my kids game tablets in restaurants. Recently, a friend introduced me to Silly Putty and Model Magic, both of which I find quite easy to bring and pack away. My kids can’t stop creating things with them.
4. Role play has always been my kids’ favorite past time. Whether it’s them being a ticket, booth operator, or playing house, I think kids always love pretending to be in their own adult world.