The brilliance of boredom

‘I’m bored!’ This is the cry that can send shivers down the spine of the most resilient parent. But after an exhausting year, and with the Christmas holidays stretching ahead of us, it’s reassuring to know that boredom can be good for our children.

Our intuition, increasingly backed up by new research, tells us that giving children time to be bored, to amuse themselves, to muddle along on their own, is a very good thing. Not only does it give space and time for creativity and imagination, it also teaches our children important skills such as planning and managing their time, developing self-discipline and helping them to embrace and make the most of feeling bored.

Christmas seems the perfect moment to give boredom a go as there is plenty of time, endless opportunities to get creative and lots of reasons to let our children get out from under our feet and learn to amuse themselves. It’s a chance to ditch the guilt and teach them how to be bored, instead of finding distractions to avoid it at all costs. Perhaps we can even help them learn to associate it with positive feelings rather than as an empty void to be immediately filled with screens. We often hear that creativity is nurtured by boredom – that many great ideas were born on long walks, while folding laundry or lying in the bath (an eminently sensible place for Archimedes to ponder water displacement). The first question is why is boredom so brilliant – and the second is how can we possibly convince our children?

Why boredom is brilliant

It gives creativity and imagination a chance to thrive. Overscheduled, over-organised and busy children with little time to just be are missing out on the chance to let their imaginations run. , to come up with ideas, to make new associations and to creatively solve problems. Unstructured time, when children dream up things to do without the interference of adults, is vital to healthy child development. As Michael Patte, associate professor of education at Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania, says: ‘Boredom is a vehicle for children to create their own happiness, enhance inventiveness and develop self-reliance.’

The feeling allows our children to discover interests and passions. Not only have countless writers, artists and scientists credited boredom for their ideas, many a child has also discovered a life-long love of insects, reading, kicking a ball, drawing or building during time left with their own imagination. When the mind wonders and daydreams – and, more scientifically, when it is in a restful state – it allows the brain to explore and make new and different connections that create ideas and solve mysteries.

It’s good for the brain. There is fascinating new research around all aspects of boredom and much of it supports the idea that , giving it a much-needed rest. Alice Walf, a neuroscientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, suggests that we may even be able to retrain our brains to enjoy it. When the brain falls into a predictable, monotonous pattern, we feel bored, even depressed, and this may be because of decreased levels of dopamine, the feelgood chemical released when we are excited. She suggests that we can retrain the brain to enjoy these less fun times. When we are young, our brains are particularly able and adept at adapting to new ways of thinking and behaving. ’Give boredom a try and see what your brain comes up with,’ suggests Walf. It’s exciting to imagine that we can help our children develop effective strategies to retrain their brains to embrace boredom.

Boredom is a life skill worth learning. Our children need to learn to embrace boredom for when none of the activities on offer seem, on the face of it, stimulating or interesting. This takes self-discipline. , head of the Boredom Lab at York University, Canada, explains that the sensation is not as simple as having nothing to do: ‘The bored person desperately wants to do something, but they don’t want to do anything that’s possible.’

Perhaps it’s the drudgery of writing a history paper, sitting through a sibling’s music recital, helping to stack logs or rake leaves: there are endless things that appear ‘boring’. Equipping our children with the skills to help them embrace and navigate these times is extremely valuable. The Boredom Lab team points out that boredom in young people has been associated with higher levels of risk-taking, perhaps in search of that dopamine fix. So helping them grow up with a healthy and constructive experience of dealing with it is a good thing.

Why is boredom so hard?

Boredom has a lot of competition. It’s hard to avoid feeling overstimulated, overscheduled and over everything in our always-on digital life. How often do you sit down for a moment’s rest only to find yourself embedded in your Instagram feed, or when avoiding a dull task end up pressing ‘Next Episode’ twice on Netflix? If it’s hard for us to avoid easy yet unfulfilling distractions, imagine just how tough it is for our children, who have yet to fully develop self-discipline or learn delayed gratification and other high-functioning skills. Screens are easy, fun and require little effort. It takes willpower to ignore or to push back on the algorithms that are drawing us all into them. This is just one reason why screen-time rules are so important. We need to help our children through consistent, respectful boundaries to get into the habit of being bored without screens.

Boredom is uncomfortable. Sometimes we’re so used to filling every moment that we have forgotten how to slow down and enjoy a bit of idleness ourselves. We are our children's greatest teachers, and if we are always on a screen, on the phone or busy being busy, we are not sending the message that boredom is brilliant. When we proactively make time for downing tools and relaxing, and show a little respect for the need to let our minds wander, a positive approach to boredom is more likely to become a family value. Teaching our children to be bored and amuse themselves doesn’t mean that we can’t sit down and enjoy a little colouring in, creating, cooking or chilling by their sides.

Boredom can make us feel guilty. Perhaps we feel that we’re not living up to parenting expectations if our children cry that they are bored. When we hear the bickering that so often comes from bored siblings or the lament that there is nothing to do, we think we’ve failed, as it’s our job to have organised something for them. Surely we should be working harder on some aspect of their development? We can give ourselves a break if instead we take a deep breath (always a good idea), own a bit of boredom and remind ourselves that we are not judged (by ourselves or anyone else) on how busy we keep our children but rather on the connection that we develop – and the relationship we build and love.

How can we help our children embrace boredom?

As always, we should start by managing our expectations. Ask yourself: can I expect my high- energy six-year-old to sit quietly and find something to keep him/her busy for an hour? Probably not. Should I expect my children to feel a little uncomfortable at first when they are used to school punctuated by back-to-back activities? Absolutely. The good news is that armed with realistic expectations, patience and a few effective strategies, we can model and teach our children how to make the most of a rainy day or how to fill a quiet half an hour.

Is it boredom or do they need something else?

They are tired or hungry. The first port of call, especially for younger children, is to check in and make sure they are getting enough sleep and have enough fuel. ‘I’m bored’ can mean that they are tired, they’re not able to concentrate and they need to recharge.

They need some connection time. ‘I’m bored’ can also be telling us that they have not seen us all day as we’ve been absorbed in lots of other things, or they are just not feeling great and need some time and attention. Whether they are two, 10 or 16 – and especially during these tough months – it’s vital that we make consistent one-on-one time with each of our children a priority. Just 10 minutes of child-led time is enough. When our children feel connected to us, when they have the confidence that they are unconditionally loved, they’ll be in a better place to take the initiative and handle a bit of boredom.

They would rather be doing something else – and that’s OK. Being bored is, according to the team at the Boredom Lab, a feeling that we would rather be doing something else, and this can be an uncomfortable place to be. As with all difficult feelings, our job is not to take them away or fix them, but rather to teach our children resilience by helping them recognise how they feel, acknowledge these feelings and find a productive way through them. We want to help them to arrive at this thought process: ‘Ah, so I’m feeling bored. There is nothing appealing in front of me to fill my time. That’s OK. It happens. What am I going to do about it? I could lie on the sofa and binge-watch something – but I won’t feel great afterwards, so let’s find something else interesting (productive) to do. Let’s be proactive.’

The practical boredom busters

Show empathy for the feeling. Depending on your child’s temperament and age, they’ll need varying degrees of hand-holding until their new skill of boredom-busting becomes a habit. We need to create an environment where our children can embrace the experience of being bored both emotionally and practically. Always connect with them first. Listen to the cry of ‘I’m bored!’ and let them know that it’s normal and that you get it:

‘It can be so hard to have to wait when it seems there’s nothing to do.’

‘Sometimes we look around and think, “I can’t see anything that looks interesting to do.”

‘I’m wondering whether you think that as we live far away from your friends, there’s nothing here that’s interesting?’

Talk through how it feels to be bored. Listen to their worries and complaints with empathy and without judgment (‘In my day we were let outside in the morning and came home for supper’ is not helpful). You may have plenty of downtime built into your day already, or this may be a bit more of a challenge. Either way, calmly discussing, listening and coming up with ideas together is the goal, especially for older children.

Make downtime part of your family routine. Children thrive on and need routines and schedules. We can help by building downtime into the family routine and modelling it ourselves. What do we do when we’re bored? Perhaps listening to a podcast while doing the ironing or driving, getting started on a project that has been hanging around or just resting in that hammock when we need to de-stress or relax. These are all productive strategies and may be in stark contrast to lying on the sofa, eating all the Christmas Quality Streets and then lamenting that you are full of remorse!

Preparing our children rather than springing things on them gives them time to process, anticipate and prepare, and boredom is no different. Sunday afternoon might be your time to ‘do nothing’ and it may or may not be a screen-free time. Children absolutely need screen-time limits, but there are also children for whom making a creative Tik Tok or developing a new programme may be an appropriate response to feeling bored.

Setting things up and involving our children not only improves buy-in but helps them get into the habit of thinking ahead to what they can do with their time – Lego, reading, writing, painting, making Christmas decorations.

Get practical. Preparation is key to success and here are a few ideas to get you started:

Boredom busting jar. Get the children to write down things that interest them or that they find fun. When the inevitable ‘I’m bored’ retort is heard or it’s time for downtime, they can fish ideas out of the jar: build a den, bake some cupcakes (making sure you have the ingredients and bits and pieces to hand), teach the dog new tricks, set up an obstacle course, build THE highest tower from blocks, put on a play, paint a card for Granny, learn a new trick, make a poster from old magazines...

Creativity cupboard. An accessible space filled with inexpensive things to get the creative juices flowing. Depending on the age of your child, this could include corks, glue, paper of varying sizes, wool, scissors, egg cartons, pine cones, notebooks for writing, stamps and ink. Add and change the contents frequently, as well as involving the children in coming up with fun ideas to include.

Whiteboard or calendar – for older children support them in coming up with ideas and a plan for their time. A brainstorm during a quiet, relaxed time with your son or daughter taking the lead is the most effective path, with your help if they need materials or ingredients.

In the beginning, you may need to be nearby while the training wheels are still attached to this new skill. The idea is for our children to appreciate that being bored opens opportunities. It is perhaps most important of all to remember to comment on all the steps they take in the right direction:

‘I love that you have chosen the coloured paper and the glue and sparkles. I can’t wait to see what you decide to do next. I am just nearby.’

‘You should be impressed that although you thought you had nothing to do, you went and found that bowl of corks and glue and started creating something fun.’

‘I know you find it hard to put that screen away. You have been really resourceful and I’m thinking you might have forgotten how much you love that Lego.’

‘I can’t believe you taught Alfie to roll over! He looks really pleased with himself!’

So this Christmas, take a deep breath and know that, with a little preparation, support and good listening, you can help your family embrace boredom. Not only will you be helping your children to be creative, develop self-discipline and train their brains, you might even end up with a few new decorations, biscuits or mince pies and a moment to yourself. What’s not to love?

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The brilliance of boredom

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