Why boredom is the best gift you can give your kids, and how to embrace it.

After touching briefly on boredom and kids over on my instagram a couple weeks ago, followed by LOTS of requests for me to write more about this, I decided to put a post together, talking more about why boredom is the best gift you can give your kids (and how to actually embrace it).

Here’s the coolest part.  This isn’t a staged photoshoot.  I was working on this post for the last couple weeks thinking how I’d like to have some images, just to give it a little more personality, and I walked into the living room on a Saturday afternoon, and this is how I found my youngest two.  No prompting, no coercing.  They were just building legos happily together, and having a grand old time.

The thing is, this isn’t an isolated event.  If you came into my house on any given day, you’d find any one of my 4 kids engaged in some creative way.

This didn’t come without effort, but the rewards have been exponential for all of my kids.

My parenting approach has always been to intentionally do the harder thing at the beginning that lays the best foundation for future success.  My dad used to say to us growing up that “the path of least resistance leads up the steepest hill.”  If you take the easy road in the beginning, it’s much harder later on, but if you do the hard work early on, the rewards are infinite and parenting is so much easier in the long run.  Parenting in this way also sets your children up for the greatest success in life; helps them to develop into the very best version of themselves.  Isn’t that what we all want as parents?

Boredom is one of the best tools in your arsenal for helping your children develop in this way, and if you aren’t using it yet, buckle up.  Prepare to have your mind blown.

Your kids are about to get incredibly bored and it’s going to be so freaking good for them…

Embracing boredom isn’t easy or natural at first.

Being comfortable with boredom takes practice, especially if you haven’t been parenting this way. In the beginning it’s going to “hurt” a little.  As a parent, there’s a moment where they’re not going to be doing it “right” and you will feel like you need to jump in and provide direction. Just wait.  Give them space.  Your child can handle it.  Will they whine?  Probably, at first.  And it will be annoying.  Will there be a mess to clean up afterwards?  For sure.  You should still do it.

What are your fears around children being bored? What are we afraid might happen?

Trust me, I know how challenging it can feel to have bored kids.  Sometimes, we feel it is our duty as parents to provide our children with constant entertainment.  We often jump in because our kids being bored makes us feel something about who we are as a parent.

We take them on outings, to the movies, the jump park, line up playdates and sign them up for sports, dance classes, pack our weekends with activities, all of these designed to keep our kids occupied.  There is so much pressure, some internal, some societal to be our children’s main source of entertainment.  We feel that if we aren’t hovering over them and providing endless occupation then we are “bad” or “disengaged” parents.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Before we go further, let’s talk about what boredom does for your children, and why it’s so beneficial to the development of their minds, patience, worth ethic, and ability to cope with frustrating situations.

Embracing boredom is about helping your children to train their brains to delay gratification.   The ability to delay gratification will help your children be better readers and students, help them be more diligent workers, have a greater work ethic, make them more patient humans, better listeners and more creative thinkers.

This is a very contradictory idea to just about everything you see.  Literally everywhere we look we see children being entertained.  From the kid in the cart at the grocery store playing a game on tablet, the teen constantly on their phone, to the family in the pew at church with endless toys and snacks to entertain their kids through a worship service.  I know, that used to be me.

In fact, the idea for this theory was born in a church pew.

When my oldest 3 were all toddlers, my husband was serving in our church leadership, which meant I sat alone on a pew every week with a 3-year-old, a 2-year-old and a newborn.  I would bring fruit snacks and goldfish and Cherrios, and soft books, coloring books, little quiet toys, hoping that by entertaining my kids through the hour long meeting I could keep them quiet.

It didn’t work.  In fact, most weeks, it was total chaos, and I’d go home from church and just cry. Then one week, after a particularly rowdy day in the pew, my husband told me he had an idea.  He said he’s been praying for me on the stand while I struggled with the kids in the congregation, and he had an impression.  I know this was God speaking to him, because what he said sounded crazy, and it also totally changed my life as a mom.

He told me he thought we should stop bringing stuff to entertain the kids.  Like everything.  No toys, no books, no snacks.  Just me with a bag of diapers and wipes and nothing else.  I thought he was crazy.  But I was also a little desperate and desperate people are willing to try crazy things.  So the next week, I brought NOTHING with me to church.  And the kids were still hard, but I knew it might take a little time, so I tried again the next week.  Still hard, but they were a little better.  Then something magical happened.  By a few weeks in they started just sitting, quietly.  I could see that they were learning to self-entertain.  And a lightbulb came on in my head.  If it worked in church, I bet it would work in every situation.

So I started incorporating “quiet time.”  We all but eliminated screens during the day/week.  No cartoons, no movies. (Smart phones and tablets didn’t exist yet, so that wasn’t an issue.;-)  Things got much better, car rides were more peaceful, temper tantrums became less frequent. And I became a convert to boredom.

Just like sleep training helps children learn to self-soothe and makes them better sleepers for life.  Boredom training helps children learn to self-entertain, and makes them more creative, engaged and patient for life.

When your kids are comfortable with being bored, they are able to look inside themselves for stimulation.

They are comfortable reading, writing, creating, building, or just sitting and thinking.  None of these activities offer instant gratification, and your children will benefit endlessly from allowing their brains the space to develop, stretch, to rest and to grow.  Creativity thrives in boredom.

 Boredom also give your children the quiet that will enable them to learn to hear their own thoughts.  If their heads are always filled with noise how will they ever learn to listen to their own voice and know their mind?  Our children need the opportunity to develop that inner voice.

Kids who don’t crave constant external stimulation from a screen, phone or gaming device are also able to approach the prospect of having “nothing to do” from a place of joy and excitement rather than anxiety.  They are more productive and imaginative.

The truths about boredom, and some practical tips.

It’s hard at first.  Like all worthwhile pursuits, embracing boredom is not easy at first.  Your kids are going to whine at you.  Expect it, and don’t fall into past patterns of needing to entertain them.  If your kids are little and want to “follow you around.”  Try incorporating quiet time.  A couple hours a day when they must play quietly in their room.  If they get impatient, just roll with it.  It takes time, but they will get used to it.

Fighting, whining, messes.  The best chance for success with practicing boredom is going into it with realistic expectations.  When your kids get into boredom, there will be fighting in the beginning. They will for sure whine at you, and yes there will be more messes.  Here’s how to deal with those three things.

Fighting: Don’t immediately intervene.  Fighting between siblings is natural and helps kids work out and understand interpersonal communication in a safe place.  If you feel our patience slipping, separate the kids, for a bit.  Give them a chance to be bored on their own.  Both situations are beneficial.  And remember all siblings fight.  It’s natural.

 Whining: if your kids whine incessantly at you, you can either ignore it (I give them a little smile or hug to acknowledge that I see them, but that I trust them to figure it out, and I’m not going to “fix” their boredom).  If they keep whining I offer to give them a chore to fill their time.  That usually sparks the creativity pretty fast. ;-)

Messes: If kids are playing and being creative more, there will be more messes.  How I’ve handled that is one simple policy.  They can make as big of a mess as they want while they are playing/creating, and when they are done they must clean it up.  Smaller kids will need help with this, but they must help with the whole clean up.  This helps them learn accountability, and to check their messiness and/or clean up as they go.

This isn’t parenting on auto-pilot. 

This isn’t the “easy” path up front. But it is definitely easier in the long run.  All my kids are responsible, great students, excellent readers, good travelers, creative thinkers, and hard workers.  This all stems from giving them space to be bored.

One final caveat. 

You have to practive what you preach, and live what you teach.

Nothing makes you more aware of your own hypocrisy quite like becoming a parent.  If you don’t let your kids have screens because they “aren’t good for them” then you can’t have your eyes constantly glued to one when they’re around either.  If watching a show isn’t a good way to fill some down time for them, you’re going to need to find an alternative hobby to “the bachelor.”

This doesn’t mean you and your kids can NEVER watch anything again, or never use screens again.  It’s about being intentional with how we use them. We watch a movie every Friday night as a family.  We get pizza, make popcorn, it’s a blast for all of us, and we all look forward to it all week.

Also, because we are intentional about that being our “screen time” our other down time is filled with meaningful, fun, productive and creative things.  And you find, the less you give into the instant gratification of screens, the less you care about/crave them.  And you’ll find it’s liberating as an adult too, you’ll have more time for meaningful things.  Go figure. ;-)

Do you practice boredom with your kids?  What has worked for you?  Share in the comments!