“It’s okay for your children to be bored. Some parenting “experts” suggest leaving your child in a bored condition, as though once bored long enough, stores of creativity will rush forward. It is not an indictment on a child’s ability to self-soothe or auto-entertain. It wasn’t a philosophical musing in need of expansion.īoredom is a red flag! It’s a signal to you that something needs to change about the environment or your interactions with your kids.
My declaration was a cry for help (ideas, materials, suggestions, participation). In that moment, I was genuinely bored, as a kid with free time. My dad, unhelpfully, used to reply to us that we had no idea how valuable our free time would appear to us as adults, and that we shouldn’t waste it since we’d never get it back.
