2023-07-18 09:00:14
I’m not the only one who feels that it is her duty as a mother to fill her days with activities and learning opportunities. A study cited in a 2018 New York Times article lamenting the unforgiving of modern parenting revealed that regardless of education, income, or race, parents believed that kids who get bored should sign up for extracurricular activities. As Erin Westgate, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida, explained to me, there’s a kind of cultural stigma attached to boredom, especially in the United States.
Only boring people get bored, the saying goes.
But the reality is that boredom is “normal, natural and healthy,” said Westgate, whose research focuses on what boredom is, why people experience it and what happens to them when bored. While noting that few empirical studies have been done on boredom in children, Westgate believes that, in moderate doses, boredom can offer a valuable learning opportunity, can stimulate creativity and problem solving, and motivate children to seek activities that are meaningful to them.
“Preventing children from getting bored is a mistake, just like preventing them from feeling sad, frustrated or angry,” he said.
Here’s what you and your kids can learn from boredom.
boredom is informative
Boredom is an emotion, noted Westgate, who likens it to the indicator light on a car’s dashboard: “Boredom tells you that what you’re doing right now isn’t working.” Usually, that means the task you’re doing is too easy or too hard, she said, or that it’s meaningless.
One way parents can help children (especially younger ones) learn to manage boredom is to work with them to develop what Westgate calls greater emotional granularity. For example, they can help them distinguish between feeling sad or bored. “Name it and control it,” a phrase coined by psychiatrist Dan Siegel, is a technique many child development experts use to help children identify their feelings.
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