“My Child Says He’s Bored.” Truth be told this is one line that makes me roll my eyes. There should be no way a child is bored. Pensive, maybe. Relaxed, sure. But bored, no. This is a case where parents have an assumed definition that they have created for themselves over time. Children learn that telling their parents they are bored gets a reaction, lots of questions and possibly a trip to the principal. They get attention. If children only knew the power of the “I’m bored at school” statement. After the dust dies down, the principal has been contacted, teachers have been put on notice that they’d better ratchet it up a notch; the child is left in his own soup. Now he has more math problems, an extra book, harder questions to answer in every subject, the expectation that he’ll work on independent long term projects and no time to just breathe. I’ve seen this so many times. Parents complain. Teachers do what they’ve been asked to. Child is miserable and resistant and then the once big deal is no deal within about 6 weeks. Hornets nest calm and quiet.
When a child says to me that he is bored, I ask him what bored means to him. I don’t assume we share definitions. He usually repeats the statement, shrugs, says work is too easy or too dumb. Sometimes boring means that work is too difficult and he’s embarrassed to admit it. Sometimes boring means he just doesn’t want to do it. Sometimes it means that he doesn’t like using a dictionary when he’s writing a story, sometimes it means he thinks he knows everything already. Sometimes it means that he wants to sit next to his friend he was just moved away from. Defining “Bored” in child English is a crucial first step which parents often neglect before snapping into action.
Secondly, there seems to be an assumption that bored is a bad thing. The times we do some of our best thinking are times kids may describe as boring. Sitting on a beach wondering why there are so many colors of water, watching an ant pull twice its weight across the sand, watching interactions between people, looking for stones, shells, answers to why you just got dumped. We parents need to change the vocabulary a bit and we can change the gestalt. When a child declares boredom, get excited and tell your child that is a signal from your brain that it is time to think about or do something new. Watch something closely, wonder about something unanswerable. Boredom is a sign that your child has not developed intellectually enough to make use of that space in activity. We all know adults like that, too. Adults who are very uncomfortable without their children or spouse around forcing them to some reactive or obligatory action, people close to retirement who have no idea what they would do if they didn’t have work to go to. Bored means we’re not seeing the possibilities.
We have created children who are uncomfortable and “bored” if they are not told the next thing to do the minute after the one before has been accomplished. They take their leads from adults who keep checking off endless lists of things they think their kids should learn, memorize, perform, accomplish or master. Teachers are forced to give those students more and harder work to do after they have met standards acceptable and developmentally appropriate. It’s not enough that a child is doing work extremely well; they have to be given work so hard that the feeling of mastery will forever be just one reach ahead of them. Some people may think it’s good for children to feel incompetent. I don’t know. It sure doesn’t do much for adults and it hasn’t been my conclusion after over thirty years of teaching. I find children at their finest, most exuberant and most excited when confidence can be worn like a soft, comforting garment.
If your child comes to you and says he’s bored, give him a smile and tell him how lucky he is to have a mind that is finally unoccupied.
