Summer holidays are the longest of the year for children. Disconnection from routine and school obligations generates a different dynamic, which is usually associated with water and outdoor activities, but also with abundant free time, which can cause children to say more than once: “I’m bored.” Parents’ usual response is to fill in the blanks, when they are, in fact, the golden opportunity for children to learn to manage and enjoy boredom, which is, in reality, the enjoyment of doing nothing or of the contemplative life.
The daily routine imposes a hectic pace of activity on us and when we have free time it is difficult to adapt to a more natural and healthy rhythm. Children follow this example and end up integrating it as well. “Boredom is not something exclusive to children, it also happens to adults, and we do not tolerate it well. It is common to link efficiency and productivity to happiness. We often feel the need to fill our agenda with a large number of commitments, which requires us to be more productive, competitive, consumerist and very demanding with our work and responsibilities,” explains Iosune Mendia, psychologist and coach family in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid).
The need to turn every minute into something that brings results has caused even the moments of sweet far nothing Children often become a source of stress. “We live in a society that associates doing nothing with something negative and a waste of time. We feel bad because we believe that we should be doing more; because not every minute of the day is dedicated to something productive. This happens because performance and productivity are so associated with self-esteem and worth,” says Mendia. Children say “I’m bored” as a reflection of the adults around them. “They have been taught to always have their time occupied with schedules, structured tasks and screens. However, occupying children with activities, both at school and outside of it, deprives them of learning to manage their time,” continues the expert. “This also causes them to disconnect from their inner world and they stop knowing what they like or what moves them in life,” she adds.
Something as natural for children as their ability to play can also be affected by their lack of ability to manage free time, which leads to a feeling of boredom. “There are children who no longer know how to play alone and need someone to accompany them or direct them to do so,” says the expert. She mentions other factors that influence a child to say that they are bored: “When there is difficulty in maintaining attention, both internally with regard to thoughts and emotions, and externally, with what is happening outside, the child does not concentrate on anything specific and is more likely to get bored.”
The fear of boredom
Adults are generally afraid that children will get bored during the holidays. “When this happens, it means an extra demand for attention from parents, who are more relaxed in the summer or, on the contrary, continue working. The situation requires a deeper and longer emotional connection and, sometimes, the adult himself has an excessive connection with the screens,” he explains. Diana Gonzaleza family therapist specializing in children and adolescents. Getting away from screens in the summer would be ideal to allow children to get bored and connect with their creativity or do other types of activities: “Shared games, having contact with water and nature, going for walks, sharing yoga at home, playing chess or telling stories,” suggests González.
Other recommendations would have to do with adults, such as slowing down the pace of activity and tolerating their children’s boredom. “This will help children to have more creative occupations by having to use the resources they have at hand, which encourages healthy development,” says the specialist. Getting children to not have a negative concept of boredom implies that they connect with it without prejudice. “To achieve this, one suggestion could be to sit down or lie down and suggest that they feel what that blank space brings them, from silence to noticing their breathing or the ideas that arise,” advises the expert.
Boredom, a space to create
Being bored is good for children because it is a blank canvas on which they can create independently. “It gives children the opportunity to decide how to use their free time; to explore their internal and external world and to bring out what they like most or are passionate about. It is the place where creativity and ideas for solving problems are born,” explains Diana González, a family therapist specializing in children and adolescents. It is not advisable to solve children’s boredom: “If you intervene to give children something to do, you castrate their ability to be the authors of their own time.”
Although children are responsible for their own boredom, and for learning to manage it, you can give them a hand while they learn to do so. “For example, with the boredom jar, which consists of decorating a container where you can put papers with names of activities to do, such as writing to grandma, making cutouts of dolls to draw clothes on, making a collagedressing up, coloring a mandala or watering the plants,” suggests the specialist.
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