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The Benefits of Boredom for Kids
Summer break is here. Routines disappear, structure shifts, and for many families, technology becomes the easiest way to fill the day.
When it isn’t an option, that’s when you might hear those familiar words: “I’m bored.”
Without it, our instinct is often to make suggestions or figure out something for our kids to do. Truth be told I did suggest vacuuming 🙂
Sometimes the hardest part of our child’s boredom isn’t their discomfort. It’s our discomfort.
I realized recently that when my son lost his technology privileges for two weeks, his first response was, “What am I going to do now?”
If I’m being honest, his boredom was uncomfortable for me. It was distracting and annoying. It would have been much easier to solve the problem for him. Then I would have gotten some much-needed peace and quiet.
But I didn’t step in.
After a few days, something shifted.
He started finding things to do. He got creative. He even began playing with the younger kids on our street and teaching them how to play baseball. None of that would have happened if I had rushed in to solve his boredom.
That experience reminded me that boredom isn’t something we always need to solve.
If we can sit with our own discomfort long enough to step back, our children often discover they never needed us to fix it. They just needed space to figure it out themselves.
This is what I know: Sometimes the greatest gift we can give our kids isn’t another solution. It’s the chance to discover what they’re capable of.
Until next time…
