Why is it important to be bored?

“A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring” Michel de Montaigne

There have been many articles in the popular press this week about allowing children to be bored. I thought it might be useful for us as educators and parents to have a chance to consider the educational reasons why allowing children unstructured time is not only important, but essential.  

Firstly, we all know the adage that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. This may well be true, but invention and indeed all of human endeavour is only possibly if it can be imagined. Imagination is something that we can feed with ideas and technical understanding, but imagination is only truly possible in the spaces when we can be openly reflective. Imagination is an active internal process which connects concrete ideas, past experience, diverse inspiration and personal creativity, to create something new. It takes perseverance, time and self-motivation. In truth, imagination is the mother of invention. It is a critical faculty for learning and for success in life. The best time for imagination is not the pressure of requiring a solution, it is the time you have nothing else to do.

As human beings we inhabit many spheres, but it is useful in this case to imagine the difference between an inner creative thinking and imagining life, and a world of external learning stimuli, activities and experiences. It is the relationship between the two that creates a whole person. However, we have become accustomed to listening to the noise of that external world as if it holds all the keys to life, and rejecting the internal voice. How many of us put on music or television to stave off those moments when we might have to engage with our inner selves and run the risk of feeling bored? Two seconds of relative peace and we take out a phone to check, or to text or to chat with someone else. We have become so afraid of boredom that we frantically fill all of our time, and feel guilty if we don’t. We also want to save our own children from boredom, and in doing so we are stealing away their inner lives and their vital connections to themselves. If we fear that without external activities they may in fact become nothing, then we will be impelled to fill their lives for them and we will be creating in them a greater fear of being alone and being unoccupied, and of being unable to cope with just thinking and being themselves. We will have made them dependent and in fact we may even have enabled them to become lonely, unfulfilled and unhappy in later life.

Dr Laura Markham refers to the need for unstructured time, because children have so many activities to complete, often one or two on each night of the week after a full structured day at school, plus homework. She explains how structured time closes off the imagination and the ability to be self-determining, it makes them lack confidence in their own abilities and unable to be independent. The result of keeping children fully immersed in set activities  is that it  models to them that they can only succeed, or have fun, in structured ways, where they have little control and not much need of self-motivation, other than to compete (hopefully successfully) against the other children placed there to do the same. Whilst it can of course promote skills and team spirit, there needs to be a balance if that same child is ever going to have the imagination to develop strategic play or to be able to transfer skills to other situations. Being always involved in structured activity and games can stifle individuality and reinforces the need to comply rather than to innovate.

Boredom is a creative state. Dr Teresa Belton writing for the BBC admits that boredom can initially feel like an uncomfortable state, especially as modern life makes us unused to it. But by giving in to that feeling (in the same way as we give in to that extra chocolate or to any other unhealthy habit) we take a further step away from developing the creativity we would all love to have, through a quick fix. It is far more honest to accept that we all find certain things boring, even necessary things, but we have to develop inner resources to cope. I am sure many of you will agree that there are many chores we have to just get on and do despite very low interest level – I often long for a Sunday night without ironing!

It is easy to fall into that trap of feeling guilty about not doing enough for your child and therefore planning activities and events to ensure they are fully occupied in all of their free time. Filling the house with music and noise equally provides a (welcome?) distraction from one’s own thoughts. It is no wonder then, that screen time (of every sort) has become a useful filler for those empty seconds of the day and the evening. As a teacher with 28 years’ experience I would say that children in general have shorter attention spans and more requirements to be helped, supported and constantly stimulated than ever before. Imagination is undervalued and children expect constant attention and reinforcement even to get on with what they can easily achieve alone. When faced with anything they don’t understand or feel to be hard work they say they are bored. This is one of the results of constant stimulation, it becomes an addiction, alongside an underlying nagging tiredness that creeps into children’s lives when they don’t have time for adequate reflection, rest and recreation.

Maria Montessori wrote about free play (which modern children often claim is boring) enabling children to become active and in an alert and receptive frame of mine, and she demonstrated that children are adept at self-regulating and managing their own rules, and that they performed better in all areas if they were allowed the full scope of their imagination. Children who can play without intervention, and manage their own time, are calmer, more thoughtful and are able to be more articulate as they have time to rehearse ideas and to think things through. They are able to make their own positive decisions and are far less reliant on adult approval before moving on or turning the next page over. Montessori went so far as to say that play is a child’s work.

Finally, children say they are bored for many reasons, but an important one to note is that they would actually like a little of your attention. When is the last time, for no real reason other than just for the joy of being together, you danced with your child?