Boredom in young children, a situation that many parents fear because of the stress it can generate, both for the adults for putting up with the little ones, and for the children themselves. Now, is it negative? Let's find out.
Today there is a tendency to structure every minute of an infant's day. School, extracurricular activities, socializing, travel... They hardly have time to be bored.
Boredom is good for young children
And yet, boredom is positive, as it makes them think. For example, how to entertain the time during the empty period. In other words, it makes infants more creative.
Therefore, it is necessary not to overload a child's agenda with activities, allowing him/her to be bored and, at the same time, to have free time to explore internally and externally, both what surrounds him/her and his/her own possibilities.
Once a child relates to his environment and to himself, he can invent, imagine and create. In other words, it increases their creativity, a highly valued skill nowadays that is key to proper learning.
During their boring times when they are thinking and imagining, they explore their way of being, their passions, their tastes, their ways of entertaining themselves. In fact, as adults and parents, you will surely see that your children spend little time standing still, because they quickly find a way to pass the time doing something entertaining.
How to challenge a child to be bored
In reality, what we mean is that we must challenge children to explore themselves so that they can get to know themselves better and find their innermost passions. But how can we do this? Let's put some interesting techniques into practice.
Less time in front of the screen
It doesn't matter if it's the TV screen, the computer screen or the cell phone. We can limit the time he spends watching videos or playing video games so that he can change it for other activities that he can create or imagine, and that do not involve these types of technologies.
Search for activities
When an infant is bored, he or she will look for something to do. There are many options, so the child, as we have said, will have to be creative. In this case, as adults, we can help him by encouraging him to meet children his own age, to look for activities to do at home, to give him some kind of goal or objective with a concrete action, etc.
Let it connect with you
If the child is bored, he may seek greater connection with the people close to him. For example, with his parents. This is a good time to enjoy quality time with your child. Together you can find a thousand and one activities to do for fun. In this case, imagination is the only limit we can set for ourselves.
Boredom can be fun
Boredom itself is not fun, but the need to entertain oneself and seek out activities that are enjoyable can become a beautiful and positive activity in itself.
As we have said, boredom will sharpen the inventiveness of our infants and allow them to look for techniques and actions that will help them to get out of that state of tedium in which they find themselves.
From Logos Nursery School, nursery school in Las Rozas De Madrid, we put all our knowledge and our experience to the benefit of the children who come to our institution. While boredom is not encouraged, we do work on the creativity and originality of the children so that they can have a happy and fulfilling life.
