A few years ago, some researchers put individuals in a comfortable but sparsely furnished room with nothing to do. It was boring. Participants were, however, also given a device to administer electric shocks. It turns out that 67% of men and 25% of the women tested would rather give themselves painful electric shocks than sit with their own thoughts for 15 minutes.
Two things appear to come out of this research: women can tolerate boredom better than men; and all of us find it highly unpleasant.
I mention this because a week from now the girls will be on school holidays, which for many parents heralds yet another battle against boredom. I am here to urge you to lay down arms and to allow the forces of boredom into your home. Why?
The first reason is that it’s good for children to be bored. It’s also increasingly rare. An ordinary day used to be punctuated with boredom at regular intervals: stuck in traffic, looking out the window on the bus, waiting for your friend to arrive at your pre-determined meeting spot. These days, if we get stuck like this we almost certainly pull out our phone.
Between the accessibility of smart devices and the torrent of content through social media and the internet, true boredom has almost disappeared. If you do go down the digital rabbit-hole, there is still the restless, unsatisfying feeling that you’ve frittered away hours without being able to recall how or why. But deep boredom – the kind where you have nothing to do, where you have no choice but either to exert yourself to find some stimulation or to sink deep into your own thoughts – that kind of boredom is hard to find.
Hard to find, unpleasant, and very good for us in the right amounts. Boredom improves creativity. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that people who tackle a problem just after experiencing a period of boredom are more successful and creative than the norm. Boredom is also useful as a stimulus: it prompts us to search for meaning and purpose. It doesn’t just help us solve problems, it helps us find problems that need solving.
All this is easy to preach, but I am well aware that when the holidays come, bored children won’t be administering electric shocks to themselves – their first resort will be to make things painful for their parents. Fairly soon, they wear us down. We become exasperated and possibly faintly guilty, because as parents we often struggle to wrap our heads around the idea that it is not, in fact, our responsibility to entertain our children.
Once, when I was dealing with toddlers who were rejecting every carefully prepared meal, my mother said: ‘Your job is not to get them to eat. It is to serve up a good meal. What they choose to do with it is a matter for them.’ Words of wisdom that immediately relieved me of a burden of guilt. Applying that principle here: our job is not to entertain our children, it is to create conditions for them to entertain themselves. After that, it’s up to them.
There’s a lot of evidence that the way we do parenting now is a lot tougher than it used to be. To be the sort of parents we want to be, we need to be strategic about where we direct our time and energy.
For now, I will leave two thoughts with you:
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Parenting demands a lot. It’s already really hard to do it well. Cut yourself a break, and don’t add responsibility for entertaining your children to the list!
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Boredom is good for all of us. Trying to eliminate it from your children’s lives is a perverse waste of time – the effort will wear you down and your children will be disadvantaged.
Ms Elizabeth Stone
Principal