When I was child, a protestation that I was bored or had nothing to do always got the same response from my father.
“Go bang your head against the wall.”
The absurdity of his suggestion was meant to reflect back to me the absurdity of my complaint. He was really saying, “Think harder, son. There is always something interesting to do.”
And of course, there always was.
As I grew, I no longer needed my father’s head-banging reminder. My internal mantra became, “If you’re bored, you’re boring.”
I took responsibility for my boredom. I came to understand that if I were bored, it was I who was not thinking hard enough.
There is an upside to boredom, explains renown psychologist Dr. Laura Markham, in a blog post entitled, Why Boredom is Good for Your Child:
We respond to our kids’ boredom by providing technological entertainment or structured activities. But that’s actually counter-productive. Children need to encounter and engage with the raw stuff that life is made of: unstructured time. Continue reading “Hurray for Boredom!”
