Bored? Read this...

Hi Friends,
This is an article I did for my school newsletter. It's not the typical Squeaky Voice material, but I thought you parents out there might like it. ;)


Bored To Tears
Understanding & Appreciating Boredom
By Aimee Allen

It was yet another rainy Saturday in the Pacific Northwest. One mild-mannered ten year old had hit her threshold for inactivity. She was tired of drawing, couldn’t bear to watch any more TV, had read every book on her bookshelf and had done and redone her dolls’ hair more times than even Vidal Sassoon himself could possibly fathom. With tears in her eyes she surveyed her living room; her mother was curled up on the couch with a glass of ginger ale nursing the stomach flu, her brother was lounged in the corner reading a Geronimo Stilton book and her dad, now a full-time student, was across the hall in the office studying for finals. It was at this moment that the sweet ten year old uttered the words that drive most parents crazy. “I’m sooooo bored.”

This of course roused her otherwise infirmed mother, who set her ginger ale down rather loudly on the window sill. This exasperated mother loudly asked “How on Earth in the year 2011, with all the toys, games, books, etc., can anyone claim to be bored?” Knowing as she said it that it wasn’t just the daughter’s declaration that bothered her, it was the whole connotation of boredom.

As parents we try to balance our children’s lives without making them too full or too dull. When our children say they are bored, we tend to take this personally. The whole idea of boredom makes us feel uneasy. No one sets out to host a boring dinner party, tell a boring story, go on a boring vacation, have a boring home or be a boring parent. In fact we most likely dread the idea. So when you are accused, and it does feel like an accusation, of any of these things, it hurts the ego. Still, if we take a step back, we might find that boredom isn’t always a detriment.

One of my professors from graduate school felt strongly that boredom in the right doses was a good thing for people. He noted that in such a fast-paced society with people almost always on the go, boredom forces us to sit with ourselves for a bit. Boredom allows us to quiet our minds, to introspect and to problem solve. For many people boredom can be the gateway to creativity. Many artists, inventors, musicians and writers have credited sheer boredom for their best works. The world-renowned artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor said, “It's precisely in those moments when I don't know what to do, boredom drives one to try a host of possibilities...”

Leonardo da Vinci was said to often be bored. I read somewhere that he was even bored in his sleep. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” Certainly da Vinci was open to transforming his moments of boredom to moments of fascination. How lackluster the world would be if people like Kapoor and da Vinci were not able to embrace and then overcome boredom time and time again.

You don’t have to be a famous artist to embrace boredom. I grew up in an apartment complex where there were a lot of other children around to play with. On the rare occasion that I found myself outdoors alone, I would complain that I was bored. At those times I would often plop down in the courtyard and watch the ants. I found their lives quite fascinating. I could, and did, watch them march back and forth for hours. Other times I would start to pull the grass out of the ground and see how small I could shred each blade before going to the next. Shredding blades of grass can be pretty tedious work, but I had some of the best daydreams and fantasies as I worked those blades.

Daydreaming, a common companion to boredom, can really be a good thing, not just for creativity, but for brain activity as well. As I was researching for this article, I found some science to back this. In his blog “The Frontal Cortex”, writer/scientist Jonah Lehrer, explains “At first glance, these boring moments might seem like a great time for the brain to go quiet, to reduce metabolic activity and save some glucose for later. But that isn't what happens. The bored brain is actually incredibly active, as it generates daydreams and engages in mental time travel. In particular, there seems to be an elaborate electrical conversation between the front and rear parts of the mind, as the medial prefrontal cortex fires in sync with areas like the posterior cingulate and precuneus.” As anyone in the business world will tell you, it is a very good thing when all departments are communicating and working together. While we are lamenting over the tedium of our day the parts of our brain are working as a team, which they cannot to do when we are challenged, focused, or otherwise engaged.

I need to be careful about over-romanticizing boredom. We have all experienced boredom and we know it is an uncomfortable and frustrating feeling. Often when bored, children will occupy themselves with TV and video games. This certainly isn’t a brain-stimulating outlet. Even worse, boredom in large doses can be linked to a variety of negative things such as obesity, drug use, depression, dropping out of school, etc. In fact I just read that the number one reason high school drop-outs give for leaving school is boredom. They don’t have interest in the school subjects and have not made a connection with any of the adults in the school.

So no, we don’t want our children to be bored for long periods of time. The idea of moving from boredom to fascination means that there has to be some acknowledgment of our mental state, some time spent in this state and then a desire to move past the discomfort. Just like any other uncomfortable emotion, we need tools to get ourselves through. In the Montessori classroom we pride ourselves on having many materials that actively engage students’ brains. Children rarely come to us with the claim that they are bored, because there are so many appropriate choices to stimulate their minds. The beauty of the Montessori model is that we have been focusing on independence and problem solving since the children were toddlers. If children do find themselves in a situation where they feel bored, they can usually get through it without much interference on the part of the adult.

Taking this cue from the Montessori classroom, we as parents can encourage our children to utilize their problem solving and independent thinking skills. Conceivably the child will at some level say to him/herself I recognize this feeling, I’ve had it before. What can I do next? What interests me? What activities do I enjoy? What do I want to find out? What have I done in the past to get beyond this feeling? If I can’t come up with solutions on my own, who can I talk to who can help me? Just as it is with adults, for some children this is a natural process, other children might need some guidance. Perhaps this can be a topic at your next family meeting. By saying something as simple as “What do you do when you’re bored?” or “How do you get past feelings of boredom?” you can help your children develop strategies they can use for a lifetime.

On yet another rainy Saturday, I found that mild-mannered ten year old and her younger brother zipping around the house collecting items for a project. It started by putting stickers on a cardboard box. In no time the cardboard box evolved into a setting. Soon they were creating puppets from socks, complete with yarn hair, googly eyes, clothing and personalities. There was sewing involved, script writing and a lot of laughter, too. This provided hours and hours of engagement for both children. When asked where they got the idea for this elaborate project they simply answered, “Well we were just bored.”

References
Lehrer, J. (March 24, 2009). Boredom [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/03/boredom.php
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/arthur_schopenhauer.html
Brainy quotes http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/anishkapoo324857.html#ixzz1J9SuNYxq