Non-Traditional Parenting Strategies-Boredom is Good

I had kiddos early compared to many of my peers, so it is not uncommon for me to be the purveyor of hard earned wisdom to buddies that have kids that are a couple years younger. I give a lot of traditional advice that you can find in any parenting book or through common culturally accepted practice. However, I thought it would be worth sharing some of my more less main stream go to parenting strategies.

So the next couple posts will list several parenting tips and strategies I have used successfully to improve my parenting.

Remember, before you read this, you like me and think I am a good father.

It's OK for kiddos to get bored.

My kiddos are absolutely done with how I respond to their pleas for me to alleviate their boredom. They know my answer and thus have stopped coming to me.

Flash back to 4 years ago. It was a common occurrence for my kiddos to approach me in the midst of the pandemic lockdowns and tell me, "I'm bored!". I used to acquiesce to their implied message saying: do something for me so that I am no longer bored. What ensued when I tried to acquiesce was time consuming and all together not fun for either of us. I realized quickly that my role as a parent was not to be an entertainer for my kids.

Then I came across some interesting research showing that when we are bored we are often just at the precipice of a major creative surge.

This insight utterly changed my response. When the kiddos came to me after learning of that research my response became, "Good! your brain is doing exactly what it should be doing." Then left it at that.

What I observed astonished me. There would be another 5-10 minutes of moping about in boredom, and then an explosion of creative play: an art medium that hadn't been used before, an old toy long ago discarded now used again in a new way, the emergence of a novel game with a sibling.

I would look at this outcome and think, man am I glad I didn't get in the way of this. Nothing I could have come up with would have matched the creativity and engagement of what this kiddo just did for themselves.

So embrace boredom. Do not be the parent that entertains your kids at all time. And for sure, don't be the parent that throws a screen in front of them to get them off your case. Let boredom do what boredom is meant to do, and let it allow your child to unlock their creative potential.