Children should be allowed to get bored

The other day I was reading a lamentation about the rise of team sports for kids. Little league, etc. Before that you could just put a group of kids in a park and they would <i>make up their own game</i>. It was a creative process.<p>Now you tell them exactly what to do -- and it's totally rigid and even a bit jingoistic.

I recently was on a long solo hike and my smartphone ran out of batteries. With no music or anyone to talk to I had to find something to think about for the 2 hours it would take to complete the hike. I ended up going through each year of my life and thinking about where I lived and what I was doing at the time and memories associated with each time and place. It was actually quite entertaining.

When I was a kid we were somewhere that was boring as hell, so I laid on a bench and stared up at the tiled ceiling. I noticed that for a square (n x n) block of tiles that n^2 = sum(1..n) + sum(1..n-1). From playing with the numbers in my head, I was able to derive the formula the sum(1..n) = n(n+1)/2. Later when I learned Gauss' formula in school for the sum if integers, I was like "Hey, I invented that!". Those kinds of thought experiments just don't happen if you're staring at an Xbox all day.

I recently spent some time in hospital fighting pneumonia. Hospitals are exceptionally boring places. I loved it. I loved not having to do anything, not having to make decisions, not having to constantly think. The highest priority of my day at one point was moving things from my table to my drawer. It was awesome.<p>I think we fill our lives with so much stuff that there's so little space for little things, but when I was rearranging things on my table I hadn't felt so free of responsibilities and decisions in years.

I thought about this among my Facebook friends before replying here. I agree with the premise that children need plenty of time in their youth that isn't overly structured by adults. That's one of the reasons that my family homeschools rather than sending our children to our fine local public school system (which draws in students from all over the state through open enrollment). By test, and by verification through conversation with other adults who know our children, our children have no problem learning the essential information that children need to learn in childhood for independent adult life. But they learn more efficiently, because of the flexibility of homeschooling, and they thus have more time to pursue personal interests and creative activities. (The creative activities include short story writing for all our children, programming in a variety of languages for our oldest, and visual art for all the younger children.)<p>We do have our children in some external programs that structure some of their time. We particularly like our local youth soccer association because its coaching philosophy strongly emphasizes letting the young players make their own decisions on the field and not coaching from the sidelines. I never knew that there was such a thing as "creativity" in soccer until I watched dozens of games over several years and saw how each of our children expresses a different personality on the soccer field, all while coordinating effort with teammates. Soccer truly is a beautiful game when played by players who have played together for a decade and who know one another.<p>AFTER EDIT: I beg to differ with the comment quoted below,<p><i>There are great rockers from places nobody would remotely associate with great music (Bob Dylan and Prince are both from Minnesota, for instance).</i><p>from another top-level comment in this thread. I associate Minnesota with great music, because I live here. (Dylan and Prince are all right, but I'm not sure I'd even agree that they are the peak of what Minnesota has to offer in music. And Minnesota is by no means the most boring state in the United States, as my mother who moved here from elsewhere is glad to let people know.)

Boredom is when we let our mind run free, in search of things that would be interesting to us. If our mind is occupied with distractions, it becomes harder to focus.

My parents came up with a great way to make sure my brother and I always found ways to entertain ourselves: saying "I'm bored" to my parents was the same as saying "I need a chore to do around the house."

I think "getting bored" is the wrong term, she is talking about the fact that children should learn to find things to battle their boredom themselves. Was she still bored when she had a piece of blank paper and nothing to do?<p>Her conclusion seems to be that only letting the brain consume is numbing but that creation and creativity come when the media that lets you mindlessly consume is not available. This media is acting as a drug, numbing creativity. I agree with that notion.

Less focus on "boredom", more focus on unstructured time. Boredom implies the child's own attempts at entertaining themselves has failed.<p>Then again, I consider myself a pretty creative person, even though I insist on plenty of instructions when it comes to work -- but that may come from needing to deal with other people's expectations vs. my own.<p>"Creativity" does not win out over pre-existing brand guidelines.

Some amazing artists come from boring places. There are great rockers from places nobody would remotely associate with great music (Bob Dylan and Prince are both from Minnesota, for instance).

When I was bored as a child I was miserable. Jumping from one idea of what to do to another, one by one verifying that they will not bring me joy I seek. The only way out of boredom was just wait till I get physically tired of sobbing and feeling horibble, and then having a nap.

My mother always used to tell me "only boring people get bored".<p>Now with a small child and business to run, some days I would love to be bored and have nothing to do!

School gives plenty of time for children to be bored.

Not Every children but children should be allowed to get bored.<p>Run everyone on same track never make anything better. Like People do a single kind of work. When Someone get bored with something they come with a beautiful solution.

Old Jasper Carrot joke:<p>Straight man - There's a report that children are bored 3/4 of the time at school. This means they are not being prepared for working life<p>Jasper - really? That sounds like <i>excellent</i> preparation for working life

I completely agree with this writeup, but I believe it depends on the child. Some people feed off of the energy and creativity of outside influences. As an introvert, however, I get overwhelmed over time of being unable to quiet my mind. There are times when listening to my radio will make me feel I'll, and I'll shut it off for weeks as a result, until a time comes along when I want to drown out the chaos rolling around up there. Also, having someone constantly talk to me to try and help me stay awake on a road trip actually has the effect of putting me to sleep, because my brain starts to idle when it's being fed constant stimulation. Imagine explaining that to a loved one who thinks they're helping you out. Definitely an arduous learning experience for all parties involved.<p>I now spend my 6+ hour road trips in complete silence (radio turned off and everyone else asleep), and it's infinitely helpful time to reconnect with myself and my ideas and aspirations.<p>When I got bored as a kid or young adult, I'd do things like: learn orgami, draw something, learn a programming language, start and commit to a workout plan, create something interesting. Now my life doesn't really allow time for boredom. That's why I needed to get into grad school: to force myself to set aside time to learn and create. I would love a stimuli drought right about now.

Before I leave the house, I always try to line up a set of topics to think about while I'm in transit to where I'm going. Usually, these are design challenges in the projects I am working on or plans for the next thing to work on. Sometimes, I even allow myself to think about blue-sky type applications as a reward for getting more down to earth work done. Yes, I am a nerd, through and through!<p>Many times I have wondered what I would do if I were confined in prison or became blind. I think, so long as I was mentally okay and had access to a computer to write software, I would be fine. I even considered that if I didn't have a computer, I would be able to entertain myself by implementing the rules of a game that exhibited computational ideas. After all, John Conway's Game of Life[1] was originally played by hand on a board.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html</a>

It's slightly sad when science journalism relies on "an expert says", without feeling the need to reference any data.

getting myself bored is actually the only way i know to feel like "resetting" and getting fresh idea, views, etc. suppressing hn would be a good idea for this to happen more often tho...

From where I come from, it's normal to let children get bored :)

Isn't boredom just response of a body that what he is doing is not effective? So it encourages going doing something that's more effective, efficient and productive.

my take on this subject a year or two ago :P <a href="http://jankom.posterous.com/kid" rel="nofollow">http://jankom.posterous.com/kid</a>