Summer break: a time for Pinterest-worthy beach vacations, meticulously planned family gatherings, and endless high-energy activities for kids as they let loose after a stressful school year. Some days of summer break might feel this perfect, but more often than not, parents find themselves at home, tasked with responding to those two dreaded words from their kids:
“I’m bored.”
The pressure to entertain
Eileen* used to work around the clock to make sure she never heard those two words from her sons. During summer break, she kept her kids on a strict schedule. They had workbooks to complete in the morning and were allowed some designated screen time around lunch. Every afternoon, Eileen would rush home from her part-time job to drive her kids to whichever activity was happening that day: a karate lesson, a youth group activity, or an outing with a friend. When the boys became restless in the evenings, Eileen would plan an outing, browse TikTok for summer activity ideas, or play with them, stopping whatever she was doing to rescue them from their boredom.
On paper, Eileen looked like a five-star mom. Thanks to her attentiveness, her sons were occupied all day long and never had a moment to be bored. However, like many parents, Eileen struggled with an overwhelming pressure to be her kids’ entertainer during summer break – a role that was both unsustainable and unhelpful for everyone involved.
What if boredom isn’t bad?
Our culture is accustomed to constant entertainment. When school ends and summer presses pause on our regular routines, the pressure to fill every moment of our kids’ lives ramps up. In fact, a Google search for “how to keep kids entertained (summer)” yields a jaw-dropping twelve million results. If you are feeling the pressure to rescue your kids from their boredom, you might be relieved to hear that boredom isn’t bad for kids – it is actually good for them.
Boredom isn’t good for kids because of the feeling itself, but because of what can come after the feeling. When you let your kids sit with their boredom, you are equipping them with life skills that children with more structured lives might not develop as quickly. Among these skills are play, creativity, and self-sufficiency – three essentials for raising kids that will become well-adjusted adults.
The power of play
Boredom naturally prompts children to seek out their most crucial task: play. The Italian educator Maria Montessori famously said that “play is the work of the child” because playing is more than just how children pass the time – play is how children learn the rules and skills necessary to exist in our world. Preschool age children develop motor skills from playing with toys and learn on the playground what happens if they jump down from too high a height (they get scared or hurt). Elementary age children learn cooperation when they decide who will be “it” for tag and explore social roles when they play “store” or “house,” whether with peers or dolls. When left alone with their boredom for long enough, even tweens and teens will play via sports, competitions, and creative hobbies.
The fact of the matter is that the power of play – especially unstructured play where kids can follow their natural curiosity without an adult’s guidance – can only work its magic when kids are most at risk of becoming bored. When parents try to dictate the way their children play through structured boredom-ending activities, they undermine their child’s solo, natural, and much-needed exploration of the world.
The case for creativity
Boredom is also a prerequisite for creativity. Although it might seem hard to believe, if you leave your kids to their own resources to overcome their boredom, they will eventually begin to use their imagination. A bored child’s imagination at work might manifest in an explicitly creative activity, such as drawing, filming a video, or making music, or it might result in a kid who has decided to kick a ball at a fence, roll in the grass, or even dump out bins of toys. Each of these are forms of creativity because each came from a child who faced a problem and had to imagine their way to a solution without an adult’s prompting.
Put simply, boredom is the soil in which creative problem-solving grows. This type of creativity goes beyond artistic hobbies – it means the ability to think of an outside-the-box solution to a problem and teaches children to use their imagination not just for entertainment, but for overcoming real-life challenges. This kind of practical creativity will serve kids well as they emerge into adulthood, equipping them to examine a problem and construct a solution.
Strengthening self-sufficiency
Finally, sitting with long bouts of boredom will teach your kids to be self-sufficient. All parents want to raise self-sufficient kids and must do so by allowing their children to rely on themselves, but it can be difficult to control your parental instinct to swoop at the first sign of distress. To make things even harder, it can be a challenge for parents to think of low-risk ways to encourage kids to be self-reliant. For instance, no parent would find it appropriate to teach toddlers to ride public transit, nor would they cut off a tween’s access to water to teach them to pay the bills. Teaching self-sufficiency is all about empowering kids to take small, low-risk chances to rely on themselves instead of their parents, and boredom presents a perfect opportunity to do exactly that.
Leaving your kids alone to overcome their boredom is a risk-free way to equip them to handle their own challenges in preparation for adulthood. There is no risk factor when it comes to boredom – no one’s life has ever been endangered by having nothing to do – and kids of all ages can gain from having to rely on themselves for entertainment. In addition, leaving kids alone to tackle boredom will strengthen other self-sufficiency related skills, such as emotional self-soothing, taking responsibility for personal well-being, setting a schedule, and having independence from parents.
Set your kids up for success
Of course, balance is key when it comes to figuring out how much you should try to entertain your kids. It’s unhelpful to entertain your kids at every waking moment, but it goes without saying that it’s clearly wrong to neglect your kids’ needs. In your pursuit of healthy boredom, don’t fail to provide your kids with the tools to overcome boredom on their own. When it comes to setting your kids up for a successful fight against boredom, a good rule of thumb is to provide, not plan.
For example, provide your kids with toys, craft supplies, sports equipment, and books to keep themselves busy. Try creating a safe and engaging outdoor play area to get kids on their feet. Allow them to “play” in unconventional ways, like through cooking, organizing, or even making a mess. Parents can choose what provisions of entertainment are reasonable for their living space, budget, and screentime limits, but should remember that they don’t need to plan what kids do with these provisions. When parents have provided kids with the tools they need to fix their boredom on their own, they are setting their kids up for success in the real world.
A parent’s role
If leaving your kids to contend with their boredom feels like a difficult thing to do as a parent, it might be helpful to read what the Bible says about a parent’s role. The Bible commands that parents teach their children about following God (Deuteronomy 6:7), refrain from discouraging their children (Colossians 3:21), provide for their children’s needs (1 Timothy 5:8), and give them loving discipline and correction (Proverbs 29:15). God desires for parents to love, teach, cherish, and nurture their children – not necessarily to find activities to occupy them all day long. All of this is not to mention that adults need time for themselves in order to show up as the best parent they can be, and sometimes, entertaining our kids takes up time that might be more effective if spent on self-care or other life responsibilities.
It’s also helpful for parents to lead by example – but that can be difficult if a parent is also boredom-averse. When children see a parent who pacifies their own boredom by scrolling on their phone or filling their schedule with back-to-back plans, they will come to see that as the standard. On the other hand, when children see a parent who is willing to be bored, they are more likely to view boredom as a normal part of life and not a free pass to despair, meltdown, or endless screen time. Next time you feel bored, resist the urge to scroll or channel surf and instead model to your children how to find something productive or engaging to do. Encourage your child when they successfully overcome boredom on their own: verbally affirm them or even participate in the play they have chosen (build block towers or cut up paper beside them while letting them lead the direction of the play). In these ways, parents can show children with their words and actions that it’s possible (and oftentimes more rewarding) to overcome boredom without another person’s guidance.
Remember Eileen? Around the second month of summer break, she knew something had to change. Her boredom-busting habits had become unsustainable and unhelpful to herself and her kids, and what she expected to be a relaxing, laid-back time of year had turned into a frenzy. When Eileen surrendered her self-imposed responsibility to entertain her children, she and her sons had the chance to take a breather during summer break, and she saw them grow in ways they hadn’t before when their every moment was scheduled.
This summer, learn from Eileen and dare to let your kids be bored. When they begin to complain and ask you to find them something to do, remember that shortcutting your child’s boredom is also shortcutting a powerful process that will foster play, creativity, and self-sufficiency. Realistically, parents should be ready to deal with frustration as an entertainment-addicted generation of kids is left to rely on their own resources, but with time, you will watch in amazement as your children relearn how to play, use their imagination practically, and take a significant step on the journey of becoming a self-sufficient, well-adjusted young adult.
*Name has been changed
