Feb 7, 2010
Parents, be dull—it’s key to your children developing their imaginations.
Don’t overentertain your kids, because…
…boredom is necessary for a child’s development, and will eventually spark a mental state known as “daydreaming.”
(The Three-Martini Playdate, 106-7)
Great advice…
Reminds me of C.S. Lewis talking about being stuck inside on rainy days and the stacks of books His dad always had at the ready – it would be fair to say his imagination was fully developed!
I like that.
I’ve heard something similar…when you kid says, ‘mom I’m bored’ respond with…’that’s good honey because life is filled with a lot of boring moments, and you need to learn how to handle those moments’. The original quoter was much more elegant in the response, but you get the idea.
Couldn’t agree with you more completely. My mom used to always respond with, “Go find something to do. I’m not the entertainment committee.”
Spot on! I worry about children who are so entertained and scheduled that they don’t have time to come up with one thought on their own!
“Only boring people are bored.” At least that’s what my boring US history teacher would say….
This encompasses toys, not just activities, in my mind.
If the toy does all the playing and imagining for you, then what good is it?
I agree on the one hand….but I don’t know how to be dull…
I’m reading a great book right now, along these lines. The Case for Make Believe by Susan Linn.
Love it … it excuses me for all those lazy moments of parenting I had when I didn’t entertain my boys.
To my amazement, they’ve grown up to be three critique-thinking teens/young adults.
i have that very sentence underlined in my copy of that book. i don’t do much entertaining so my kids should be very creative.
as a new mom, i totally struggle with this. what is the balance? i feel pressure from the baby-pundits to play and teach and sing and dance and do do do for my child, but i feel, gut-wise, that a simpler approach is likely better. thanks for the quote/link :)
I cheer loudly when my kids tell me they are bored.
I say Mum 1 kids 0.
Thanks for adding a book to my reading list. I am also going to share it on my blog.
Agreed. My husband (and 3 brothers and 1 sister) grew up on a foreign mission field where the national children were in school 6 days a week until very late at night. So they were each others best friends.
Amongst the brothers, they read through the dictionary, read through the encyclopedia,read through most classics, read through their dad’s theology books, made movies with special effects (not too bad, either), made bombs, shot each other with b.b. guns, made discoveries about fire and what it does, and even read Janette Oak. They wrote stories, drew pictures, invented toys, and…are now quite brilliant young men.
I hope our kids are just as bored.
Confessions of a Slacker Mom. Great book that discusses just that and made me feel better about being a boring mom, who’d rather beat pots and pans on new years eve, than buy all that flashy noise stuff.
On what evidence is this based? If you take a counterfactual and look at John Stuart Mill or W.A. Mozart you will see that a highly involved parent can help a manifestly amazing child according to different ability sets. Don’t pat yourself on the back too easily for ignoring your kid because it’s convenient.
I’m thinking boredom is inevitable even if parents TRY to be interesting. Not a diss on parents in general…but none of us can be fascinating all the time.
Good stuff, Abraham. I need to remember this one when we enter the parenting stage.
From the creativity show in the Christmas show by your son, it seems you and Molly have done a great job at being dull =)