This is common situation for every parent, child come to us and complain, “I’m bored”. It is become difficult for us to entertain our child every time and that is not the good approach. Well, to make them entertain all the time is not our responsibility but we cannot leave them as it is. Then what should be the next step? How to deal with child’s Boredom.
Let us look around their boredom.
Is boredom bad?
Being lazy is a bad thing but getting bored is not. You know why? Because when you get bored you are seeking for something to do which is new and we have never done it before. And exactly same happens with our kids.
When they say, “I’m getting bored” means they want some new activity to do and cannot find interesting.
There is something hidden underneath the boredom that you can use to develop their skill. They want to do interesting something.
So, you can grab this opportunity to make your child creative. If you play mindfully, you can turn their boredom into productivity.
In that way their boredom helps them to develop skill. They can develop skill to plan strategically, problem solving skills. Flexibility and organization skills are also developed in them as they start to practice to get rid of the boredom.
Try to not give them mobile or TV as they are the easy solution for parents and so on you can miss the opportunity to make your child skilful.
How to deal with child’s Boredom?
Usually, children do not used to to make their schedule for the day and that is the reason that most of the time they are clueless for the next activity. That’s why they feel more boredom. Here is the key to handle child during that time.
Have some conversation at the free time with your child and ask them for activities they like or they want to do. Make a chart for their activities so you can get idea of their likes and unlike.
For younger child you can include fun activities:
- model play (doctor, police, army man)
- making tower from block, Legos
- building a fort or a house and play in
- puzzles
- colouring and crafts
For older child (pre-teen, teen child) include:
- reading their favourite book
- art project or drawing
- board games
- outdoor project (garden making/repairing work)
- create website/podcast/coding (For tech savvy child)
- sports
- cleaning their stuff
So, you can redirect them to the chart that you have already prepared when they come to you with boredom.
Sometimes they will refuse to pick activity from the chart, at that time give them 2 or 3 option to pick or give them option that if you do not choose the activity then you have to do what I ask for.
Also remember that do not give them all toys, their mind gets overwhelmed and can not focus on one.
Instead of give them one or two toys for play and when they get bored from that toy you can have another option to offer.
Beware of the attention seeker
Children has short attention span, hardly 20 minutes not more than and if they are pre-schooler than the attention span is less than 20 minutes. Children are attention seeker so they try to grab your attention repeatedly.
So, it’s obvious that they will come back to you after they have done with their activity and maybe interrupt you in your work. Redirect them again and again does not work for you because for that you have to take a pause and your child distracting you after some point again.
Then what is the next step?
Then you can give them a task to do, find out what they can do with their boredom. In this way they learn to take a dive into their mind and thoughts. They can explore new ideas that makes them more creative.
Be Realistic and set Goal
As you know that children have short attention span and after few minutes they get distracted to another things/activity. So, schedule their day according to your work and balance timetable with your children.
Means try to get done your work where you need more attention when your child has school or they are doing their homework or other activity.
In between all, get some time for your child so they don’t feel alone or abandoned. Timely they will learn to manage their boredom and can figure out how to deal with their extra time.
Caution: – There is a caution that make sure your child does not tend to the gadget whenever they are getting bore. Because when this kind of situation happen, they will learn that boredom means gadget time and internet and you cannot get the benefit of the boredom.
Don’t forget to embrace failure
It is obvious, that when you give different task to do to your child, maybe they get fail to complete that task.
For instance, if you give them task to make art project and they get fail, do not blame them or say any negative words to them. Embrace their efforts and appreciate them to try again. Do conversation in positive words so they do not get demotivate.
Your words and empathy make them strong and inspire them to make more efforts the next time.
After all you have achieve your gaol as a parent to guide them from boredom to productivity.
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