Stop Saying Boredom is Good for Kids

Chronic boredom is harmful to adults, causing stress, disengagement, and poor well-being. Academic researchers have shown that boredom in the workplace can be just as damaging as burnout. But search for information about childhood boredom and you’ll find the opposite message: articles describing boredom for kids as “fantastic”, “important”, and full of benefits. News articles, social media graphics, parenting discussions, and even policy proposals are full of praise for how great boredom is for children. Why do so many adults disresgard children’s autonomy, capabilities, and intellectual needs? Unstructured play is different than boredom Play is a keystone of childhood. It is crucial for children to have unstructured free time in which they figure out what they want to do. Left alone, my daughter has come up with all sorts of fun ideas– building homes for her stuffed animals out of empty kleenex boxes, hand-drawing a series of mazes of varying difficulty, and inventing a murder mystery game for her matchbox cars. My daughter isn’t bored when she does these things! However, there is a time when my daughter was quite bored, and that is when she attended school. While she made friends and never complained about going, she began to spend most of her time zoning out. She lost her previous curiosity and became quite passive. She grew accustomed to getting the right answers without trying, and began to get upset when practising piano or playing chess (activities she previously loved, but where mistakes are inevitable). Boredom did not just impact her during the hours she was at school; it altered how she was interacting with the world. Once we returned to homeschooling, my daughter’s curiosity, creativity, and resilience quickly returned. Boredom and Busy-ness are not opposite Boredom is a state of weariness through lack of interest, dullness, or tedious repetition. It is not fundamentally about how much work a person has to do, but rather about how stimulating and engaging that work is. The term “boreout” refers to chronic boredom and understimulation in the workplace. Research confirms that boreout leads to poor well-being, disengagement, and stress. It increases how likely workers are to quit their jobs. What is boredom? Sitting through a math class that is too easy (so you tune out) or too hard (so you tune out) is boring. Completing an overly repetitive task is boring. Being forced to read a book you find simplistic is boring. Many children can go days without hearing an interesting idea. Their world feels small and drab. That is boredom. Lotta Harju, an assistant professor at EM Lyon Business School in France, who wrote her dissertation on boredom in the workplace said: “Don’t assume that keeping people busy will cure boredom. It does not.” This echoes the experience of my daughter. The problem was not that school didn’t keep her busy. In fact, she has much more free time to devote to her passions now that we have returned to homeschooling. Yet in popular culture, boredom is proposed as a counterbalance…