Do children “need” to be bored?
Very busy children, from an early age, often have schedules worthy of a minister. Parents thus think of awakening their offspring. An over-stimulation that could well be counterproductive.
Boredom hunting
Elite kindergartens whose objective is to make their young pupils perform well… This type of establishment exists in France. Such as the active bilingual Jeannine-Manuel School, EABJM, in Paris in the XNUMXth century, which for example allows children to learn reading, writing, but also sport, art, music, from the youngest age. age. In this school, extracurricular activities (dancing, cooking, theater, etc.) are more numerous than the days of the week. It is anecdotal, perhaps, but it is also symptomatic of an era and a society, which seem to have a panicked fear of heights. This is confirmed by Teresa Belton, American expert in the impact of emotions on the behavior and learning of children, who has just published a study on the subject (University of East Anglia). ” Boredom is experienced as a “feeling of unease” and society has decided to be constantly busy and constantly stimulated. She told the BBC. Monique de Kermadec, a French psychologist specializing in precocity and success, also notes it: “parents absolutely want “Too much” to occupy their child to feel like “good” parents. They multiply extra-curricular activities, in the hope of compensating for their absence in the evening after leaving school. Piano, English, cultural activities, the little ones often have a second life that begins at 16 pm ”. Children in the 30s have all the less time to get bored as they are constantly called upon by the screens around them. “When the children have nothing to do, they turn on the television, the computer, the telephone or any kind of screen,” explains Teresa Belton. The time spent on these media has increased ”. Now, she continues, “in the name of creativity, maybe we need to slow down and stay disconnected from time to time. “
Boredom, a creative state
Because by depriving children of the possibility of being bored, by occupying the smallest gaps of free time, we are at the same time depriving them of an important stage in the development of their imagination. To do nothing is to let the mind wander. For Monique De Kermadec, “the child must be bored so that he can draw his own personal resources from him. If he expresses his feeling of “boredom” to the parent, it is a way for him to remind him that he wants to spend time with him ”. Boredom would even allow children to unleash the little genius that lies dormant in them. Teresa Belton delivers testimonials from writers Meera Syal and Grayson Perry on how boredom allowed them to discover a particular talent. Meera Syal thus spent hours looking out the window when she was little, observing the changing seasons. She explains that boredom triggered her desire to write. She kept a journal from an early age, with observations, stories, and poems. She attributes her fate as a writer to these beginnings. She adds that she “started writing because there is nothing to prove, nothing to lose, nothing to do. ”
Difficult to explain to a young child who complains of being bored that perhaps this is how he will become a great artist. To prevent these moments of idleness which can also distress her, Monique de Kermadec offers a solution: “imagine a” suggestion box “in which we insert small papers on which we write various activities in advance. A paper “soap bubbles”, “cook a dessert”, “decoupage”, “song”, “read”, we slip in a thousand ideas for those days when we are “bored” at home “.