A bored child is not a parenting failure. Teach them to shrug off the learned helplessness of boredom

‘Giving children the chance to experience boredom or, at least, to sit in their room until their brain finds something for them to do, can be a learning experience.’ Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian

Somewhere in week two of the previous school holidays, our nine-year-old wandered downstairs, looking for something or anything to do and frowned over my shoulder at the laptop screen.

“I don’t really understand what you do, but it looks very boring.”