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.”
From a child, there is no harsher judgment. The joke was on her, of course, because (at that particular moment) I was actually procrastinating on X.
Working from home has its benefits, but the collapsing of boundaries between the personal and the professional is never more apparent than during school holidays. For working parents this interregnum tends to be a time of stress and extreme scheduling.
The answer, traditionally, is a packed itinerary of activities in far-flung corners of the city, where someone else can keep the kids busy climbing ropes, practising judo or learning archery. But increasingly, many of us are attempting to work while keeping kids entertained as we hop between meetings.
The result, inevitably, is that not only are we exposed as being boring, we are also vicariously boring our children.
A bored child feels like a parenting failure.
Isn’t our job to keep them stimulated, challenged or amused? The scale of this failure is only heightened by the fact that it is now almost impossible to avoid distraction or entertainment. We all carry around machines of infinite distraction, whose purpose is to make sure we are never bored again. In that light, managing to bore your child should perhaps be seen as less a failure, more an astonishing achievement.
Like any parent, I am easily victim to the emotional blackmail of a young child at a loose end. Why am I sitting at my desk when I should be playing with my daughters, or taking them on a grand excursion, or, failing all that, providing infinite access to Minecraft? What cruel torture boredom is. What a sadist I am.
But maybe we should be easier on ourselves these holidays. Perhaps boredom is not a parenting failure, but rather one of the greatest gifts we can offer. Teach a child to do an activity and they will be entertained for an hour, teach a child to do nothing and, well, their boredom is no longer your problem.
Boredom is an antidote to the currently dominant idea that parents have a duty to be responsible for every moment of our children’s experience. It’s more in line with the three-step guide to parenting espoused by DH Lawrence (who notably neither had nor wanted children): “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone.”
Lawrence argues that kids know when they’re being lied to, so it’s best to be honest and direct. Instead of “The world is a wondrous and interesting place”, try “Life isn’t always interesting – learn to entertain yourself”.
Studies suggest that boredom is good for our mental health, as disengagement from external activity or stimulus gives the brain a chance to reset.
Neither is boredom unproductive. We know that, when people are bored, parts of their brain light up in ways that indicate engagement. In other words, the brain goes looking for things to occupy it. It’s a chance to get creative. With nothing to occupy it, the brain pursues novelty and invention.
Philosopher Martin Heidegger identifies three kinds of boredom. The first two are becoming or being bored with something (this book, this toy, this video game) but the other he describes as “profound boredom”.
This kind of boredom promises a chance to learn more about ourselves – which is one of the reasons many of us seek to avoid it at all costs. It is the anxiety of being left alone with our thoughts.
As parents, we obviously try to spare children anxiety and discomfort. But profound boredom can be a safe way for them to experience pain and build resilience. 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. Heidegger suggests that peace and calm lies on the other side of that initial anxiety as we slow down and learn to be in the world (or our bedrooms), rather than just in our heads.
All of which is great in theory, but what does it look like in practice? For parents attempting to work from home these holidays, it means making sure bedrooms are armed with materials of distraction and inspiration. Materials – whether it’s pencils, craft kits, books or board games – that allow children to move between different activities as the mood takes them.
My experience suggests introverted kids tend to struggle less with being left to their own devices (or lack of devices), but children who draw their energy from interactions with others will benefit from activities that require them to “check-in” with parents for regular praise or feedback.
Ultimately, helping kids live with their discomfort means we parents have to cope with our own – the guilt and disappointment that we aren’t always available to motivate or entertain.
But maybe our tedious obligations are their fantastic opportunity to shrug off the learned helplessness of boredom? That’s what I’ll be telling myself these holidays, even as I reach for the noise-cancelling headphones.
• Myke Bartlett is a writer and critic who has taught courses on creativity and happiness
