Guest post by Peter Minkoff
Children seem to be more prone to be bored than adults. Especially during holidays when they don’t have any school chores, the parents are the ones from who is expected to solve this problem.
Kids who are always bored in their free time, can develop a long-term boredom, when nothing interests and excites them, which can be a cause of later vandalism, school drop-out or drug abuse.
No reason to fear of these extremes, though, if you teach your child how to overcome the boredom by himself. Your kid doesn’t need an army general to order him what to do, but a life coach to teach him how to accomplish things by himself.
Here, we’ll give you five advices on how you and your child can exceed the boredom issue together.
Developing their creativity
Children are true masters of creative thinking and when they find just a small thing that will keep them occupied for long term, they can create wonders. TV, computer games and iPhones can only keep your kids occupied for short period, what they need in order to develop their creativity is a special project or a task that will last even for couple of months.So for a five or six year old, that project can be growing a plant and maybe even keeping a journal about its development. For a school kid, a photography project, where he should keep record about his vacation or some other topic can be a great way of expressing and developing creativity and maybe even a wind in his sail for some future career.
Encourage their imagination
The imagination is one of those things we are gradually losing as we’re growing up and the children are blessed by having more than enough of it. You should appreciate and encourage when a box becomes a spaceship in your child’s hands, it’s a priceless thing.
One of the best ways of sparking that fantasy life are costumes. They’re helping kids to imagine themselves as some other characters which require an additional effort of coming up a story to go with the costume. By channelling kids’ energy into superheroes they can save the world, defeat a villain and be the queens and kings of their own universe.
Research shows that storytelling which involves costumes can enhance child’s ability to retell the story and develop better language use. In fact, parents can have a great interaction with their kids, by searching inspiring costumes online and in that way discovering their interests.
Praise independent playing
It’s not possible for you to be always there when your child needs some entertainment and it is also not an option for 20 kids from school to come every day to impersonate their companionship at your home.So, what can you do? It’s not so bad to allow and encourage your kid to play alone sometimes. Making that transition from a fellowship in school to independent playing is a big step for your little one, so start with just 15 to 20 minutes.
Afterwards, you should gradually increase the time of independent playing. Reward the independence with a picnic in a park or walking by the river.
Thinking with their own heads
Adults are often wrong in thinking that kids never know what they want. They just don’t know how to express their desires and how to accomplish their plans.
Encourage your child and let him know that you can understand his wishes and you’ll not diminish them or laugh at them. Then, sit together and make a list of the things your kid considers fun and which can be used as get-out-of-boredom cards.
If some of the items on the list are undoable, explain calmly why is that so and search for alternatives together. Try to, with join efforts, think of some games that can be played with whole family and some projects which can be done independently.
As with the first steps, your kid should do everything on his own, all you can do is hold his hand and hope he won’t trip and fall. And that should be enough.
Peter is a lifestyle writer located in Brisbane, Australia. After graduating from Australian Institute of Creative Design, he worked as a trend forecaster and as a freelance writer for few local newspapers in Brisbane. Beside writing, he loves shopping, cooking exotic meals and travelling around tropical destinations. He’s future plans are in creating his personal lifestyle blog about everyday life-saving tips.
