Boredom can help the child's development
No person is looking get bored. Fun is a goal that everyone wants to aspire to and have great experiences. However, this state can bring great benefits to those who pass through it. The boredom that sometimes appears in the lives of children has much to offer them as explained Sandi Mann, professor of Psychology at the Central University of Lancanshire.
Get bored It is an invitation to seek an alternative plan, to stimulate the mind to achieve the opposite effect: have fun. For this specialist this negative feeling that makes entering a phase of apathy is a good door to stimulate the imagination, so it is recommended that parents allow their children to experience this tedium from time to time in order to give them the opportunity to be more creative
Use your head
Mann explains in one of his investigations that boredom is a double-edged sword. It is true that in some occasions it can lead to a use of the imagination to find the way out of this state. But in others the exhaust valve can be very harmful. For this he gives the example of people who eat impulsively at feeling like that.
In this investigation the psychologist gave several participants boring tasks to complete and then asked them to use their creative thinking to try to give a new use to a plastic cup. Those who had been entrusted with the most tedious work suggested the most interesting use of this object. For the psychologist boredom encourages the mind of people to wander, leading them to more associative and creative ways of thinking.
The mind can be the answer to boredom, in it you can find what you are looking for. Daydreaming and letting the imagination fly awakens the subconscious. Something that activates creativity, making things look different, making the child capable of inventing imaginative solutions to this tedious situation.
Overstimulation
Mann also points out that nowadays society "does not know how to get bored". In a world dominated by new technologies, children live in a situation of overstimulation, something that leads them to constantly look for these "anti-shock pills". From very young children are exposed to stimuli that they do not need, denying them the opportunity to find the solution to their state of boredom.
Children are getting used to a very intense environment and hypersimulation where everything changes and moves very fast. The brain has adapted to this context and in the absence of stimuli, an anxiety appears before them. For Mann this new context is raising children with a very low level of tolerance to boredom. Each time they will need more stimuli to reach the levels they require and not overcome this feeling of boredom.
Given this situation, it is only necessary to encourage other activities in the smallest of the house. Practices that encourage your imagination and for it nothing better than a blank sheet and a box of colored waxes to draw or a pencil to write an exciting history. Let the imagination fly and in this way escape from boredom. It is also advisable to perform intellectual tasks to encourage reasoning. That is to say, not to depend on all these stimuli in order to be able to solve the boredom but to find the solution in the mind.
Damián Montero
