That we need an expert to understand that (and other trivial things) is a failure of common sense
Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
51–60 of 201 posts
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#52I feel the destructive behaviour of bored kids is forgotten a bit. Growing up in the late 70s early 80s we were kicked out of the house until dinner. We did a lot of really dangerous things exploring. Among these, -Playing in storm drains. Inside the narrow tunnels I might add. -Abandoned construction sites. -Railway tracks. Putting things o the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks…
Most of the things you describe are part of a good childhood and learning boundaries and limits, and testing yourself, and growing harder, and having fun.
Sorry, but we had been living like that for ages before helicopter parents became the norm. Kids didn't die in the streets by the truckload, or jump off of roofs to their doom any any number to statistically matter, as this alarmist comment implies.
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#53“should be allowed”, in practice, means “should be forced”, since it means saying no to the huge collection of devices (TVs, computers, tablets, nintendos etc) that prevent boredom.
gaming consoles were pro-social when you had split screens, a thing of the past
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#54“should be allowed”, in practice, means “should be forced”, since it means saying no to the huge collection of devices (TVs, computers, tablets, nintendos etc) that prevent boredom.
Yeah, that's intuitively not a fate I would want to wish on my own kids. I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing . Now, the kind of device I would provide is another story. Unfettered access to the Internet at large, including social media, is probably not well advised - access to Wikipedia probably is. Questio…
Boredom can be filled with... books! I think that going for a "personal computing device" first is in general a bad idea and I'm really glad for the first ~14 years of my life I also didn't have any because I'm not sure I would have had the self control to avoid just getting suckered in, and I feel lucky I developed a reading habit instead.
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absolutely true, though perhaps hard to understand just put simply like this. Sitting in silence is not the solution, but it will cause a solution to occur within you. Sitting quiety will make you self-reflect. Self reflection will reduce stress and fear. Reduction of stress and less fear is a reduction in problems caused by human error, and negativity towards eachother (due to fear).
> Self reflection will reduce stress and fear. People will say things like this, and then miss how many people immediately become uncomfortable with sitting quietly lest they face the risk of self-reflection, and how many social tools for avoiding it we have.
There's always therapy
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#56“should be allowed”, in practice, means “should be forced”, since it means saying no to the huge collection of devices (TVs, computers, tablets, nintendos etc) that prevent boredom.
Yeah, that's intuitively not a fate I would want to wish on my own kids. I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing . Now, the kind of device I would provide is another story. Unfettered access to the Internet at large, including social media, is probably not well advised - access to Wikipedia probably is. Questio…
>I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing.
If you lived in a farm 200 miles from any kid in rural Nebraska maybe. And even there there would be tons of adventures to have on one's own.
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#57I feel the destructive behaviour of bored kids is forgotten a bit. Growing up in the late 70s early 80s we were kicked out of the house until dinner. We did a lot of really dangerous things exploring. Among these, -Playing in storm drains. Inside the narrow tunnels I might add. -Abandoned construction sites. -Railway tracks. Putting things o the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks…
Ehem - sounds like a normal childhood?
Compare that to the sheltered, all-wishes-granted and no minute spent w/o distractions like social media, kids. Started with Gen Z who get all angsty, with panic attacks, when they have to start performing, i.e., during final exams and the like. And never learned to deal with emotions and free-floating thoughts, handling themself, keeping calm.
(all observed from multiple coworkers being parents, some had to bring their offspring to psychiatric therapy - of course, driven, as taking public transport on their own would be too much!)
Due to our normal childhood, we could handle situations later in life where today's offspring inevitably fails.
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#58I often think that a lot of people are depressed and/or in a burn out because they don't give themselves a moment to do nothing. A moment were the brain can get up to speed with all the bombardments of information. In the past we had moments we were bored. Now, we always have a phone or other screen were we can indulge on dopamine.
Americans should definitely get (and take) more vacations.
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#59>such as talking to elderly neighbours No no no, that's dangerous!!! Don't ever let your kids talk to strangers, duh. /s Same thing applies to adults imo. Embracing boredom was one of the best things I did in the past years. Boredom is fun!
If boredom is fun... is it boredom then?
/s
PS: the phone tried to autocorrect "boredom" to "Boston". Any truth to that? :)
Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)
#60> All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. —BP
This is absolutely true, though perhaps hard to understand just put simply like this. Sitting in silence is not the solution, but it will cause a solution to occur within you. Sitting quiety will make you self-reflect. Self reflection will reduce stress and fear. Reduction of stress and less fear is a reduction in problems caused by human error, and negativity towards eachother (due to fear).
Nitpicky, because I get what you mean, but "self reflection will reduce stress and fear" is by no means always true and I'd argue it's probably not really true for most people in practice. Epictetus said (paraphrasing!) that people are rubbish at self-reflection and you need to practice it to be good at it, like anything else. Lots of people approach it in terrible ways and it leads to really bad outcomes - giving up immediately, doom loops, too much self-criticism - so it really does need to be done (to use a more modern reference) mindfully.