not bored

[metaphortunate]

Parents, a question:

At what age did your kid first:

1) Say "I'm bored"?
2) Act bored?

This question brought to you by us noticing that at the age of 2 years 8 1/2 months, the Junebug has not yet complained of being bored, or even acted bored. I'd like to think that this is because we fill his days with mentally-stimulating, age-appropriate activities. And in truth probably some of it is because he goes to day care where he is surrounded by other kids and they really do all kinds of activities. But he also spends plenty of time hanging around the kitchen or living room while we're cooking or feeding Rocket, or hanging around our bedrooms while we're doing laundry, or waiting for buses or trains, or sitting in the car, or what have you. And he never has any trouble amusing himself. If all else fails there is always spinning around and around until you get dizzy.

Last night we were at the bus stop and he bent over to pick a stick up off the ground and announced delightedly "Look! A stick!" then danced around with it. I am going to miss the hell out of this phase when it is over.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn]

Maybe it's just his personality. I don't think I've ever grown out of that phase.

[marahmarie]

You're lucky. I was born grown out of that phase (I've been bored forever).

[metaphortunate]

That's what smartphones are for!

[marahmarie]

...which bore me, too (seriously, I get much more juice out of things that are emotionally energizing in some way...otherwise I'm sort of a flatliner, in terms of overall excitement levels).

[metaphortunate]

Well, my friends live in my computers, that's pretty much what I find good about them. :) The phone itself yeah not so much.

[wordweaverlynn]

I am lucky. Between books and the delights of the world -- beautiful scenery, interesting people, pleasant scents and sounds, I'm always entertained.

[marahmarie]

That's not what I mean. I don't mean I'm not inspired and delighted in a similar fashion. I mean I still can get bored pretty easily unless someone/something/for some reason holds my interest beyond its usual quick release. In an 'OK been there/done that/what's next' sort of way. Side effect of a brain that runs at millions of miles an hour, according to everyone who's ever talked to me, I guess... *shrug*

[metaphortunate]

It's just wonderful to see someone be so delighted by a twig on the ground. The world is apparently full of awesome things.

(This backfires, a bit? Like, sometimes I'll want to show him something really cool, and...sure, it's cool. It is! It's just not cooler than, say, grass.)

[wordweaverlynn]

I've had that problem showing my family around my beloved city.

"Come look at the history, art, and architecture!"

"Wow, the train let us out underground. The station is actually underground, and there are SHOPS and everything!"

[metaphortunate]

*laugh*

[antisoppist]

It's just not cooler than, say, grass
That's Small Daughter. We took her to a museum and the most fascinating thing was how the escalator worked. At the nearest big town when she was two it was paving stones and how they fit together and what they are made of. I am finding it a bit disconcerting to suddenly have one who asks "why?". After the other two I thought all the child-rearing books were making that bit up.

[norah]

Ahahaha, whereas I keep waiting for #2 to start with "why" and it keeps not happening...

[metaphortunate]

Oh my god. OH MY GOD.

At some point in the evening I give up and start answering the every-30-seconds "Why?" with "Aaargh! Bbbldeebledoobledoo..."

[kate_nepveu]

I remember taking the kids to the Bronx Zoo and they spent a while staring at, I think, sparrows? That were eating crumbs and (Pepperidge Farms) goldfish and such.

Also the first time we took SteelyKid to a zoo she found a worm and talked the most about that.

[metaphortunate]

Yup.

It's really a statement about framing, if you think about it. This is the time when we look at stuff!

Harimad here

[(Anonymous)]

"I'll want to show him something really cool, and...sure, it's cool. It is! It's just not cooler than, say, grass."

My mother has had a great deal of trouble adjusting to this. She has her agenda and isn't entirely happy when the kids don't follow it. (That said, she's much more laid back about it with her grandchildren than with her children.) OTOH I saw it go spectacularly well at a 2 yo's birthday party. The party helpers saw that the kids liked the boxes that the entertainment came in, better than the entertainment. So they found a few more and set up a maze.

Re: Harimad here

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, you gotta run with what works. It can be hard to let go of expectations though!

[thistleingrey]

Good for the Junebug, and for you guys.

My daughter hasn't admitted to being bored yet. She sometimes shows that she'd rather be doing something else (says, "Let's do ___," or even "We're all done here--could we go?"), but if we're outside the house, for the most part she watches things happen if she isn't an active participant. I've heard an older preschool classmate whine about being bored, so she knows the word.

[metaphortunate]

Oh yeah, there's definitely times he'd rather be doing something else. Like when he's all done with his meal, he wants to be set free right away.

[laurajv]

Sunshine claims to be, and acts, bored from time to time. Usually it is a transparent ploy to get me to let him play with the iPad. (It doesn't work.) He started doing this around age 4, maybe a little later.

[amaebi]

Children who are acculturated to be makers and thinkers rather than consumers don't get bored much. Of course, you're fighting a world that's trying to acculturate the Junebug to be a consumer. But since what they offer is shiftlessness and boredom you can easily best them with a little narrative and pouncing.

Chun Woo's had bursts of it from the ages of four or so, but not too often. And is still thrilled with more technical versions of the stick, at the age of nine. :)

[metaphortunate]

I have no idea how to do that.

[thistleingrey]

Explaining stuff, sometimes random stuff randomly, seems to help (pretty soon he'll say if you've interrupted a thought and he doesn't want an explanation right now). So can encouraging him to watch what adults around him do and to pitch in in small ways that don't hurt him, and occasionally asking what he's thinking about. --At least, I'd interpret amaebi's comment to be general and not cap-M Maker Culture maker, though perhaps I'm wrong. For my part I set the bar at not tuning out because I'm hoping more for "centered" than "acculturated to x," but I think the two are related states; default-consumer gets a little whiny at times when external stimuli aren't on tap....

[amaebi]

If you treat the world as an interesting place and are alert in it, if your approach is more "things to do" than "things to buy" or "things to evaluate as lacking," I think those are the basics. And it sounds as if you're got those down. (You're a sharp critic, and a very creative critic. It's the sterile judgeship of "that's not quite good enough" that seems doomed.)

[resonant]

I think I first heard "I'm bored" in ... maybe mid- to late grade school? The kidlet very quickly figured out that both her parents respond better to direct propositions -- "I'm bored" will get you a chore, whereas "Could we go to the zoo?" has about a 50/50 chance of succeeding.

Middle school students claim boredom a lot, but that's because other middle school students mercilessly slap down any show of enthusiasm unless it's exactly the right enthusiasm, resulting in kids who fear social sanctions if they express any interest in anything at all.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, too true.

I definitely plan to do the chores thing.

[veejane]

Also, he appears to already have learned the punchline to my favorite joke:

Q: What's brown and sticky?

..The silly pun phase is right around the corner.

[brooksmoses]

There are many punchlines to this joke.

My favorite is "a brownie!" because most people expect the "a stick!" answer and it's nicely symmetric.

I was initially taught the joke as a metric for whether one is sufficiently punchy on sleep-deprivation that one should really just go to bed now: If it's uproariously funny, go to bed.

[metaphortunate]

It'll be a while. The five year old who was here recently came up with an amazing joke, which went like this:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
NOTHING! (laugh uproariously, repeat for hours) This *killed* among the under three set, too.

[lovepeaceohana]

Nothing like a little fridge horror to chill that out, though. *shivers*

[sara]

About age five, in Catboy's case; Herself has very rarely complained of being bored.

Since I tend to respond with, "There are no boring situations, only boring people, do you want to be a boring person?" I get very few complaints of boredom. And, like resonant, I tend to respond to complaints of boredom with chore lists.

[jae]

I don't get bored either, for what it's worth. I'm not even entirely sure what it feels like.

-J

[metaphortunate]

For me, these days, the annoying unignorable feeling that there are three hundred things I need to be doing, plus about fifty specific things I'd like to be doing, only for whatever reason I can't be doing any of them at this point in time, so the time is just wasted; and I don't really like where I am, so I can't even just relax and enjoy the downtime.

It's pretty much confined to certain aspects of my commute and the very occasional dull/repetitive task at work, these days. I'll say this for my life: it's not boring.

[ironed_orchid]

As an adult, feelings of boredom signal that I'm procrastinating or that I'm heading into a depressive episode.

[jae]

I actually didn't mean "my life isn't boring" in the conventional sense (though that's also true, for the most part). I meant that if I'm in a situation that people-who-get-bored would tend to find boring and I have no built-in distractions, I will just look at the inside of my head for the duration of time I need to keep myself occupied. It's never failed me.

-J

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, that's why being in an at least mildly unpleasant and/or occupying situation is part of it.

I miss boredom, though. I feel like there was a kind of creativity that came to me in those fallow periods, when I wasn't quite sure what to do. There's no room for that in my life right now.

[kate_nepveu]

SteelyKid definitely sometimes complains of that, especially when she's blood-sugar-crashing; I don't remember when she started (now 5 1/2).

She's also, for an extrovert, capable of entertaining herself for long periods of time.

[lovepeaceohana]

Lu is more likely to complain of being bored than his brother, and has been able to do so since, hmm, I want to say three? Unless he's playing video games (and sometimes even then!). I do think what he really means is just "I'm losing interest in this activity," not bored the way that I might experience it, as a state in which very little can grab and keep my interest (usually combined with a sort of restlessness).

But then again he's always found it a little harder to keep himself entertained - he can be cautious about trying new activities, especially structured ones, but definitely shows extroverted tendencies like being energized by others' company (he prefers playing with others to playing by himself). And he prefers activities that involve some kind of motion, the more dramatic the better, to ones that require him to be a little more calm or still: outside is better than inside, pillow forts are better than reading, dancing is better than just listening to music. /shrug

KK's similar in some respects, but he's also way more willing to just hang out and play with blocks or his toys while I'm cooking. Lu has never been able to do that; he almost always requires some sort of interactivity.

[antisoppist]

My eldest was extremely cross as a baby and we had to keep her constantly entertained by moving her around and giving her constantly changing different things to look at - patterns of fabric, moving trees, mobiles - or she would scream non-stop. She became magically easier to live with as soon as she learned to read at the age of 4. I think the things she finds interesting are mostly inside her head, like me, and she found being a baby intensely boring because she hadn't developed enough brain for that yet. She never says she is bored (she is now 12) unless she has run out of books.

Son the extrovert has always been fine as long as there are people to talk to - on a plane aged 18 months, he made choking noises until everyone was looking at him and then turned round and waved at them all - but sometimes complains of boredom when there aren't. We have worked out that we need to invite his friends round more often than his father or I consider normal.

Small Daughter needs practical things to do. She doesn't say she's bored but says "what can I do?" and is perfectly happy if the answer is "help me make a cake" or "Let's mop the kitchen floor" or "Here's a spray bottle and a cloth, find things to wipe".

I intended not to ever label my children but...

[metaphortunate]

Well, if it helps you keep track of their different personalities and how you can help them out best...

[norah]

SEVEN. I had to ban the words from the house (he lost 5 minutes off his bedtime and/or screen time every time I heard them). It took him approximately .30 minutes to declare boredom after direct stimulating activity ceased to be available.

Luckily, banning the words seems to have helped - he no longer uses them at all.

[metaphortunate]

Excellent!