Dear Therapist:
With summer here, I keep thinking about how much effort we put into making sure kids are never bored. Camps, trips, activities, playdates, projects. The minute a child says, “I’m bored,” parents feel like they have to fix it.
I wonder if we are missing something. Is it so terrible for kids to be bored sometimes? I was bored as a kid, and I think I managed. Where does this pressure come from?
How much should parents be arranging and entertaining over the summer, and how much can we just let our kids figure it out?
Response:
I think you’re describing a larger issue. It’s not just boredom that parents feel they need to fix. Many parents feel responsible for making sure their children are always happy. We feel that our kids should never be bored, unhappy, stressed, or uncomfortable.
Of course, we want our kids to be happy. The question is whether we should be micromanaging their happiness. Our overall job as parents is to raise happy, well-adjusted, functional adults. The question becomes: When we take charge of our children’s every emotional need, are we actually helping them in the long run?
When we personally address all of their emotional needs, are we, in essence, teaching them that they don’t need to learn how to manage those needs themselves? Worse, are we teaching them that they aren’t capable of doing so?
It can be hard to watch our children struggle. When we see other parents constantly arranging activities and solving every problem, we may feel like we’re somehow falling short. Although we may intellectually understand that our children need to learn how to manage their own feelings, our fears, insecurities, and emotions can easily get in the way.
It can be difficult to balance our children’s immediate needs with our long-term goals for them. That balance varies with age, maturity, personality, and many other factors. Boredom is usually a relatively low-level issue. For that reason, it can be a good place to begin helping our children learn to address their own emotional needs.
When our children are very young, we naturally meet many of their needs directly. To some degree, it is necessary to do things for them that they are not yet capable of doing themselves. At the same time, we are modeling behaviors that they will eventually learn to do on their own. Optimally, as they mature, we gradually allow them to take increasing responsibility for meeting their own emotional needs.
The same principle applies to older children who have not yet learned these skills. They may be accustomed to having things done for them. At the same time, they are more mature and may be able to develop these abilities relatively quickly. Often, the satisfaction of becoming more self-sufficient helps reinforce a more independent way of managing their own needs.
-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW
psychotherapist in private practice
Woodmere, NY
adjunct professor at Touro University
Graduate School of Social Work
author of Self-Esteem: A Primer
www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200
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