She continues: “Disconnect, ask open-ended questions, find what makes your kid tick, facilitate exploration and get creative. Together.”
“As caregivers, I think we sometimes get caught forcing our kids to do certain things. Whether it’s because we want to distract them or we feel like it’s a good learning opportunity, or maybe we even think that they’ll enjoy it, we sometimes teeter toward projects and activities with obvious beginning, middle and endings.”
“The problem with this approach is—while these activities can be done more independently—there tends to be a lack of genuine creativity. Creativity needs to happen organically. By providing our children with open-ended materials and guiding questions and prompts, they’ll naturally take the reins and suddenly you’ll find yourself in the middle of this awesome tangent inside your kid’s wild imagination.”
Varley provides an example of her daughter having an uncontrollable love for Halloween. So, in turn, Varley threw some Amazon boxes on the floor and asked if she wanted to build a haunted house together. Yes, she did have stuff to do, but once the boxes hit the floor, the little girl’s eyes lit up. In a light bulb moment kind of way.
She immediately went for her craft drawer and started sketching plans. Varley described it as magic—minus the excessive amounts of blood in the blueprints. But it’s gotta be spooky, right? The daughter was so engrossed in it that she forgot technology even existed for several hours. And though that sounded like fun, the most exciting part was that the mom was there, beside her, listening to all her wacky ideas for the house.
“At the end of the day, our kids want to be with us,” added Varley. “The best part is, there are so many ways our kids can express their creativity—through art, dramatic play, physical activity, music—find something you can share together while still allowing your child to take the lead. You’ll be surprised with how much your child can do—and how much you can learn from them—just by being there.“
And do you know what the best part is? If we apply the same principle to adults, it’s gonna work just as well. The key here is boredom.
Varley explains that adults too can be grossly overstimulated. It doesn’t help that nearly every adult these days has a backlog of stuff to do and it’s all stressful. It’s almost robotic in a sense. And while life can be stressful in its own right, it is up to us to choose an appropriate reaction to these stressors. Because we can control it.
“We feel guilty being bored. Somewhere along the way, this notion of overworking became glorified and the idea of doing ‘nothing’ became taboo,” elaborated Varley. “Consequently, we’re not allowing ourselves to get bored. Like children, with everything right at our fingertips, reaching for our phones the moment we feel boredom creeping in has become a natural reflex. If we want to inspire creativity in ourselves, we need to learn how to embrace boredom again.”
“At the end of the day, how we choose to experience life is ultimately how our children will experience their life as well. We only get to do this thing once, we may as well have fun along the way. Go for walks together. Sit in the same room. Explore. Play. Talk. Dance it out. Kids are so stinkin’ good at noticing life. Once we learn how to live and notice life again, creativity will come naturally for all of us,” concludes Varley.
So, make room for being bored. It’s good for ya! In the meantime, though, be sure to check out Stuff Tiny Humans Say on Instagram, Facebook, and X and why not read our article on it?
If you’re that bored, then you can also check out the best parenting posts from last month too, because the rabbit hole doesn’t have to end here. Oh, comments and upvotes are also appreciated!
