Let’s stop worrying about keeping our children busy! Clinical psychologist Pascaline Poupinel explains why (from time to time) it’s not bad to leave them bored.
Summer camp, theater, judo or tennis internship, magic or gardening workshop, singing or English course… we no longer know what to invent to keep our children busy during weekends or holidays.
For fear that they will get bored, that they will not learn something at all costs … so that they can “practice” … we do our utmost to enroll them – whether small or large – for any kind of activity. And to do this, how many hours do you spend finding “the right places”, managing registrations, organizing the joints, combining tickets (not to mention the money).
Boredom, a source of anguish
It is too easy to say that boredom is useless – explains Pascaline Poupinel -: according to the adult, it often only means that the child is wasting time.
It is also a cause of anguish or enervation, when the child goes around the house and says: «What can I do? I do not know what to do…”. Or it torments you every five minutes: “Can I get the iPad? Can I invite Tizio? ». It seems they no longer know what to do, and sometimes this frightens us.
Enduring boredom, a sign of good mental health
And therefore the parents believe they are obliged to keep their offspring permanently occupied: “But there is no obligation to be busy all the time,” continues the psychologist. And we really need to take this recommendation very seriously because, according to various specialists like her, the organization of the rhythms that parents set up around a child participates in its constitution and psychic balance, beyond what is perceived. The ability to cope with boredom is itself a glaring sign of good mental health.
Keep an eye on the influence of today’s society
Modern society encourages and influences us to keep our children busy, stresses psychotherapist and psychoanalyst Etty Buzyn (in her book “Daddy, mommy, give me time to dream [Albin Michel]). Being a consumerist, this society is animated by the ideal of “more and more”; being competitive, it pushes us to arm our children, to make them performant, combative, to prepare them for exams, higher studies, professional difficulties. Being digital and permanently connected, it encourages children and parents to move from computers to smartphones, from televisions to tablets.
Set limits!
Take the case of long journeys! Today there is no longer a child who is bored in the car or on the train:
In our times – says Pascaline Poupinel with a touch of nostalgia – those journeys were an occasion for daydreams at the window, we counted the green trucks, we talked or discussed in the family, we invented games, we sang, we found a way to kill time.
Today, even before getting into the car, creatures are given a tablet with a film or a video game, and with this we buy … we must confess it … our peace of mind. Hence the need to impose limits, because when the child is in front of a screen, in the meantime, he does not think about anything else: he does not think about what he could do as an alternative.
But why is it so important to leave room for this void, this unemployment? Pascaline Poupinel highlights three essential positive aspects:
1. The ability to be alone
It is necessary for the child to learn to be only because it is necessary to experience the expectation, the frustration, the lack that will be filled by the satisfaction of the desire: “The child who claims the mother’s breast is the first psychic construct of a human being”. The ability to be alone is also the ability to say “I”, to recognize that you exist and to find the resources to feel good about yourself. Knowing how to be alone also means having self-confidence. Finally, being able to play alone or to fall asleep peacefully without anyone is a sign of internal and emotional security.
2. The ability to dream
Only when the child or teenager is unemployed can they dream. And dreaming means imagining, creating, desiring, projecting, experimenting… It is a precious and necessary moment during which you let your spirit take off and ideas are born; a time in which the minor sets out to discover his most personal aspirations.
It is also a relaxing moment after all the efforts that are required of him at school or in his different activities: “We are made of the same stuff that dreams are made of,” he said. The storm the Prospero of Shakespeare.
But be careful: letting dream does not mean “leaving the child abandoned to himself without rules or limits”, explains Etty Buzyn: “A child in that condition would have no chance to build or socialize”. It seems to me, however, necessary to return the position of the dreaming child. Isn’t it the creativity of these future adults who have been given time to dream that our society needs?
3. The ability to give birth to desires, motivations, pleasures
It is important to leave your children an empty space in which creativity, desires, motivations and pleasures can enter. This waiting is inscribed in time, because waiting means acknowledging the absence of the object and thus bringing out the desire. And it is the satisfaction of this desire that gives pleasure and allows the child to come true. Françoise Dolto used to say: «Easy things fill the need, but not the desire».
So this summer, when your child yawns at the table or your boyfriend is lying loose on the sofa, don’t grumble but rejoice and say: “He’s bored, how wonderful!”
[traduzione dal francese a cura di Giovanni Marcotullio]
