“Mom, Dad....I’m bored.”

Makes you feel put on the spot, right? You might even feel like you`re a bad parent. Most of us pressured to solve this "problem" right away. We usually respond to our kids’ boredom by providing technological entertainment or structured activities. But that`s actually counter-productive. Children need to encounter and engage with the raw stuff that life is made of: unstructured time.

Why is unstructured time so important for your child`s healthy development?

One of our biggest challenges as adults, and even as teenagers, is learning to manage our time well. So it`s essential for children to start encountering the experience of deciding for themselves how to use periods of unstructured time.   

Maybe even more important, unstructured time gives children the opportunity to explore their inner and outer worlds, which is how they discover who they are. It`s the beginning of creativity; how they learn to engage with themselves and the world, to imagine and invent and create.

So the best response to "I`m bored," is: