If your child is used to having their time micromanaged, making the shift to a way of life where they’re responsible for amusing themselves some of the time can be tricky.
Unfortunately nowadays, everything is so structured. Parents pride themselves on their family routine and often boast to their friends.
Whilst routine is great for getting babies into a swing, it’s actually quite damaging for older children.
Having every need catered for and entertained ruins creativity in children. They need boredom and time without devices or structured activity to think.
Nothingness sends the brain into overdrive. Unfortunately we’ve lost that by filling days with tv, computer games, social media and technology.
Trust me; leave a children for a couple of hours with freedom and nothing else and see what they create.
‘It will be difficult at first because they don’t know how to do it, and you’ll have to be their imagination mentor, but once the spark has ignited, it will get better,’
Try these techniques for encouraging children to entertain themselves.
• Have a weekly activity detox. ‘Nominate one day a week where the family has no structured activities, and make it up as you go along,’
• Give them a creative, open-ended task like building an obstacle course in the garden or setting up a treasure hunt. ‘This will inspire creativity, as they have to decide what the treasure will be, hide it from you, write the clues, and so on,’
• Provide low-tech toys. If you have the space, collecting things like offcuts of wood and fabric, cotton reels, junk modelling resources and old clothes from the charity shop will give your child endless opportunities for free play. ‘You don’t need to buy an expensive marble run when your child can make an even better one from things you have lying around the house.’
• Allow them to make mess. Making mess without fear of reprimand is the wish of every child out there. Don’t mind the mess. ‘Everything can be cleared away, and you can make it a condition that your child has to help tidy up afterwards,’
• Get outdoors. ‘Take your child to open spaces and resist the urge to jump in and protect them,’. ‘Let them climb on the highest monkey bars, and allow them to take risks.’ Risk taking is great for learning and those skills get transferred into adulthood. Remember these are the leaders of the future; if we don’t allow them to take small risks as children, they’ll struggle to make breakthroughs as adults.
• Be a good role model. ‘Wait as long as you can before introducing phones and model healthy attitudes to technology yourself: you can’t insist that your child puts their phone down if you’re always on yours.’
Nobody is perfect but during these times of Covid-19, use the opportunity of boredom and loneliness for your child to create something fun.
*(I cannot take the credit for the entire blog. Some of the sources of this are taken from a study by Dr Tessa Belton)
On Saturday 30th Jan at 4pm (GMT) I am running a children’s meditation and mental health check in session on my Hypno healing page on Facebook. There is also a zoom link below :
Lisa King is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Mental health check in and children’s meditation
Time: Jan 30, 2021 04:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/9828818060?pwd=SmhzMHpCK0pHSHFSdlJweTRsd20wZz09
Meeting ID: 982 881 8060
Passcode: uCP637
The midlife illness tour 