- [Voiceover] The parenting junkie.
- Hey guys, welcome back to the parenting junkie,
the place to go to love parenting
and for parenting from love.
Today I want to talk about a concept called slow parenting.
And this really comes from a bunch of questions
that I received about the idea of boredom,
of my kids being bored.
I think for many of us hearing I'm bored
or that's boring is a bit of a trigger,
it's very annoying to hear that
when there's so much to do and so much to learn
and we would love for our children
to be able to entertain themselves.
So allow me to, you know, kind of provoke
some thoughts about boredom
and about what it really means
and how we might respond to it.
In our society we have been conditioned
to believe that we need constant entertainment
and we need something to do all the time.
And now with our smartphones, of course,
we always have something to do
and something to look at and something to check out.
And our children live in that same fast paced world
where there's always a new toy or a new person
or a new game to play or a new show to watch.
And so the idea that there might just be
pockets of stillness or of quiet
where there's nothing happening throughout the day
is a threat to that type of society.
But for most of us as adults
we come to discover the world
that is more rooted in eastern philosophy
which promotes a stillness, a sense of quiet,
an internal speculation, an internal
investigation of our world.
A world that is more meditative and slow.
And really the mindfulness movement
has so taken off because it's, you know,
it's being understood now and is beginning
to be understood in the west as well
that every action that we take
can be done with mindfulness and with presence
where our mind is in the present moment.
Or we can be living in this frantic monkey mind,
a frenzy of future time travel and, you know,
reminiscing about the past so our mind doesn't quiet.
Now, as adults it's very hard for us to learn this
because we've always been trapped in the monkey mind,
thinking thinking thinking, planning, worrying,
and then when we feel overwhelmed by our thoughts
and we feel trapped by them, then we're finding
things to be productive about and to do.
This kind of ceaseless activity where we always
need to be doing and we always need to be productive.
And it's something that we need to unlearn
through our yoga practice, through our meditation,
to find that quiet, to find that stillness,
to connect to our internal worlds
and to travel to inner space,
is something that is challenging for us
and that we need to learn and make a practice of.
My thinking is that perhaps when a child says I'm bored,
this is an invitation for two things.
One is for ownership and authorship
of their own lives and their own choices, right?
And the second is an invitation for stillness and quiet.
So we have very negative associations with the word bored.
But perhaps we could reframe it, to think about it as
a white canvas or as an empty space, as a breath
that a child can take between their ceaseless activities
and their self betterment
and take a break from this resume building
that we've called childhood today,
to just be and to just be bored,
to not have anything to do, to just be.
I think that boredom is the birthplace of creativity
and of problem solving.
You know, when you can just say
I'm not in a rush to do anything,
I'm not engaged now in any activity.
That can kind of be a wave that we go through
and when we embrace it and ride that wave,
then we can learn to reach, you know,
deeper into our own souls, our own internal worlds,
and to create, to create realities
that we are interested in.
So I would say, rather than fighting boredom,
rather than thinking of things to always always do,
not that I'm against activity, we do lots of them,
but rather than always finding something to do,
creating consciously pockets every single day
for boredom, for quiet.
When we solve our child's boredom by giving them a list,
well, if you're bored you can go and do this,
you can go and do that, you can come and help me,
you can read a book, you can...,
we are castrating their ability
to solve their own problems,
to come up with their own solutions and their own ideas,
and we are creating an impotent child
who is always dependent on the next thrill,
on the next piece of entertainment.
You don't want to be lecturing them or shaming them,
that being bored is a bad thing
or that children in Africa don't get bored.
But we could just kind of empathize perhaps.
Perhaps we can just say hmmm, you know,
you're bored now, interesting, what are you going to do?
Or, yeah sometimes we're bored.
And you could, you know, you could be a sounding board,
you could be a conversation partner
to get them thinking about things they might want to do,
or they might, you might want to model
and cultivate that boredom and silence are a gift
to be cherished and to be used as just a quiet pocket
to get in touch with your internal world.
And you could model this of course by meditating yourself,
or by having quiet time everyday yourself to read,
or by being in less of a frantic rush
to always be busy and always be doing.
In our society we glorify being busy
and I rebel against this, I think that it's so unhealthy
for us and that we need a lot of time
when we're not busy so that we can recalibrate
and we can connect internally.
If your child is really driving you crazy
with the boredom thing and they need something to do,
perhaps intervene only minimally.
Like perhaps lay out a book without even commenting,
or rearrange something in the room,
put on music, open a window.
Perhaps start, rather than going full blast
into activity mode, perhaps start
just by making a shift, an adjustment in the atmosphere,
in the mood in the room, or in something
that you're leaving out for them,
so that you are leaving a very gentle subtle invitation
but not solving the problem full force.
Another way to kind of counteract this idea
that we constantly need to be entertained
is to take your time with each activity,
to do it mindfully, and not to be multitasking
all the time, as hard as this is.
So, for example, if you're going to a museum,
you've paid the ticket, you want to see everything
on the map, but your child is now engrossed
in this one display,
allow yourself to just be there
in that moment, to just be with that display,
or with that toy, or with that book,
or looking at that picture
without moving and ushering onto the next thing
even though you've paid for the ticket.
And that way you also show your child that
we can do one thing at a time and we can do it mindfully
and really have presence with what we're doing.
Of course we do this by switching off our phones
when we're with our kids as well,
by listening to them, by looking in their eyes,
by playing with presence, by simply being.
These are ways that we can model
that presence for our children.
Another important way to counteract boredom
is to plan less activities.
Not to keep your child constantly entertained on purpose.
So this starts from the earliest of ages
and this is kind of a rye concept,
where rather than interfering with what the child is doing,
we just allow the child to be.
And this starts with the youngest of babies,
when they're simply lying and looking at, you know,
a shadow playing it out on the wall
and we come and rattle a rattle in their face
because we have this preconceived notion
that a rattle is more interesting and more entertaining
and more, you know, it's more,
it's going to teach them more, they're going to learn more
if they see this bright colored rattle
rather than if they look at the shadow on the wall.
And from that very moment we have
kind of inflicted on their personal ability
to engage and interact with the world with presence.
And now we have taught them that it's not enough,
that they need more, and thus begins this rat race
of entertainment and of stimulation.
So, starting from the very earliest of ages,
allow the belief and trust that when your child
is doing something they are getting
what they need at that moment.
And this is a beautiful quote from Magda Gerber that says,
be careful what you teach,
it might interfere with what they are learning.
And I think this is directly related to boredom
because we actually teach this idea
that they need to be in a frenzy to get to the next stage,
that we need to hold their hands and walk them
so that they're not just crawling now, they're walking.
Now we need to teach them the ABC
when they're three years old so that they're not just
talking, but they're reading.
Allow your child their slow pace
and invite that slow pace in and cherish it.
It's also really important to leave
your child's interests and their choice
of entertainment up to them.
Give them that authorship from the very beginning.
Give your baby the freedom to make those choices
without placing the toy, or manipulating the toy for them,
or playing for them, or telling them the puzzle
has to be this way and not that way,
or the order of the trains has to go like this
or not like that.
Again, we're teaching our kids that there's a right way
and there's a next stage and there's a next level
and there's more entertainment and more stimulation,
rather than saying whatever stage you're at
is the stage that you're at and let's be present with.
And lastly I want to say I think it's really important
to allow children time away from our watchful eyes.
As adults we tend to teach, we tend to manipulate,
we tend to interfere, to comment.
And that in and of itself inhibits a child's ability
to entertain themselves and to control their own experience.
So starting from a very young age you can create
a yes space where your child is fully safe
and you can be in a nearby room within earshot,
but not watching over them and checking
and evaluating and judging as we always do as adults.
And when you're able to just give them the time
away from you, and as they grow older
even more time away from your eyes,
they will become more and more self sufficient
and they will know how to entertain themselves
and to make their own time worthy for themselves.
Did you like this video? I really hope you did.
And now I really want to hear from you.
Do your children complain of boredom?
Is it something that you struggle with?
And have you heard the idea of slow parenting
and does it resonate for you?
The best place to have this conversation
is over at theparetningjunkie.com.
So head on over there and leave a message now.
While you're there sign up for email updates
so that you're sure never to miss an episode
of the parenting junkie.
And of course subscribe for the channel on Youtube.
Keep on loving parenting and parenting from love
because you're kids need you
almost as much as you need them.
Bye.
- [Voiceover] The parenting junkie.