Rabbi Besser’s post, “Over-stimulation is the enemy of imagination – we should give our children the gift of boredom”, and the article it was linked to were interesting food for thought. I certainly see the difference between the way my kids spend their free time and the way I spent mine with my siblings when I was a child. Although we had many toys, we spent more time playing imaginative games, both indoors and out of doors. My kids spend much more time watching TV and playing on the computer or video games. Their hand-eye coordination is probably better than mine was, but they don’t use their imaginations as much, and I am sorry about it.
As for the last part, “…we should give our children the gift of boredom”, well, I’ll let you know how that goes – it so happens that I just unplugged the two TV’s in our house three days ago. It was for a variety of reasons, and something that I have thought about for years, and finally decided to do. Will they think of it as a gift? Only time will tell, but my 10 year old announced at supper tonight that she likes this new policy, because she now spends more time talking to us.
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