Caring for Children: There Are
Benefits to Boredom
by Barbara F. Meltz, Boston
Globe, January 22, 2004
Every Tuesday morning at 8:30, the 268 students in prekindergarten through
eighth grade at the Cambridge Friends School sit silently in a circle on
the floor for half an hour. Really silently, as in you can't even whisper.
Oh, the 5-year-olds are allowed to draw if they need to -- even
second-graders can do that -- and if a student is really fidgety, a
teacher might put a supportive arm around him. But that mostly happens at
the beginning of the year.
This is a Quaker school. Sharing silence is part of the tradition of the
faith, a way to center one's self within the community and seek personal
truth. These days, though, school head Mary Newmann sees even more value
in it.
"If you want to raise children who can think critically, who can solve
problems of all kinds -- and we do, that's our mission -- they need the
chance to think uninterrupted," she says.
That's rare these days.
Beginning in infancy, children are bombarded with noise, stimulation, and
instant gratification, from crib mobiles with flashing lights and music to
DVD entertainment systems for the car. Quiet time? It's virtually
programmed into children never to have it.
Certainly, there are advantages to children from modern technology.
Increasingly, though, educators like Newmann are wondering if it comes at
a cost.
"The gadgetry may distract a baby from crying, but does he ever discover
his toes?" wonders Wheelock College early-childhood educator Diane Levin.
She means that on two levels. Literally, the fussy baby who is left alone
long enough to find his toes (not more than a few minutes, after all) is
making the first step in a long journey. "He's figuring out that he can
entertain and distract himself," Levin says. "He's also learning something
profound: that he has the capacity to solve his own problem."
In terms of human development, that's an "Aha!" moment. The infant whose
parent pushes the button to turn on the mobile may also be comforted and
distracted, but he learns nothing about his capacity to solve his own
problem, says Levin.
This may seem like too much credit to give to 10 toes, but for Levin,
Newmann, and others, toes are a metaphor for what they see as an erosion
in opportunities for children to develop critical-thinking skills.
"It's been happening ever since children started watching more TV, about
20 years ago," says Levin. "As the process for interacting with the world
becomes more passive, children are robbed of the process of being an
active agent in their own lives."
There are no statistics or studies on this yet; it's something that will
play out as time passes. Researchers and educators do know, however, that
children learn best by initiating, manipulating, and observing cause and
effect.
Levin has coined a term: problem-solving deficit disorder. Minneapolis
psychologist and author David Walsh, founder and president of the National
Institute on Media and the Family (mediaandthefamily.org), has one, too:
mental operating software.
"It's as if this software is wired into them in the crib that sets an
expectation for entertainment and instant gratification," he says. "As a
result, when things get tough, children are more likely to throw up their
hands and throw in the towel than figure out what to do."
Beth Dimock sees this play out in her prekindergarten class at Cambridge
Friends School. Children are easily frustrated and bored.
"They don't know how to carry through with a project -- any project -- on
their own," she says. "Why do two playmates at your house end up in front
of a video? Because they're `bored.' They can't even solve the problem of
what to play."
Researchers say time in front of screens is a big source of the problem.
"We think we are giving our kids an edge when we use software to introduce
them to art, language, nature, you name it," says Pittsburgh psychologist
Sharna Olfman. If she had her way, children under 7 would spend no more
than an hour a day in front of any screen, educational software included.
"All it does is teach them to be dependent on the screen for instant
gratification," she says. "They are not developing the capacity to use
their own creative intelligence."
Indeed, Levin says problem-solving is a cumulative skill that gives a
child a sense of inner power.
"The more you do it, the better you are at it and the more you feel good
about yourself as a learner, a social being, and a thinker," she says. "A
problem-solver is someone who says, `I can affect the world. I can figure
out how to build this tower so it won't fall. I can tell the teacher
there's a problem on the playground.' "
Even seemingly benign conveniences may undermine a child's ability to
solve problems. Consider Velcro, or the digital clock.
Laceless shoes and zipless jackets enable some children to dress
themselves at an increasingly younger age. Having that concrete sense of
independence is important for a preschooler. So, however, is knowing how
to tie a knot.
"Knotting is a basic life skill, and more kids come to me not knowing how
to do it than ever before," says Dimock.
Ditto for shoe-tying. Learning to tie a shoe takes small-motor skill and
builds cognitive connections, she says. Children learn the properties of
the material, the malleability of the string, how you can move it and loop
it. They have to have a goal in mind and be able to visualize getting from
string in your fingers to a finished bow.
"This is really complex," Dimock says. "To gloss over it or skip it
altogether is not good."
Digital clocks let young children tell time as soon as they know their
numbers, but this convenience, too, may come at a developmental cost.
"An analog clock is cognitively richer," says Levin. "It teaches you the
logic of time in a way that the digital can't, that seconds fit into
minutes, which fit into hours, which fit into days."
Olfman wonders if we are seeing more children labeled with Attention
Deficit Disorder and other behaviorial and cognitive disabilities as a
by-product of inadequate problem-solving skills.
"There's no question in my mind that we have more restless, agitated, and
unhappy children because they are dependent on instant gratification," she
says. "Life is boring when you haven't acquired the capacity to solve
problems as basic as knowing how to fill your own time. Why wouldn't that
lead to acting-out behaviors that get you labeled at school and eventually
even medicated?" Olfman is editor of the "Childhood in America" series (Praeger
Press).
Except for urging parents to limit screen time (the American Academy of
Pediatrics recommends no TV for children under 2), no researcher is saying
we have to eliminate gadgets that save time and make our lives easier.
Rather, they stress using them in moderation and with an awareness of
potential developmental short-cutting.
In-car DVDs are the exception. Walsh hates them. "They usurp conversation,
word games, looking out the window, and, yes, quiet time and boredom," he
says. "Some boredom is healthy."
So is some quiet time. Just last week, a first-grader at the Cambridge
Friends School told Mary Newmann that when she has a problem with a
friend, if she waits until the middle of the silent meeting, a solution to
the conflict usually will come to her.
"And if you don't have silent meeting?" Newmann asked.
"Probably I would be mad until the next day," the girl said.
