Let’s Not Forget: Boredom Is Essential to Childhood
Updated
Among the myriad of harm that humanity has inflicted upon itself through both the wired and wireless world, the disappearance of wholesome boredom might be the most consequential. Indeed, there is something sacred about a child staring out a window, hands idle, and mind completely free. In today’s world of ceaseless stimulation, we’ve forgotten the essential, elemental gift that boredom provides—a gift that is incredibly abundant, wild, and generous in what it teaches. Today’s society has forgotten that children are born with imagination already in bloom, if only they’re given room to tend it. Noticing the lack of boredom isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Instead, noticing the lack of boredom reinforces the necessary role it plays in a child’s life. Embracing it is recognizing a belief that is profoundly rooted in wisdom, nature, and a deep, intuitive sense that our Creator inherently knew what children truly needed before it became lost to technology and algorithms.
One such profound thinker who saw the importance of boredom clearly was Rudolf Steiner, whose educational philosophy gave rise to Waldorf schools around the globe. In Steiner’s view, authentic learning and inner development need rhythms of activity and restful emptiness. In other words, it requires periods when nothing is imposed, allowing the child’s soul to emerge from the interplay between inner life and outer world. Why is this important? Because there is a zone between doing and thinking in which the human spirit can breathe. Make no mistake, this point is the foundation of creativity. In Steiner’s own words, it is only in higher stages of older development that boredom becomes impossible; before that, it invites the imagination of a child to rise like wind in a hollow sail.
Of course, the ‘creative womb’ of boredom has been recognized well beyond Steiner circles. For example, studies in cognitive science reveal something astonishing: the brain does not carry out its best work while bombarded with stimuli. You don’t say? Instead, adequate rest, purposeful pause, and yes—boredom—engage networks in the brain that help us consolidate memory, reflect, and generate ideas that were previously not present before. According to researchers, this activity is the brain’s default mode network, a state of free mind‑wandering that consistently encourages original thought and much-needed problem‑solving.
So what exactly are children missing when they don’t experience boredom? When a child’s time is filled with screens, push notifications, educational entertainment games with fail‑safe rewards, and instant visual satisfaction, the very impulse to create—which is inherently there and thrives during boredom—is short‑circuited. A child’s brain is deprived of the chance to inhabit that beautiful, quiet gap between stimulus and response, where imagination weaves threads into new patterns of thought, narrative, and play. Without the sacred silence of boredom, a child’s creativity becomes a derivative echo of what technology feeds them, not a true emergence of the child’s imagination.
Our bountiful world of nature understands this. In nature, there is always a rhythm—ebb and flow, action and stillness, seasons of growth and seasons of waiting. Children, as a core component of that natural order, flourish when they experience unhurried time, unstructured play, and yes, boredom itself. When parents allow their kids to experience real mental space (meaning time without direction and without stimulation), their inner resources don’t disappear. Instead, they reorganize. What parents often interpret as aimlessness is usually a child learning how to be with themselves. This skill is crucial for them. Indeed, that moment of mild discomfort we rush to eliminate isn’t a problem to solve—it’s a necessary stage of development. It’s how children begin to develop their own momentum instead of borrowing it from a screen or a schedule.
Boredom creates a kind of internal pressure. With nothing coming in, the mind is forced to produce something of its own. Isn’t nature genius? The ridiculous phrase “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” comes to mind. Yet, that inaccurate framing misses the point entirely. Instead, an idle mind in children (and adults, for that matter) is often where original thought starts—where ideas form without being prompted, where curiosity comes from within instead of being externally supplied.
Without question, today’s modern life works hard to block idle time. We rarely allow ourselves, or our children, even a few uninterrupted minutes. Every pause gets filled with something: waiting in line, riding an elevator, standing at a crosswalk. We reach for a device automatically. It’s worth asking whether this constant input is accidental or extremely profitable and absolutely intentional. Either way, it means boredom has become unfamiliar—and because of that, uncomfortable. Maybe even threatening, which is precisely why allowing it might now feel almost subversive.
Of course, most often when parents hand a screen to a bored child, it’s usually not out of laziness or neglect. It’s out of love, exhaustion, or the desire to keep things moving smoothly. Perhaps it is frustrating to hear a child exclaim, “I’m bored,” when time is tight. But a child expressing boredom is not a signal that something is wrong. No, indeed. Instead, it’s a signal that something is beginning. Think about that for a minute. If parents resist the urge to intervene, children learn to navigate that space on their own. How? By learning how to initiate, persevere, and tolerate their frustration with being bored without immediately being given a way to escape it. What a gift.
Those who argue against the necessity of boredom tend to point to educational tools, enrichment programs, and carefully designed content. Why let a child sit in discomfort, they ask, when there are apps that teach, games that stimulate, and activities that promise productivity? The answer is simple: critical development doesn’t happen only through input. Creativity isn’t delivered. Curiosity isn’t downloaded. In fact, it only emerges when there’s room for it. When nothing is prescribed for them, children are forced to decide what matters to them. That decision‑making process is the point and is extremely important in their development.
Make no mistake, highlighting the significance of boredom isn’t an argument for spending unlimited time doing nothing. Instead, highlighting the benefits of boredom is an argument for allowing today’s children to experience the kind of unstructured time that children before them inherently always had, before it was engineered out of daily life. The kind of time where thoughts wander, moods shift, and ideas slowly take shape. Boredom, in that sense, isn’t empty. It’s remarkably full of limitless potential.
If we want today’s children to blossom into adults who think for themselves, and who are grounded, creative, and capable of stillness, we must stop treating every quiet moment as a problem. Rest isn’t wasted time. Silence isn’t neglect. And boredom, when we stop fighting it, turns out to be one of the most useful conditions for becoming a fulfilled human being. So, when a child says, “I’m bored,” maybe the best response isn’t to fix it. Maybe it’s to wait. To trust that something worthwhile is forming just beneath the surface.
