Summer Boredom

I just saw this post about kids in today’s society who don’t know how to keep themselves busy and have fun without having direction from adults.

They start out on summer vacation sleeping in, doing fun things with mom, dad, or the babysitter and doing new things. After a few days at home , kids are bored and look to the adult at home to entertain them. They never learned how to keep themselves entertained, use their imagination, or have unscheduled play time. Their days have been spent in school, music lessons, sports practices, and play dates.

I really liked how the author of this blog post explained to her daughter that she will have time during the summer that she will have to fill of her own by reading a good book, playing with paper dolls, or building with Legos.

Imagination is a necessary tool for creative problem solving that so many businesses and organizations are looking for in today’s graduates, but many kids have difficulty discovering their own imagination and using it to its full potential. I have seen this in many of our programs and try to combat this direction-following thinking with open-ended art projects to encourage children’s imaginations, especially in my Fun Friday programs.