Understand current affairs from a Zen viewpoint. How could a Zen approach give different outcomes to world events and how is your life effected by Zen and non-Zen decisions?
Participate in the discussion by leaving Zen comments.
Login
Zen Suggestions
 | Food Rules: An Eater's ManualWant some clear advice on how to eat well? Look no further, Michael has concrete advise based upon the concepts he introduced in The Ominvore's Dilema |
 | Fit for life, Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, Warner books, 1987 |
 | Fit for life 2, Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, Warner Books, 1989 |
 | A Field Guide to Buying Organic, Luddene Perry, Bantam, 2007 |
 | The Hows and Whys of Alternative Education: Schools Where Students Thrive, Darlene Leiding, Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007 |
| Learn more about these links | Suggest |
Inspiration
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.Plato
Sign up to our Newsletter
| Is it good for kids to be bored? |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Richard | ||||||||||
| Monday, 22 February 2010 21:38 | ||||||||||
 "I'am bored" starts ringing out throughout the house. It's not the most Zen of things to hear as a parent and naturally makes you uncomfortable - you don't want your kids to be unhappy.Yet more and more people are suggesting that it's good for kids to have some time when they are bored. The idea is that children today are over stimulated. There is always some kind of entertainment available to them, the television, PlayStations, games and even some parents are micro-managing their children's time to make sure they always have something to do. Just writing that sentence makes me feel exhausted actually. I think I'll go and lie down in front of the telly. But not just yet because.... Children who are bored eventually start to make their own amusement. They begin to use their imagination to think of stories and scenarios with kings, queens, princes and princesses or battleships lining up for a fight or space exploration where they are the astronaut. Passive activities, such as watching television, limit the exercise of a child's creativity and imagination, according to Aletha Solter in "Helping Young Children Flourish." Thus reducing the amount of passive activities and increasing the time where children can spend time on their own, with simple creative toys or objects, will help them to exercise their brain and make them happier more fulfilled children. An article in the Daily Telegraph recently suggested that children were so over stimulated that they couldn't remain with one activity for fear that they were missing out on another one that could be better. This lack of focus may create opportunities for boredom, but the child may not have the exercised imagination muscle ready to work.  Another more worrisome aspect to this is that children who aren't creative when younger will miss out in the job market when they are older. The expectation is that traditionally creative skills will be increasingly required in future jobs as we become a more designed-based society. Even creating powerpoint presentations require design skills as bullet points are no longer permitted So it's time to limit the use of the Wii and reduce television viewing to enable your kids to become bored and then exercise their brains so that they are happier, more fun and better prepared for the work-place. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gemsling/299144477 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/1766647167 Technorati code: GKREPHEATG44 For more insight into this topic, see these articles:
         |
||||||||||
| Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 16:16 |
