THE CREATIVE POWER OF BOREDOM

by James Russell
First published in The Green Parent magazine (www.thegreenparent.co.uk)

"When I examined myself, and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." Albert Einstein

As we need empty spaces in our cities so our children need empty places in
their lives. At least my daughter does. A lively six year old, she loves school but by the end of the week is as wired as a stressed-out executive. On a bad Saturday morning she wakes up completely frazzled. She has to watch TV! She must have friends over! She needs to go shopping! The suggestion that we go for a walk is met by tears. It's so boring! I hate walks!

As she shouts and screams it is hard to remember that she is not just being bratty. It is also hard to resist her demands for entertainment. She, like most of us, hates to come down, and our culture is on her side. Since we abolished Sunday (why rest when you can shop?) and began overloading the calendar with holidays, festivals, sporting events and so on, it has become almost a sin to do nothing. A good citizen is an avid consumer, not just of material things but of entertainment, recorded music, exotic places. As parents we are under pressure to provide continual activity for our children, since to be bored in the twenty-first century is a terrible deprivation.

Boredom. It is not a word that thrills, but it is as necessary to one particular child as breathing. The poor girl is beside herself on Saturday morning after a busy week. There are, of course, activities we should be getting her involved in: a gymnastics class; a theatre workshop. A friend wants her to come over. She needs new shoes. But we take a deep breath and tell her we're going to have a quiet day. This is not the news she was hoping for. She collapses in tears. We are the worst parents in the
world. Not even TV?

The next hour can be excruciating. More tears, first of all. Unkind words. She drags herself into the front room and flops about on the sofa, half on the floor, as tragic a picture as you could imagine. Books and shoes are flung about. Then something changes. She starts muttering to herself. Her eyes light on a piece of wool, a piece of red wool six inches long. She picks it up and waves it feebly about. Drops it. Flops down to the floor. Picks the wool up again. This time she pulls it taut with both hands. She twists it around her finger. Untwists it slowly.

I notice at this point that a change has come over her. She focuses intently on the wool, then looks around for something else: a small plastic horse. She takes the horse
and ties the wool around it and starts talking to it. Come on, horsey! There's a new lightness in her tone, in her body too. Suddenly she's gone.

A little while later I go up to her bedroom, noticing first that she's singing. Not a particular song but, rather, a kind of sing-songy monologue that wanders with her thoughts. It sounds like fairies might. I peek around the door to see her squatting on the floor, singing to herself. Around her she has already created a world. The horse is beside her, still tied up, and in front of her is every animal she and her brother possess: realist plastic animals; cuddly bears; painted wooden birds from a farm set. They're in little groups, the small ones perched up on blocks, arranged according to some private plan.

"Hello, Dadda!" she chirps, and goes back to her game.

Creativity has always been mysterious. Even today, when we have studied every aspect of human psychology and endeavour, it remains impossible to pin down what it is that makes this person creative and that person not. I think you can see creativity evolving in a child, though. You can watch a child construct elaborate games that are, in effect, worlds. My daughter enters an altered state when she has recovered from the initial shock of boredom. It allows her to calm down after a week of stress but it has the added effect of opening up her creative self.

A beautiful energy lights up the room around her . . .

With the animals all lined up she will rush off, quick as a sprite, and fetch paper, pencils,
scissors. Still talking to herself in that incomprehensible way she will set about constructing whatever it is her animals need: a farmyard or a library; a storybook or a family of cats. Sometimes I lie on her bed and absorb the beautiful energy that lights up the room around her; she'll come up to me with something that needs stapling but otherwise remains in her own world. The morning passes. An extensive family of paper cats fills the room, complete with baskets, paper mice to chase, paper
birds ('Poor birdies') likewise and paper rugs to lie on.

Sometimes her little brother gets embroiled in the game. At two he is a restless creature, but his toddler energy is no match for his sister's creativity. She calls him Alexander for some reason and explains repeatedly that they are orphans; smiling and placid he lets himself be dressed up as a princess, sits quietly when told, dances on command.

I don't think school is a bad thing. It serves to teach children how to interact in the world and dilutes the parental influence. But school only offers a partial education. Reading, for example, is a necessary skill, but equally necessary, and much neglected, is the development of an imagination that will allow the words on the page to be more than dry symbols. To appreciate a novel it is not enough to read the words. You must have the mental equipment to translate words into a world, and that requires imagination. Being left alone with a few toys enables a child to develop that world-
building power.

There is a tendency in our results-driven time to think of creativity as a workplace tool, a
problem-solving skill that will enable the possessor to function as a good citizen. Some experts suggest that creativity be nurtured by encouraging young children to make choices and solve problems. I am talking about something different. The creativity my daughter exhibits when she is playing is about process, not goals. It's wonderful that she chooses scrap paper and pencil as her medium of choice. The house is full of her creations, let loose once the creative force is spent: paper frogs hiding under rugs; a book of spells in the fruit bowl.

This kind of creativity is not about 'becoming an artist', but it is about learning to live
artistically. Not everyone has the talent or temperament to create artistic products, but I think we all have the capacity to appreciate life more by approaching the most mundane things in an imaginative way.

Whenever something gets vandalised in our park or shop windows are smashed on the High Street the response is usually that 'bored teenagers' did it. We debate endlessly what to do with these people, who obviously lack the ability to amuse themselves. We make the mistake of assuming that the kids who cause trouble are the poorest or most deprived. Suppose instead they are frustrated artists who have never been given a chance to develop an imagination? No, this view won't get me elected, but it's an interesting thought. Suppose the reason kids in school are undisciplined and
unmotivated is not that teachers have lost the authority of the cane but that today's children are over-stimulated from the moment they lay hands on that first electronic toy, that first baby's book?

A bored child is a terrible thing. As a parent you have to endure hours of whining, drooping
about, demands for snacks, squabbling, and so on, before the child can switch off. Sometimes it doesn't work and the boredom carries on all day. It seems as though you are making your child suffer unnecessarily, but you may be equipping them for a happy life.

It's no accident that many of the great artists and writers suffered lengthy periods of boredom. You only have to think of the Brontes, trapped on their moor with nothing to do. And how many literary biographies of the past contain a lengthy childhood sickness? I picture the young Robert Louis Stevenson lying on his sickbed, conjuring the fantasies that will become 'Treasure Island'. Nowadays not even sickness guarantees boredom, since a video will always help pass the time.

Worse, the school curriculum is so much more interactive and stimulating than it used to be that students now even have trouble slipping into that bored reverie at the back of the class, source of so many adolescent fantasies. By a curious twist, a school that is low in the league tables may prove a healthier environment for a developing mind: at my daughter's primary school, which doesn't have the greatest academic record, the Year Ones are allowed plenty of time for unstructured 'making'. When friends come over they disappear upstairs and make all kinds of strange and wonderful things with paper, scissors and glue.

My daughter emerges from her morning in the creative zone a new person, helpful and friendly and ready to go out and have fun. In this happy state she'll skip three miles through countryside that is suddenly full of fairies and bears.

Recently I was in the room when her little brother woke up from a nap. He didn't see me and for a long time lay there on his bed, staring at the ceiling, not moving. Usually he wakes in a terrible mood, but this time he lay quietly, and though I had no idea what he was thinking about I could tell that he was daydreaming. That same bright energy was coming from him. Not something you could video, like a first step, or record, like a first word, but just as valuable.

*****

Author, James Russell can be contacted via email on jdrussell2@hotmail.com
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