Are your children bored? Is it good or bad? An expert weighs in
Jun 5, 2023, 9:00 PM | Updated: 9:29 pm
A BYU psychologist tells Dave and Dujanovic that there are benefits to children being bored. Photo credit: shutterstock
SALT LAKE CITY — For the last several months, school children, undoubtedly, have been looking forward to summer vacation. And now that it has arrived, the dreaded ‘I’m bored’ phrase is bound to start showing up in houses in nearly every neighborhood.
Is being bored good? Is it bad? Or, is it somewhere in the middle? Dave Noriega and guest host Maura Carabello discuss this topic during a segment of Monday’s Dave & Dujanovic.
Tom Golightly, assistant director of athletics, counseling and psychological services at Brigham Young University, joined the show Monday to talk about the matter.
Is it OK if children are bored?
“There is a happy medium there,” Golightly said. “But there are real benefits to boredom in some ways.”
He says if children are overstimulated, they need to learn how to handle there down time. Otherwise, there could be some problematic behavior that forms.
“But if we don’t teach them how to self-regulate,” Golightly said. “Then they are gonna be more prone to engaging in those truly risky behaviors like addiction.”
Carabello adds, “But there does seem to be this benefit to slowing down and letting time absorb you.”
“One thing I think the internet and social media has brought on is this huge promo,” Golightly said. “What am I missing out, if I am bored? And so I have to find something.”
A danger too being over scheduled
Noriega asked, “And what’s kind of the danger of being overly stimulated?”
“Without any time to down regulate,” Golightly said. “To manage that activation of our brain, we are going to, our brain will kind of set itself to want that high level of activation. And that’s where the anxiety disorders kind of come in where we’re tricking our brains and constantly being in fight or flight or kind of seeking that stimulation.”
He goes on to say that anxiety will be managed a lot better if that stimulation is managed.
Listen to the entire segment.
Dave & Dujanovic can be heard weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon. on KSL NewsRadio. Users can find the show on the KSL NewsRadio website and app, as well as Apple Podcasts and Google Play.
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