"I'm bored!" What can I do?

A child expresses this need to the adult, and most likely the adult will respond with "do something" "use your imagination" or some similar response. But it is not what the child asked for. When a child says to an adult " I'm bored , I don't know what to do", he expects the adult to give him the solution, to solve the problem for him. But if a child, in a state of free time, with nothing scheduled, without directed activity, does not know what to do, whatever the context and the resources he has at hand at that moment, we are talking about children dead of imagination , programmed to do and do.

It is very likely that in these cases we find children overloaded with a calendar: school, extracurricular activity, another activity, shower, homework, dinner,... in short, what do I have to do today.

Having overprogrammed children means that they have no time to do nothing , one of the main needs they have to meet the evolutionary stages of development. At the moment when a child is used to spending free time, to free play , without programming, without directed activities, slowing down, and with time, it stimulates imagination and creativity, and creates its own game, wherever be and with the resources it has. With three stones you can create a game.

Because the game is the language of childhood , through it they develop the neural, motor and social part (yes, because they relate to the game) among other things. It is a necessity, and they are "programmed" to imagine and create a game. Therefore, a child's "I'm bored" can be a trigger, an alarm that their creative part is not trained , to not have time to do nothing. We create children's calendars from adult-centrism, programmed to do, learn and be, leaving aside the primitive need to do nothing.

Are we adults creating and raising the new generation of "hyper" ? We are responsible. The hyper-stimulated, the hyper-programmed, the hyper-protected, the hyper-consumers, the hyper-stressed, the hyper-trained, and a series of hypers that does not leave us clear the line that separates the expectations we want from our sons and daughters, of what we expect, and the constant complaint of being connected to screens, perhaps in search of disconnection as we adults do, using the screen instead of the imagination.