By Liv Downing
Many years ago, we were holidaying, and the opportunity came up for me to have an hour to myself ; my youngest took himself off to bed for a midday nap. Ahhhh peace, it must have been the hour of running along the beach and the 90 minutes of uphill scooting we had done in the morning. No, I really didn’t mean to exhaust him, honest…… During this nap time, my eldest, who was seven at the time, was complaining that he was bored. I tried to explain to him that being bored was OK and really, part of life. That he should practice being bored because when he is an adult, there will be large chunks of his life that are boring but necessary, like putting petrol in the car or paying bills online. Needless to say, he wasn’t really interested in my lecture and snapped “it’s OK for you, you have that super power”. Hmm, which one I thought? Gosh, I have so many! So I asked him what he meant and he responded, “Well, you have the power that allows you to just sit here and watch the clouds and do nothing. I don’t have that power”.
36 Peninsula Kids – Summer 2022/23
I tried to explain that we all have that power; we just need to practice it. Again, he wasn’t interested in hearing mum rant on about how accessing the natural clarity, calm and connection within all of us was a basic human right. After helping him to come up with an imaginary game, I stopped and asked myself “What are we doing to our kids?”. The constant entertainment we are providing them – the iPads and TV, the phones and toys - are we robbing them of a basic life skill? The skill of knowing how to be bored and just doing nothing? Just playing for the sake of playing, with no agenda, hidden or otherwise? Now, I am not saying that we should stop all technology; as my dear partner points out to me, it is here to stay now, we may as well embrace it. I just wonder, what is, or more accurately, what will be the cost of this 24/7 stimulation generation we are raising?
THE STIMULATION GENERATION Are we raising adults who will be so disconnected from their bodies and the present moment experience that they will have no way to understand or sit with less comfortable emotions like boredom? Will this generalize to other human emotions like sadness or worry? Are we just teaching them to numb out from a very early age by shoving an iPhone in their face when they don’t get what they want? In later years, will the iPhone be replaced by something more harmful like drugs or alcohol?