让孩子无聊一会儿

When his five-year-old complains there's nothing to do, James Dixon resists the urge to fix it. He's found that boredom, far from being a failure, is where imagination begins I've started doing something that feels, at first, like bad parenting. When my five-year-old daughter says she's bored, I don't rush to fix it. I don't reach for a screen, don't suggest an activity, don't fill the silence. I let it sit. The result has been unexpectedly brilliant. In a culture that treats boredom as a failure—something to be eliminated as quickly as possible—I've come to see it as something else entirely: cognitive space, imaginative breathing room. And like any space worth having, it's something we've almost completely crowded out. …