Boredom isn’t experienced by just one group of people. It impacts all ages: from toddlers to teens and even into adulthood. Like so many abstract issues — from motivation and independence to asking for help and decision-making — the soft skills that students need in adulthood don’t just happen. Students need to learn, practice, and engage in these skills often if they’re to become internalized.
One of these skills is ownership. The impact that boredom has on your student is evident in their response to it. For example, if your family is doing chores on a Saturday morning and one of your children finishes the task you gave him early, he may not know what to do next. But the display of ownership is if he looks around and chooses a follow-up activity or something related to chores while you finish your responsibility and return to check on him.
Another signal of whether or not a student develops ownership is if he’s given a specific timeframe to do anything of her choosing except something related to technology. Does she…
- look for direction from you to make a decision?
- need categories suggested for her?
- immediately ask why she can’t get on her phone, play a game, watch a movie, etc.?
- struggle to decide what to do next because there isn’t anyone to help her decide? (such as a friend)
One of the chief ways students learn is through boredom. When they are given opportunities for ownership — such as owning their decisions, owning their task list, or owning their hobbies — they develop self-reliance, confidence, and executive functioning skills.
What Is Ownership?
Ownership is when a student doesn’t wait to be told what to do in a given situation or doesn’t need an adult to prompt him or her for a decision, a next step, or an answer. It might be they own their fault when they erupt in anger at a sibling and they go back to apologize. Or it might be owning their space and even something simple like their hunger. One example of ownership is if a student comes home from school, gets a snack and hangs up his backpack where it belongs. In this scenario, he has owned his hunger and his self-reliance by getting his own snack, but he has also owned his belongings and his space by putting his backpack away.
So, the concept of ownership impacts a child long after he grows up, and it’s imperative in multiple streams of life, not just at school.
An employee who doesn’t own his ability to use time effectively may decide that boredom at the office is a good time to play Solitaire or take an extended lunch break. This employee may struggle to know how to order their day because they’ve failed to make a list or block their time effectively in order to complete long-term projects, follow up with other clients or respond to co-workers’ emails.
In the same way, a student who doesn’t own his education will continue to look for a teacher to direct her rather than making appropriate decisions on her own. For example, when a student owns her ability to complete a deadline, she plans out the essay that’s due in two weeks. She works on brainstorming the first few days, writes a rough draft the next few days, asks her mom or dad to help her with an early editing session and then completes a rewrite of the essay well before it’s due. That way, she knows she has time to add finishing touches and edit it again before the deadline.
With young students, these important markers are usually provided by teachers. They may spend class time brainstorming ideas while working at home on a rough draft. Then, during another class period, students may peer edit and take time to finalize their drafts.
However, an older student — usually beginning in middle school — starts to transition to internalize these hidden steps of the writing process. This is ownership.
Students who take ownership of their study habits, assignments and grades may display a growing competence for making wise choices, narrowing a wide field of options, setting goals and understanding how to break down the goals to achieve them.
How Boredom Can Postively Impact Ownership
Helping young children, as early as age 5, learn how to respond to boredom and indecision is healthy. Teachers do this when they offer simple options such as free play at recess or centers in kindergarten.
Parents can promote ownership when they help their children learn new hobbies, such as learning to crochet, how to choose a healthy snack, and keeping art supplies, puzzles, games and outdoor toys accessible so their children can gain independence when faced with boredom. What parent hasn’t heard the dreaded “I’m bored” phrase in the summer? Or who among parents hasn’t helped their children develop a summer bucket list?
Teaching our children while they’re young to make lists, ideate and narrow down their ideas gives them a foundation for knowing how to respond when they’re not directed by an external force. That way, when a teenager starts his first job in a fast-food chain and isn’t given a minute-by-minute task list of what to do, he can look around and notice that the floors haven’t been swept and choose to sweep when there’s a lull in customers at the counter.
Boredom provides a playground of opportunity for children and teens to practice the skills they’ll need as adults.
4 Ways to Coach Your Child About Responding to Boredom
1. Begin to coach your child early on how to make decisions when faced with options.
Of course, this assumes that your child is given choices. One easy way to do this is to give your child three to four choices for owning his healthy snack time in the morning and afternoon. Teaching him how to use a butter knife to cut portions of cheese, where the crackers are kept, and how to wash and access fruit are all appropriate for an elementary school child.
Another way to help your young child recognize options and choose is by teaching him not just how you would do a chore, but what the necessary expectations of a chore are. For example, if you ask your 7-year-old to clean her room and 30 minutes later, it doesn’t look much different, it may be that you work together to compose a list of what a clean room might look like.
You can even have your child start by drawing a picture of her current room, clothes on the floor and everything. Then, you might use the picture to ask your child what she thinks a clean room might look like. This way, you’re giving her an opportunity to own what she believes are the components of a clean room.
Now, you may have some expectations that she does not mention, so it’s essential to work together on a final checklist of cleaning her room. Another way to give her ownership is to ask if she’d like to clean the room in two stages (perhaps half this morning and half after lunch), or if she’d like to knock it out all at the same time and have more time to play later.
Young children need the opportunity to choose for themselves and even to fail at their choices. This helps them learn what it means to delay gratification, find alternate routes to the same result and figure out which strategies work best for them. (Hint: We don’t often have the same wiring as our children, so letting them learn how they prefer to approach a task prepares them to learn about themselves, which sets the stage for them as they get older.)
In elementary school, Learnwell’s classroom teachers promote choices throughout a student’s day. In one class, students are allowed to choose how and where they want to work on their writing assignments. They’re given the freedom to move around, stay at their desk, and even bring in cozy elements from home, such as a special mug for tea, blankets and pillows. In another classroom, the teacher lets students come up with creative ways to memorize math and grammar concepts. Sometimes, they recite them by song, and other times they show they’re learning through artistic projects or stories.
Even voting on whether or not to stay inside or outside for recess gives students agency. The more a student has experience making decisions, the more he’ll have opportunities to own his decision-making (and the consequences of it) as an older student.
2. Let students understand and absorb the consequences of their actions.
If your middle schooler finishes homework and then has unlimited technology time, he will most likely always choose technology when he is bored. But if you coach your child that a task finished well (such as homework) doesn’t always equal technology time, he will have to decide to do the homework (or not) anyway, even without a game-play reward.
Allowing his grade of zero to “stick” and not rescuing your student is one way to handle that situation, but some students aren’t motivated by grades. So what then?
Another way to help your child understand the consequences is to refuse to rescue her from a choice that’s less than wise. One example is giving your teen the option to do chores once a week, two days a week or a little bit each day. You agree on an acceptable list of tasks that need to be done every month and she chooses when to complete them.
If she chooses to do them once a week, she’ll probably learn the first time that this interrupts her weekend plans quite a bit. But if she chooses to do one a day or even a few on separate days of the week, she’ll find her weekends are free for more preferred tasks.
It can be tough for parents, but this is one of the most effective ways for students to gain ownership.
However, what happens when her Saturday is free and she has nothing planned out for her? What’s her next step or her go-to activity?
Coaching middle schoolers about what they like to do when they’re given free time actually starts before middle school. They need to find hobbies that they can do and reach for whenever they’re given unscheduled time. That’s why elementary school lays the groundwork for middle school, not just the foundations of learning, but academic behaviors too.
Being able to choose between a video game and perfecting their jump shot in the driveway starts in the younger years. If your child didn’t learn how to use his time for hobbies outside of video games or movies, he may struggle as he gets older to choose other pursuits. But it’s not too late. You can coach your middle schooler to pursue other hobbies, take up a skill that he hasn’t learned yet, try cooking or playing guitar, activities that will last a lifetime and benefit his developing brain.
3. Provide real-world skills that benefit the household.
One way students learn how to own their academics is by owning their non-academic world. An example is teaching your middle school student how to log in to the online grocery cart and add must-haves to the shopping list. To make sure they’re not just adding potato chips and candy to the cart, you’ll also need to provide instruction about your family’s weekly grocery budget, the components that go into meals, and how to look at the pantry and refrigerator to see what you have and what you’re out of.
Letting your middle schooler plan the week’s dinners is another way to coach ownership. Learning how to make sure every dinner has something that your entire family will eat, something healthy and filling and that doesn’t cost you a mortgage is a wonderful way to learn what it takes to make decisions that impact more than just themselves.
Learnwell students get to practice real-world skills as they enter middle school by logging into their Google Classroom to read what teachers have instructed them to do on their at-home days. Beginning in eighth grade and continuing through high school, students are responsible for looking at their at-home lesson plans and planning out how they’ll accomplish them. They learn what it takes to plan and organize their weeks through Life Skills and Discipleship and by meeting with either a teacher or parent to discuss their plans each week. However, the students take the lead in these meetings and, in the process, they learn much more than organization and planning.
They learn
- Communication strategies
- Leadership skills
- Time management
- Goal-setting
- How to recover from failure
Another way Learnwell students gain real-world skills is through our school’s StoryLab apprenticeships and high school career mentorship programs.
In eighth grade, students are invited to apply for StoryLab assistants, where they help plan for, shoot, edit, and provide feedback to teachers and younger classrooms who use the StoryLab editing suite for video projects. A teacher may schedule her third-graders to record their latest essays being read aloud, and StoryLab assistants can work with high school student apprentices to understand what goes into the finished video. High school apprentices employ leadership skills by training under the StoryLab coaches and helping peers accomplish their video components.

High school students all participate in job shadowing and internships. They’re responsible for emailing workplace sponsors to coordinate when they will complete their on-the-job shadowing or internships, and they’re learning real career skills in an industry they’re interested in.
4. Teach students how to reflect on their choices and life experiences.
In what way does boredom help reflection and vice versa?
Boredom is a cue, just like a grumbling tummy can be a hunger cue or irritation can be a sign of sadness or disappointment. Helping students learn that boredom is a cue, not a problem, goes a long way to developing healthy responses to it.
One opportunity to respond well to a cue is to reflect on it. In the example of hunger, a child may reflect on if they’re truly hungry or just bored. Do they feel lightheaded, have a headache or grumbling stomach — all physical signs of hunger? Or are they just looking for something to do, and a snack seems to be a good option?
When students reflect as a regular practice, they learn how to decide what their time is worth. If they’re in the practice of reflecting on their day and even their week, they can look back not to regret or be made to feel guilty, but to learn. Some families do this naturally by asking at the dinner table for each person to list a high and a low from their day. Children have an opportunity to assess what worked well for them that day and what didn’t go so well.
To help your child learn how to reflect intentionally, you can teach him or her how to use either a paper or a digital calendar, reflecting on experiences that helped him or her grow because they were challenging, disappointing or joyful experiences. The art of reflection is simply asking yourself questions.
Modeling this for students in your own life can be especially helpful as they’re learning. If you work from home, walking into a room and asking aloud, “What do I want to do with my lunchbreak today? Do I want to go out for a walk, read or run an errand?” On Fridays or Saturdays, practice looking ahead at the weekend to make decisions about how you’re going to spend your time.
This can be a five-minute review of “have to’s,” “want-to’s” and “maybe do’s.” Have-to’s are things like homework, chores, preparing to teach Sunday school or taking care of the neighbor’s pet cat while they’re away. Want-to’s might be things like having a friend over, learning a new song on the piano, tackling the garden project or researching which community businesses are hiring teens for summer work. Maybe-do’s are exactly as they sound; they’re ideas that a student may want to do over the weekend if time allows. These can be anything, but some ideas could be getting ahead in the novel they’re reading for school, practicing driving with one of their parents if they’ve got their learner’s license or playing a video game with a younger sibling.
The habit of reflection can start small, but its impact is tremendous. When students learn how to reflect on what they enjoy doing and don’t enjoy, they’re on the road to making better decisions at school and in life.
Learnwell students are often invited to take part in focus groups, provide feedback on school events and help teachers plan future lessons. They may receive a Google form in their Honors English class asking them about how they want to be assessed for the next novel they’re reading: project, independent creative work or a test. Some eighth grade and high school students have been asked to provide feedback through focus groups as Learnwell’s high school program evolves. Middle school students have been asked to vote on themes, food options and music for events like the school Barn Dance.

Reflecting and knowing what you think, believe and want are valuable boredom busters that give students a sense of purpose and direction. And that’s what empowers them to make a difference in the future no matter where their journey leads.
What’s Next?
Looking for a new way to educate your child? It’s not for everyone, but you should try Learnwell’s hybrid school model if you enjoy knowing what your student is being taught, want to help your student overcome a struggle with making friends or need time to increase your work schedule. Other reasons families choose our hybrid school is because they value having more time together. Join us for an upcoming parent information night or contact our Admissions Department for more information.
Another method of education we help parents of kindergarteners through seventh graders with is homeschooling. If your homeschooling has become dry, you’re not sure you can keep going, or you’d like to try it but you struggle with schedules and routines, we’re here for you! Our Navigator Program is like having your very own coach in the homeschooling process from anywhere in the world.