Cloudbusting...

"I sat on the roof / And watched the day go by..." Wishful Thinking, China Crisis

The Adult World seems to live in a state of constant demand. More this, more that, reply now, get to here, get to there, do this, do that, finish it, start it, watch this, watch that, an endless series of over-stimulation and under-pressure-ness. It rarely seems to have time to stop at think and just BE. We wait for a fortnight in the sun or weekending-ness so that we can step off the merry-go-round and find ourselves some breathing space before it all begins once more.

The same might be said of our children. Over-scheduled, this thing, that thing, got to get here, got to get there, all adding to their restless-legged-ness and the self-doubt that parents feel, especially over the Summer holidays, about how they might occupy time and keep children busy - am I enough? Am I parenting right? Am I fulfilling the culturally defined role of 'parent'? 

It happens in our schools too. The Adult World demands that children are in a state of Doing, achieving targets, making rapid progress, closing the gap, It wants 'learning' to be visible so that teachers and children can be made accountable. So educators feel a similar self-doubt - am I providing challenge? Am I interacting sufficiently? Am I moving learning forward? Am I enough?

Yet children need to learn the Art of Boredom. They need to develop their own ways of planning and considering and wondering. They need the emptiness of time. They need space to think, to dwell, to play with ideas before acting. It is the child's way of weighing up and coming into a moment of self-awareness and self-realisation. "I am in a quiet state. I am awake to myself, I am me. I choose"

If we consistently move children from one place to next then we erode their innate ability to decide for themselves, to shape their own responses to the world. Through choice they exercise autonomy -in the moment of choosing they are making a conscious shape of ourselves - choice is identity.

The world doesn't have to be all rush and push. There is great value in solitude and pensiveness.  Down time is the precursor to choice: "I could do this or that...I choose this" - there is responsibility, a growing sense of personal cause and effect, a route through which imagination can flourish and the possibility that children might decide to take risk because they can. Boredom gives way to creativity. It offers the chance for children to be protagonists in their own learning. It can lead to the solidarity or the individuation of learning - it is the evolution of the possible...

If only we weren't too quick to step in to get children 'busy'. If only we could take those moments before we intervene to look and listen, to wait for a child to unfold before us. The reality is that not all learning is visible, not all learning is open-book - there is a hidden world, a world of inertia and inaction, of slowly bringing into being through thought. Children are veiled in mystery. It is our responsibility to delve into it, to share in it. When we embrace boredom and passivity, we value the whole child. We give space for identity. 

So, perhaps it's time to re-imagine the insistence of 'demand' and to recognise that in the moment of choosing children are making an unconscious shape of themselves. A child's plan is their route towards self-construction after all. We just need to demand more of ourselves perhaps: to look through eyes that look beyond the visible and see the possibilities that take shape when children have time to choose...