Your baby is not bored
Crazy, right?! But it is impossible for your baby to be bored (in the way that you experience boredom). Babies are born with zero sensory experience, so literally every moment is an opportunity to experience something new.
As in, your baby has never seen the sunlight come through your living room window while the curtain gently lifts up from the wind and a songbird sings a sweet song in the tree right outside.
As adults, we read that scenario like an idyllic situation that we might imagine when trying to meditate…and YES, that’s the idea. We need to give babies the quiet, peace, and very slow experience in all these tiny moments in life that we take for granted as adults.
With all the things in the world to experience in all the different ways to experience them (think : 5 senses), there are endless amounts of opportunities for your baby to be learning and engaged. Your baby needs to build experiences in the real world that will eventually help them organize information that will help them grow and learn safely and succesfully.
Free play is the secret!
This news of your baby literally not being able to be bored should come as incredible news of liberation.
- You don’t have to buy all those toys that are ‘educational’ (don’t fall for that selling ploy!)
- you don’t have to comb Pinterest for all the parent-led sensory activities that require several random items purchased from the Dollar Tree
- you don’t have to listen to annoying theme songs from kids’ television shows
- and best of all you don’t have to share your smart phone or buy your baby an expensive device for them to slobber all over!
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: kids need, crave, LOVE free play.
They don’t need entertained!
Congratulations, you can remove that shiny, bedazzled, entertainment-director hat you’ve been wearing that has been making you exhausted and miserable.
Babies (and kids!) just need space, time, and resources for their little sponge brains to start cranking out the fun all on their own. **You should be nearby (for making sure they are not in any real danger), but for the most part – you don’t have to participate at all!
Stimulation and how kids experience it
Consider these two scenarios:
Scenario 1: A 7 month old baby is sitting up on a blanket in the middle of the living room facing the front door. The television is playing a popular kid streaming program (lots of lights, sounds, and motion). Their siblings are sitting on the couch silently watching the program. The curtains are closed because the kids don’t like the glare on the television screen. The front door starts to unlock but no one can hear it except the dog who hops up and runs over to the door wagging his tail. A parent walks through the door home from work and no one glances up to say hello, as the parent walks by everyone to pat them off the head without their eye contact. The 7 month old doesn’t notice the parent until the pat on the head and then screams to be picked up but then becomes fussy only a few minutes later when they are strapped into the high chair in the kitchen.
Scenario 2: A 7 month old baby is sitting up on a blanket in the middle of the living room facing the front door. The television is off and older siblings are running back and forth in the room with capes on and pretend swords in their hands. The windows are open and the sun is shining so that a beam of light highlights the dust. The baby notices the dust and tries to grab it, which brings attention to the dust light beam to the big kids. Now the dust beam is fairy dust that can give them flight. The big kids thank and hug the baby for being so clever. The baby claps and laughs and stares in awe as the big kids jump, dive, and run around the room. The baby picks up the rattle on the floor and the big kids cheer that they have a new knight in their group! The front door starts to unlock and the kids freeze in place. The baby sees that all the motion and sound has stopped and is now looking at the front door with the big kids and the dog. A parent walks through the door home from work and the big kids run to the parent, the dog is barking, the kids are joyfully shrieking, the parent is saying “hello!” and the baby registers in their mind that all this commotion means “When my parent comes home from work.” The parent puts the big kids down and looks at the baby smiling while saying “There’s my baby!” and bends down to pick them up. The 7 month old is put in the high chair in the kitchen while the parent chats as they unpack from the day and the baby tries to mimic communication by babbling.
Both of these scenarios are within the realm of things that are happening all over the world. They are not outlandish or ridiculous if you have ever spent any time with children. The difference lies in the stimulation: was stimulation provided for the child (in this case via a screen) or was the stimulation created by the baby/child.
So how can we encourage our baby (0-12months) to learn and experience free play?
Free play ideas for your baby
0-3 months
- observing you while you make dinner, fold laundry, working out; literally while you move at all
- observing siblings while they play or pets
- discovering their own body parts (kicking legs, finding fingers, moving tongue)
- looking out a window
4-6 months
- gripping and switching hands of various textures (koosh ball, ribbons, baby utensils, tags)
- observing siblings while they play or pets
- rolling over
- trying to reach things while on tummy
- looking in a mirror
- picking things up and putting them down
7-9 months (mobile/crawling)
- dumping & re-filling containers
- observing and trying to mimic siblings and/or pets
- pulling up to standing on furniture
- opening & closing board books
- crawl-chasing a rolling ball
- stacking & knocking over blocks
9-12 months
- opening & closing doors/cupboards
- “reading” familiar books (flipping pages, pretend reading, pointing to pictures
- pushing things with wheels
- trying new physical skills (walking, running, jumping, climbing, throwing, kicking, carrying, lifting, etc)
- building their risk assessment skills (risk assessment is looking at a scenario, deciding internally how dangerous something is before proceeding. This is a very important skill that we want kids to be practicing. At this age, it might include: going up or down stairs, getting off the couch by themselves, climbing onto a chair, etc)
But my baby is crying – can’t it mean that maybe they are bored?
If your baby is crying, your baby is trying to tell you something. Don’t jump to the conclusion right away that it is boredom, because it probably isn’t. First check the big ones: diaper, gas, pain/discomfort, hunger, tired.
If it’s not any of those, I’d put money on the fact that your baby just misses you. Your baby wants to look into your eyes, hear your voice, or be in your arms. You are the most important person on the whole Earth to that child, and they literally just want to spend time with you distraction free – no screens, books, other people taking your attention away from them. And I promise you, a few minutes of undivided attention (face to face; eye to eye; smile to smile) goes a long way with a baby. They need a little hit of parent-love and attention and then they are off to exploring again in their own world of so many experiences yet to go through.
So put down your device, get down on the floor, and look into their face. Laugh, smile, talk, sing, and be fully present – just you! You don’t need toys, non-natural noise, or to “teach” them anything. They just want your undivided attention and to be playful, silly, or happy with them.
It’s not them, it’s you.
Now that we’ve worked out that your baby isn’t bored, let’s get to the bummer portion of this post: you’re the one that is bored. If we are being honest, playing with a baby is boring. We have lots of experience in the world, and in our high tech world, our brain has also become accustomed to distractions and fast-paced stimulation. We want to scroll and laugh at memes and read the latest tweets. And we actually have grown up things we need to be doing like chores, and meals, and other forms of adulting.
So give yourself some grace – because for awhile until you get used to this kind of interaction with your baby, you are probably going to have thoughts racing through your mind like, “omigosh, this is really boring. I have so many things I need to do. I could be getting so many things done right now. How many times is it really fun for me to keep making this same goofy face over and over again?!” (the answer: literally never ending fun for a parent to be making funny faces at a baby).
Let yourself experience those thoughts, because they are true. Especially since we live in a world on turbo speed and all the bells and whistles of distraction. Playing with a baby is boring to us. All the grandmas in the world can preach to us in the grocery store how precious this time is and to enjoy it – but that’s because they are looking through nostalgia-glasses wearing hearts.
and you know what, someday we will too. Someday we will look back at this incredibly boring playtime and yearn for the days when we could make our child joyful just by smiling into their face.
It won’t always be like this –
how heartbreaking
but also thank goodness too
Isn’t that just parenthood in a nutshell: eagerly awaiting the next stage and then feeling sad that the last one ended.
So let’s put in the intentional work at each age and stage for the benefit of our kids, but also for the benefit of our future nostalgia-glasses wearing parent hearts.
One caveat…
If your older baby (9-12months) has become accustomed to stimulation in the form of screens, you may find it takes a little time to get them to be interested in free play. Their mind has sort of abandon those imagination-building connections, but have no fear – this is not irreversible! You will just need to set intentional screen limits because your child has grown dependent on stimulation being provided. Try to build your own parent-muscles in not grabbing for a screen at the first sign of a tantrum.
