A child can find almost any video within seconds, skip the parts they dislike, and start it over whenever they want. Put that same child in a quiet hallway with nothing to watch, and even a few minutes can suddenly feel very long.

For kindergarten teacher Lisa Elaine Peters, those difficult pauses revealed something important. Her students were not simply misbehaving. Many had never been taught what to do when nothing was happening.

The Forgotten Skill Of Waiting

Peters teaches kindergarten and makes videos about teaching. She began noticing that some of the hardest moments in the school day happened during the small gaps between activities.

There was the hallway line, the pause before instructions, and the moments when she needed to handle something else. Teachers often treat those situations as behavior problems, but Peters believed her students were missing a skill.

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“You may have taught them behavior in the hallway, but have you taught them behavior while you wait?” she said. Children learn how to follow instructions and complete tasks, yet waiting is often treated as something they should already know.

“Most kids don’t know how to be bored these days,” Peters added. Her point is not to blame children or parents, but to recognize how much childhood has changed.

Four Games For Empty Moments

Peters decided to teach her students what she calls “bored games.” They require no screens, equipment, or preparation, which makes them easy to use during ordinary moments of waiting.

Her activities include:

• The thumb game: Children learn to twiddle their thumbs, an activity many young children have never been shown.
• A finger challenge: They press their thumb and index finger together and try linking their hands without letting their other fingers touch.
• Belly breathing: Children lift their hands overhead while focusing on slow, steady breaths.
• The color game: Peters names a color, and the children silently search the room for objects in that shade.

“All I have to say is, ‘Play a bored game,’ and my kids will know what to do,” Peters explained. Instead of expecting an adult to remove every uncomfortable pause, the children learn a few ways to manage their own attention.

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The Point Is Not More Entertainment

These activities are different from another form of constant entertainment. They are simple and repetitive, giving children something to do without demanding all of their attention.

Peters is not trying to make boredom disappear. She is helping children discover that an empty moment does not have to become a crisis.

That lesson may sound small for a kindergartener, but many adults face the same challenge. Reaching for a phone during every spare moment has become an almost automatic habit.

Why Adults Are Being Told To Get Bored Too

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Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard professor and writer, has argued that adults may also benefit from spending more time without constant stimulation. In a 2025 article for Harvard Business Review, Brooks described boredom as an opportunity for the mind to wander.

He connects this process to the brain’s default mode network, which becomes active when attention is not focused on an outside task. During those periods, thoughts can move toward questions people may not deliberately sit down to consider.

“Bored, you go to kind of uncomfortable existential questions,” Brooks said, arguing that this process can be valuable. He has also warned that constant device use can leave little room for this kind of reflection.

In a March 2026 interview, Brooks said the average person looks at their phone 205 times a day. He suggested gradually rebuilding the ability to spend longer periods without stimulation.

“Start getting better at periods that are 15 minutes and longer of boredom and watch your life change,” he said. Peters may be asking children to manage only a brief wait, but both approaches begin with the same idea: the mind does not always need to be occupied.

What Research Suggests About Boredom

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Research has explored whether boredom can influence creativity, although the evidence has clear limitations. In 2014, psychologists Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman conducted two experiments at the University of Central Lancashire.

The first involved 80 participants who completed a boring writing activity before taking a creativity test. A second experiment involving 90 people compared different kinds of boring tasks.

The researchers wrote that their “results suggested that boring activities resulted in increased creativity.” They proposed that daydreaming might help explain the connection between boredom and new ideas.

The Evidence Has Limits

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Those studies were relatively small, involved adults, and took place in controlled settings. There is also no evidence that Peters’ specific classroom games directly improve creativity or produce measurable changes in self-restraint.

Her approach is a teacher’s practical response to a familiar problem, rather than a scientifically tested program. Still, the research raises an interesting possibility about what happens when the mind is no longer constantly occupied by outside information.

For children, that space may encourage imagination and independent play. For adults, it may allow room for reflection that would otherwise be interrupted by the next notification.

Childhood Has Fewer Empty Minutes

According to Common Sense Media’s 2025 research, children under age 8 in the United States average roughly two and a half hours of screen media each day. The research also found that 40% of children own a tablet by age 2.

These figures do not mean technology is inherently harmful, and they should not become another source of guilt for parents. Screens can educate, entertain, and help families manage busy lives.

The constant availability of stimulation may still change how children experience waiting. When entertainment is always close by, an unoccupied moment can feel unfamiliar.

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Learning What To Do When Nothing Happens

Earlier generations often had boredom built into everyday routines. A car ride could mean staring out of a window, while waiting at an appointment might involve simply sitting and looking around.

Those experiences were not always enjoyable, but they sometimes led children to invent games, imagine stories, or find their own ways to fill time. Peters is responding to a different environment by teaching a skill that may no longer develop as naturally.

She is not asking children to reject technology or return to an earlier era. She is giving them practice with something every person eventually encounters: a moment when nothing is happening and no immediate distraction is available.

Boredom Can Build Emotional Skills

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Child psychologists have also described boredom as an opportunity for children to practice emotional regulation. Dr. Stephanie A. Lee of the Child Mind Institute has explained that boredom can help children learn to manage frustration.

“Boredom might not be super distressing, but it’s not fun,” Lee said. “Life requires us to manage our frustrations and regulate our emotions when things aren’t going our way, and boredom is a great way to teach that skill.”

A child waiting quietly is doing more than following a classroom rule. They may be learning what to do with an uncomfortable feeling without expecting another person to immediately make it disappear.

Building A Sense Of Agency

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odi Musoff of the Child Mind Institute has also pointed to the value of unstructured time. When children decide how to fill it, they may need to plan, organize, and solve problems on their own.

Lee described the larger goal as helping children manage boredom so they can develop independence and “feel agency over their own happiness and well-being.” That gives Peters’ simple games a purpose beyond keeping a classroom calm.

Patience develops through ordinary situations. It grows when a child wants the line to move faster and learns that waiting can be managed.

A Small Lesson With A Long Reach

Peters is giving her students simple actions they can remember when their bodies feel restless and their attention starts searching for something new. A thumb game can carry a child through a frustrating wait, while slow breathing can redirect restless energy.

These activities recognize an important truth about childhood: self-regulation develops through practice. Telling a child to “be patient” is different from showing them what patience can look like in the moment.

The hallway becomes calmer because Peters stopped treating waiting as something children should automatically know. She treated it as a skill worth teaching, and perhaps that is why the lesson reaches beyond kindergarten.

Years from now, those children may find themselves at a bus stop with a dead phone or sitting in a waiting room with nothing to read. They may still feel restless, but they will have practiced something increasingly valuable: allowing a quiet moment to exist without immediately trying to escape it.

For people of every age, that ability creates a little more space between discomfort and reaction. Sometimes that space begins in a kindergarten hallway, with a teacher showing children that their own minds can keep them company.

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