Encourage Hobbies with Your Children

“I’m bored,” has become a comment I often hear from youngsters.  Unless they can play with something electronic, many kids nowadays feel they have nothing to do.

Being bored wasn’t something we admitted to when I was a child.  Mom or Dad would find more farm work and housework for bored children.  So we discovered all types of hobbies and creative play.

Image: sxc.hu

I’ve discovered, too, that bored children often grow up to be bored adults.  So why not encourage hobbies of many types for your children.  Become involved yourself and include your youngsters.  Introduce them to new activities.  These should include a mix of sit down and active hobbies.

You never know what life will bring. When I had a broken back, as an adult, and lay in bed in a body cast for six weeks, people wondered if I wasn’t bored out of my mind.  No, I had much to do, when I wasn’t too tired.  I read, I wrote, I played games with my granddaughter.  Occasionally the family brought the TV into my room (we only had one in the family room) and played movies.  But I was never bored.

Some hobby ideas:

• Reading
• Board games
• Outdoor games like croquet, catch, hoop shoots
• Sewing and related activities
• Painting, sketching and other arts
• Knitting and crocheting
• Fabric art, altered books
• Scrapbooking
• Photography
• Collections of many kinds
• Geocaching

Some of these may be computer related, like digital photography and scrapbooking, but they’re still using your creativity.

What activities do you encourage with your children?