Managing children’s boredom Adam Phillips makes a good point about the way adults feel and manage children’s boredom. In On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays of the Unexamined Life (Harvard University Press, 1994), Phillips examines the underlying meaning of people’s preoccupation with boredom. “Is it not indeed revealing,” he asks “what the child’s boredom evokes in the adults?” What concerns us, he suggests, is children’s lack of concern: Heard as a demand, sometimes as an accusation of failure or disappointment, it is rarely agreed […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: Adam Phillips, boredom, childhood, children, families