Imagine you had never tried your favourite food

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“Imagine you had never tried your favourite food !?!”
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This is always my favourite argument with kids when they are reluctant to try out something new – it might be a book, a destination, an activity, anything really … “What if you had never tried your favourite food ? You would have missed out on some very enjoyable moments.  Not just once – many times in the past and many more times in the future !”

Trying something new can go quite against the grain with some and many kids are astonishingly conservative in their attitude. Yet I have always believed that you can get children “hooked on curiosity“ if they had lots of positive experiences  in their early years. Naturally the same philosophy works with adults too – if you want turn someone into a lover of the opera, you know that the first exposure to this new territory should rather be along the lines of Mozart (like the Magic Flute or perhaps Cosi fan tutte) and keep the heavy Wagner stuff for the more advanced years, right?

” I   a m   b o r e d . “

It would be going too far indeed if I were to claim that trying something new would be a solution every time a kids complains of boredom – very likely the most common whinge-and-whine sentence of kids world wide.
But: it is certainly one of the most effective means of long-term reduction of this tiresome complaint ! And it has tremendous therapeutic effects too, kids tend to get into the habit of coming to ask “Have you got something to try out, is there something new around ?”.  That’s something I have not observed with the all too popular alternative of turning the TV on!

Sounds sensible, but where do we always get new ideas and challenges from?
At Parental Pals the first logical step is to exchange thoughts and hints, facts and documents, links and programs even between families who have established their individual hot wires for a good dialoge. This makes the process fast, affordable and highly effective. And it provides peers who bring with them the motivation to actually get going – an excellent example is the decision to learn an instrument:  Something to get better and better at and to share the ups and downs with somebody who knows how you feel.

Moreover, during the autumn an idea exchange, the “De-Bora“ – designed to de-bore bored youngsters and rather like a very dynamic databank – will be established, it will allow for very specific searches that consider the personal preferences and the language settings for the kid in question and will suggest matching partners too. More about that when it’s ready, folks.

Next time your kids express a particular liking for a special meal – or snack – or game – or DVD – or whatever …  remember this argument. It’s helpful.