I'm bored...

We are born curious, as anyone who has ever watched a baby will know. Even very young babies observe, 'push and pull' their own world in an often furious attempt to learn about it. And well into their first year mothers will declare, with a mixture of pride and exhaustion, 'Oh, he's into everything now.' So in this sense, a lazy child is a contradiction in terms. And yet it is a relatively common experience for playworkers to have to cope with a child who seems unmotivated and disinterested.

Eleven-year-old Penny was just such a child. A rather plump only child, she had been attending after school club for nearly a year. Her playworkers had become increasingly irritated by her. 'She just won't make an effort,' said one, 'she just seems bland about whatever we offer her.' Another volunteered, 'She never does more than the necessary. If you ask her to help clear up she will, but she never just kicks in and helps. It's the same with activities, if we didn't chivvy her along she'd just sit there like a huge steam pudding.'

Lazy children can make adults feel angry. They remind us of that indolent aspect of ourselves, which we would rather forget; the aspect of us that would just like to sit about and be waited upon. That is human! However, we do need to take 'the lazy child' seriously. First and foremost, a tired child, lacking in vitality, needs to see a doctor. Lethargy in children is often a symptom of an underlying physical illness. When illness is ruled out, we need to understand children's laziness as a communication. Let's think about Penny.

LAZINESS AS A PROTEST

Penny's playworkers were presuming from Penny's demeanour that she was probably a somewhat doted on and indulged child. In fact, her arrival had been unplanned and interrupted her busy parents' career plans. While there was no doubt they loved her, her mother admitted, 'We decided from the word go that she would have to fit in with us, she wasn't going to change our lives.' So Penny had always had a very strict routine which gave her very few choices.

As a small child she was compliant, but as she reached the later years of childhood she felt increasingly constrained and restricted. Family life was lived at a pace and Penny soon began to realise non-compliance - laziness - gave her a sense of independence and freedom. 'The more busy my mum is, the slower I get and she can't do anything about it,' she said laughingly.

Of course, protests can become a way of living. Penny was using laziness in club as a way of warning the adults, 'Don't try to organise every minute for me.' She feared that if she responded enthusiastically to her playworkers they would 'take her over' but, ironically, her laziness produced just that result. Irritated by her lack of effort, her playworkers would try to pressurise her into becoming more involved in club activities.

They had to change their approach by offering her as much choice as possible and by also sometimes allowing her to be lazy.

LAZINESS AS A WAY OF NOT FEELING

Eight-year-old Peter was always bored and tired at holiday club. He would arrive yawning, frowning and turning up his nose at whatever was on offer.

'It's boring,' he would say. His playworkers were concerned, 'He just doesn't seem to want to do anything...it's not right in a boy of this age.'

They decided to talk to his mother and find out what he was like at home.

'He's always been the same,' she said. 'I'm afraid he's just sullen.'

Undeterred, Peter's playworker pursued his history with his mother. She was soon able to pinpoint a change in her son's behaviour that occurred about a year after his father had left when Peter was five.

Father and son had a close relationship, and initially his father had visited Peter regularly. Then he took a job abroad and contact with Peter gradually ceased. Peter's mother explained that Peter used to ask about his father a great deal but, 'he used to get so upset that I suggested we didn't talk about him any more'.

The next time Peter said he was bored, his playworker asked him, 'If you weren't feeling bored now, what would you be feeling?' There was a pause before Peter's eyes filled with tears, 'I'd be sad and mad 'cos of my dad,'

he said.

Lazy children may actually be busily working hard! They may be working hard not to feel something painful and difficult which they feel they cannot share with the adults around them. It is always worth thinking of 'laziness' as a cover for another feeling.

THE FEAR OF FINDING OUT

In spite of the difference in their ages, Penny and Peter shared a fear.

Penny's playworkers were able to talk to her teachers, from whom they discovered her attainments were well behind both her chronological age and her ability. Her teachers also described her as lazy, 'She's bright enough, she just won't do the work.'

In order to learn, children need to feel free to be curious, to let their minds roam. If they feel there is a secret, something it would be bad for them to find out about, then they censor their curiosity.

Peter didn't understand why his father had left and was afraid to find out in case, as he dreaded, it was his fault. Deep inside herself, Penny feared that she may not have been wanted by her parents. She knew instinctively they had been resentful as well as delighted about her birth. However, she couldn't ask why and so was afraid to let her curiosity roam in case she made an unwelcome discovery. Such children may choose to struggle not to learn about much at all rather than risk learning about something which feels forbidden or painful.

SOMETIMES CHILDREN NEED TO BE LAZY

Parents today seem under real pressure to prove their successful parenting and sometimes it seems as though there is a mythical equation between the number of out-of-school activities a child takes on and the quality of their parenting.

Very few children can now roam freely after school. Some simply watch television or videos and DVDs, but many from a very early age have a full diary of activities each evening. While in many ways this may enhance both their development and education, the drawback is that relaxation is a serious and necessary business. We need laziness to recover from the hurly burly of daily life and laziness is a natural process of recuperation and renewal.

Simply rolling around the floor doing nothing is an integral part of a child's development. And this is particularly important for club-aged children, 'tweens', as they call themselves. They may seem, at times, to do nothing but lie immobile on their beds for hours at a time conserving energy while listening to music so loud that the very foundations of the house seem to shake. At other times, there seems to be a suspicious silence emitting from the bedroom. But being a tween is hard work and they may not in fact be 'wasting time'.

They may not be meditating upon the finer points of the great philosophical thinkers, but they are practising being independent in many ways. Most important is their need to 'feel whatever I want to feel,' to have time and space to find meaning for their welter of new feelings and experiences. And club, which provides a transitional space between home and school, may provide tweens with a crucial time to absorb and process life.

Finally, some children are more contemplative than others and we need to remember this when taking the lazy child seriously. Such children may need more time and space to process the hum of their curiosity. At this age, children's heads are buzzing with all sorts of thoughts and ideas which need to be thought about and digested. So perhaps an important question for club workers to ask themselves is, 'How much time are we setting aside for children to be lazy in club?'

Andrea Clifford-Poston is an educational therapist and author of Tweens: Understanding your 8-12-year-old (Oneworld, 8.99)