The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Children today seem to expect every single second of their lives to be filled with the most stimulating entertainment possible. After all, there are lots of options! Couple this glut of options with the fact that most parents think their number one job is to make their children happy, and the result is the never-ending struggle to spare our children inevitable moments of boredom.

Logical consequences

Let your children either learn to make the most out of their quiet moments or fill them with their own ideas for entertainment. Never try to save them from frustration by fixing their boredom for them. This is not your job. But teaching them how to handle that frustration is.

Solutions toward self-direction

When your children come up to you and whine, "I'm bored. There's nothing to do," use questioning like, "What are you going to do to solve that problem?" Better yet, tell them it's good to be "bored" on occasion, because it gives them time to recoup, reflect, and exercise that rusty inner thinking mechanism between their two ears. They can think of it as a "Richard Simmons Aerobics Hour" for their inner voice.

Try to convey a sense of empathy, "I know how you feel. I feel bored from time to time too." (Would I give anything to remember what that feels like again!)

Buy only toys that stimulate their creativity and call for active participation, not ones that passively entertain kids into zomboid states. Also limit your children's exposure to other passive forms of entertainment like computer and video games and television. Toys should be designed to help them develop internal dialogue rather than external reactions.