Before you read about scheduling and your child, take a moment and answer the following questions. Choose the answer that most closely reflects your situation:
1. When was the last time your child had time off school and other scheduled activities and had “nothing to do”?
a. I can’t remember.
b. In the past month.
c. In the past week.
2. When your child has downtime, like sitting in the car or waiting to see the dentist, how do they respond?
a. They can’t sit still, complain, and ask to play with a phone or tablet.
b. They seem uncomfortable at first but eventually look around or talk.
c. They entertain themselves by daydreaming, looking around, or making up games.
3. If your child had an afternoon alone in their room with no screens and only books, paper, and everyday household objects, what would they do?
a. Complain and throw a fit.
b. Struggle at first but draw or make something.
c. Jump right into reading, writing, drawing, or using their imagination in some way.
4. If you asked your child to go outside and play on their own for an hour with no toys or screens, how would they react?
a. They’d refuse or ask what they were supposed to do.
b. They’d hesitate but eventually find something to do.
c. They’d be enthusiastic and explore, run around, or invent a game.
5. Say your child had four days off from school and other unscheduled activities. You let them plan their time off and do whatever they want. What do you think they would do?
a. They would choose to play video games, watch videos online, or scroll social media most of that time.
b. They would spend the first day or two on screens, but after that they would ask what else they could do.
c. They would spend some time on screens, but also spend time talking with family and on self-directed activities that don’t involve screens, like Legos, art, music, etc.
Analyzing Your Answers
- Are your answers mostly A’s? If so, your child might struggle with down time and rely too much on you to schedule their time and entertainment, or they are relying too much on screens.
- Are your answers mostly B’s? If so, your child has developed some independence and creativity but needs more encouragement.
- Are your answers mostly C’s? If so, your child is comfortable with free time and constructively entertains themselves.
Perhaps you can see where we are going here. We are overscheduling our kids to the point where it may be doing harm, including causing depression and anxiety. Research shows that scheduling activities for every moment of every day doesn’t help much with cognitive development. It also has quickly diminishing returns, and it’s more stressful than helpful once students reach the high school level.
And it’s not just stressing your kids out. Overscheduling is stressful for parents too.
But how many activities do you have your kids signed up for? And when your kids aren’t at school, a class, or some other activity, are they looking at screens? Do your kids have any down time? If so, what are they doing with it?
Kids need down time
For years pediatricians have warned parents about overscheduling. According to experts and in our own experience, students need more “down time”. This means time spent relaxing, with family, or on unstructured playtime.
*Note: “down time” does not include screentime. Too much time on screens can be more harmful than too many scheduled activities. There is a ton of good information on the dangers of excessive screentime, so we won’t worry about it in this article.
Kids need the chance to play and explore in an undirected way. They also need a chance to just relax and not spend time learning or achieving or “being productive”. This time helps them to de-stress and calms their thinking. When kids don’t have the outlet of unstructured play or relaxation, stress can stack up. That’s when you get anxious, depressed kids.
Measurable benefits of boredom
Unscheduled time is not only helpful for mitigating stress in kids, but it also instills important skills.
Unscheduled down time teaches kids to solve their own problems. The first problem they learn to solve is the problem of boredom. When you have “nothing to do” you search for something engaging to think about, explore, or create. In other words, boredom is the wellspring of creativity. If kids never get the chance to be bored, they never get the chance to develop the imagination and creativity that helps them develop their own passions, personalities, and unique interests.
(Think about it: 300 years ago, without screens and organized after-school activities, kids had to read books, write stories and poetry, or come up with ways to play on their own. This “unstructured environment” was fertile ground for worldshaking thinkers like Galileo – who gazed at the stars, Isaac Newton – who came to understand gravity by sitting under an apple tree, and Thoreau – who spent all his time walking around in the woods of New England. These days creativity seems to mean developing some app no one asked for.)
An important ancillary of kids learning to solve their boredom problems is that they learn to entertain themselves, which makes your life as a parent easier. When kids can entertain themselves they are developing their creativity muscles, addressing stress and anxiety, learning to be independent thinkers and problem-solvers, and staying out of your hair.
So, let your kids be bored. It’s good for them.
Teach kids to slow down
Another important element of unstructured down time is the opportunity for kids to slow down. We bombard students with so much stimulus – teachers and assignments and friends and gossip and homework and tests and parents and social media and games and lessons and I could go on. It’s exhausting.
This being the case, kids need the chance to slow down, both physically and mentally. Unscheduled time helps them to do this. Kids can develop mindfulness when nothing is expected of them and they are allowed to sit with their thoughts.
The world we have built for our kids is a lot. They are overscheduled and overstimulated. Let’s help them by allowing them the mental space to go slow, think full thoughts, and learn to be calm.
Balance is the way
At this point you might be thinking, “Cool, so I need my kids to do less. I should take them out of all after-school classes. I should take them out of Englist.”
No, that is not what we mean. We are simply asking for balance. As parents and teachers, we have gone a little too far. We have foisted activities and responsibilities on kids they may not need or want. But, this does not mean kids should have no scheduled activities. A certain amount of scheduled activities is useful. Here’s an example we think works:
- Bedtime by 22:30 at the latest (regardless if homework and studying is done)
- School and homework
- One family evening per week
- Englist
- One tutor or academic activity per week
- One sport or physical activity per week
- Maybe one additional hobby – but only if the child is genuinely interested (e.g., music, art, programming, etc.)
- 30 minutes of recreational screentime per day
*Note: Did you know that the teachers at Englist try to give as much “down time” as possible during our brief time with your kids? This is why we insist on unstructured discussion, personal reading time, and even “fun time” at the end of classes. This down time helps students bond, de-stress, and allows students to focus better.
The rest of a kid’s time should be down time with no screens. If they complain, tell them to go play. Tell them to draw. Tell them to read, preferably for 30 minutes a day. Tell them to relax or take a nap. A schedule like the one above is really full as it is, so the rest of their time should be exactly that: their time.
We get it, you want the best for your kids and you might have anxiety about them keeping up with peers. We also know the schools in Taiwan are brutal with homework load, study demands, and extra activities. Perhaps we have collectively sacrificed the right to playtime at the altar of “productivity”.
But we also think it’s time to take a stand. Your kids can’t do everything and neither can you. As parents, you also can push back at your child’s school about the dangers of homework overload and academic burnout.
Childhood is not just a time for kids to prepare for college and careers. Kids deserve time for themselves and their families. It’s the job of parents and teachers to ensure they get it.
– Mr. Hatch