Is Unstructured Play a Waste of Time? A Mom and Former Teacher Breaks It Down
Last Saturday, I was folding damp beach towels on the couch, half-watching my 7-year-old through the kitchen window, when my mother-in-law nodded out at the yard and said, “Isn’t that just a waste of time?” He wasn’t working on the spring break reading log I’d tucked in his backpack, or practicing the piano scales he’s supposed to do 10 minutes a day. He was stacking smooth river rocks along the edge of the vegetable garden, moving the same three big boulders back and forth, stopping every minute or two to nudge a line of tiny ants away from his stack. It looked, to an outside eye, like nothing at all.
I nodded along at first, because I’ve had that exact thought a hundred times. Before I quit full-time teaching to stay home with my kids, I spent seven years in a 2nd grade classroom where every minute of the day was scheduled. Bell to bell, we had objectives, graded assignments, progress checks. If a kid was doodling in the margin of their worksheet instead of filling it out, or staring out the window during reading time, that was off-task behavior – wasted time I was expected to correct.
I still remember Leo, a quiet kid in my third year of teaching who spent almost every science class drawing race cars instead of taking notes. One Friday, I pulled him aside after class, holding his mostly blank water cycle worksheet, and told him he was missing out on important learning by wasting his time that way. He just twisted his pencil in his hand and nodded, but the next week when we did our end-of-unit independent projects, he turned in a 12-page packet of drawings of different race car designs, with notes on how the angle of the spoiler changed how fast the car could go. He’d tested the designs with his toy cars down the ramp on his porch at home, counted how long it took each one to reach the bottom, and graphed the results. I’d thought he was wasting time, but he’d been practicing focus, measurement, and problem solving on a topic he actually cared about. That moment stuck with me, long after I left the classroom.
Back to Saturday, with the rocks and the half-folded towels. My mother-in-law peeled an apple over the trash can and said she just didn’t see the point of letting him “loaf around” for hours when he could be doing something productive. I get where she’s coming from. Three months ago, I was panicking because all my son wanted to do after school was dig in the dirt and move rocks around. I’d paid $120 for a kids’ coding class he quit after two weeks, I compared his schedule to all the other kids on my block who had art lessons and tutoring and three different team sports, and I was convinced I was letting him waste his childhood.
I tried filling every minute for a month, and what I got was a kid who cried over homework every night, and forgot his soccer cleats every other practice, and couldn’t sit still for 10 minutes of reading because he was so burnt out from running from one activity to the next. That’s when I started adjusting, small, low-friction changes that didn’t require me to sign up for anything or spend extra money.
First, I started pausing for two full minutes before I interrupted him when he’s “doing nothing.” I don’t tell him to go do something productive right away. I just watch, and then I ask one question: “What are you working on?” More often than not, he has a plan I didn’t see. When I thought he was staring out the car window wasting time that I could use to quiz him on spelling words, he was counting how many red cars versus blue cars passed us, trying to figure out which color car people buy the most. That’s data collection. That’s math. I didn’t have to plan it, or grade it, or post it on Instagram. It was just learning.
Second, I leave one full weekend day a month completely open, no plans. No soccer, no playdates I organized, no library events, no errands that can’t wait. If he wants to stack rocks all afternoon, that’s fine. If he wants to lay on the couch and watch old episodes of Bluey back to back, that’s fine too. I stopped calling that “wasting time” out loud, and that small change made me stop seeing it that way too.
Third, if we have mandatory stuff – homework, chores, piano practice – we get that done first thing after school. Once that’s out of the way, the rest of the day is his to use how he wants. I don’t bug him about filling every minute.
I still have moments of panic, of course. Last week, I saw a post from another mom in my son’s class about her 7-year-old already reading chapter books and qualifying for the state gifted math competition, and I immediately went outside to yell at my son for moving rocks instead of reading. Then I remembered Leo, and I paused, and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he was building a dam to keep rain from washing away the tomato plants my neighbor gave us. He’d figured out that if he stacked the smaller rocks at the bottom, the big ones wouldn’t fall over, and the water would drain through instead of flooding the dirt. That’s engineering. That’s problem solving. That’s more useful than a dozen worksheets on soil composition, I’d bet.
Last night, I caught him rearranging his entire Lego collection by size instead of finishing the math homework packet that’s due this week. I felt that old twinge of panic, the one that says he’s falling behind, that I’m being too lazy, that this is all a waste. I leaned against the doorframe for two minutes, then asked what he was doing. He told me he was making it easier to find the right pieces for the castle he’s building next weekend. I closed the door and left him to it. He’ll get the math done after dinner, I know that.
I still don’t have it all figured out. I still sign him up for soccer camp every summer, and I still bug him about his reading log most nights. But I’m starting to stop seeing the unplanned, ungraded, seemingly useless bits of his day as a waste. Some of them are turning out to be the most useful time he has all week.
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