Is unstructured free play for kids a waste of time? A teacher’s real take
Last October, after my seventh parent-teacher conference of the day, I was shoving leftover cookie crumbs into my bag and turning off the classroom lights when Mara, Leo’s mom, pulled me aside quiet, like she was embarrassed to ask. Her son Leo is a quiet 9-year-old who draws rocket ships on the margins of every worksheet and never turns in homework late, so I was already braced for the usual question— how do we get him to speak up more? What can we do to challenge him more? Instead she said, “I need to ask you something. Is all that time he spends building cardboard spaceships in our garage just a waste of time?”
She works full time as a dental hygienist, her husband does construction, and they can’t afford the after-school coding camp all the other kids in his class attend. Part of her is relieved she doesn’t have to add another late drive to her already packed evening, but the other part is convinced she’s letting Leo throw away his free time on nothing. “It’s just cardboard and hot glue,” she said. “He’ll spend three hours straight on it and come out covered in glitter and says he’s not done. I keep telling him he could be practicing his multiplication or learning a skill, but he won’t drop it.” I leaned against the desk, my feet throbbing from eight hours of sitting in tiny kid chairs, and I thought about the hole in my backyard.
Last summer, my 10-year-old daughter Lila decided she was going to dig a pond for frogs. My husband pointed out we already have a bird bath, we don’t live near a creek, the hole would just fill with rain water and turn mosquito-y. Lila ignored him. Every day after soccer practice, she’d grab the old trowel from the garden shed and dig for an hour, sometimes two. My husband kept muttering that it was a waste of time, that she should be finishing her summer reading or practicing her clarinet. After two weeks, she had a hole about three feet wide and a foot deep, lined with old plastic sheeting she fished out of our recycling bin, surrounded by rocks she dragged from the side of the road. I still thought it was a silly project, but I bought her a bag of water plants for $10 at the grocery store, that was all I did. Three days later, she found a bullfrog tadpole in the puddle by the park, brought it home in a mason jar, and put it in.
I told Mara that story, and I told her what I’ve noticed after 12 years teaching 4th grade. The kids who struggle the most with open-ended work are the ones who never get time that doesn’t have a clear, graded goal. When I assign a project where kids can pick any topic they want to research, half of them will raise their hand and ask “what do you want me to do?” They don’t know how to follow a thread of curiosity, because every minute of their day is planned: piano, soccer, tutoring, math apps, even playdates are scheduled months in advance. Any time that doesn’t produce a grade, a trophy, or a new skill gets labeled a waste. But Leo’s cardboard spaceships aren’t nothing.
I saw him last month measure the cardboard for a spaceship window three times before he cut it, that’s math he’s doing for fun, no flashcards required. He wrote a 10-page story about the crew of his spaceship to hang on the wall inside, that’s writing practice no worksheet can match. When his first spaceship collapsed in a wind storm, he spent a whole weekend rebuilding it with extra support from old popsicle sticks, that’s problem solving and grit you can’t teach in a 30-minute after-school class.
I didn’t tell Mara to pull Leo out of all his structured activities and let him do whatever he wants forever. I just shared three small, low-effort things I do when I catch myself thinking Lila’s wasting time. First, before you say anything or redirect them to something “useful,” just ask three simple questions: “What are you working on?” “What’s the hardest part right now?” “Do you need anything to keep going?” It takes 30 seconds, and it lets you see what they’re actually learning before you write it off. I did that with Lila’s hole, and I found out she’d spent three nights watching YouTube videos about how to build a pond that doesn’t leak, which is way more hands-on science than the summer workbook would have given her. Second, block off 90 minutes a day that’s just unplanned, unproductive time. No screens, no structured activities, no requirements. It doesn’t have to be more than that, even on busy school nights. If Leo wants to build spaceships that whole time, that’s fine. If he wants to lay on the floor and stare at clouds through the window, that’s also fine. Third, when you do talk about it, name the learning that’s already there out loud. Instead of saying “that’s nice,” say “It looks like you figured out how to make the wall stand up straight even after the glue dried” or “You’ve been working on this for three days, that’s a lot of patience.” It helps them see what they’re building, too.
I talked to Mara again last month at the school carnival. Leo was running a lemonade stand to raise money for new wiring for his Mars habitat— he’d talked his uncle into giving him old broken solar panels from a job site, and he wanted to wire a little light inside. Mara was standing by the table, selling lemonade with him, with a little bit of lemon sticky on her sleeve. She said she still has days where she scrolls through Instagram and sees all the other kids her son’s age winning coding competitions and learning three languages, and she worries she’s doing it wrong. But now, instead of telling him he’s wasting time, she just brings him a glass of iced tea when he’s working in the garage, and asks how the life support system is coming along.
The frog hole is still in my backyard, too. We didn’t fill it in over the winter, and this spring, Lila saw a full grown frog sitting on the rock by the edge. Last week, I caught her laying on the grass next to it for 45 minutes, just watching the frog move. I almost went out and told her to get her math homework done, then I shut the door and let her stay. It looks like a waste of time, if you only count the things you can grade or put on a resume. But some of the most important stuff, the stuff that teaches you how to be curious and how to stick with something you care about, doesn’t look like anything much when you’re watching it. We’re still figuring it out, day by day, but so far, it hasn’t felt like a waste.
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