Is My Kid’s Unstructured Doodling A Waste Of Time? What I Learned As A Teacher Mom
The goldfish crumbs are sticky on my kitchen table, the soccer practice timer is ticking down from 20 minutes, and I’m halfway through a stack of permission slips when I lean over to check my 8-year-old Mia’s homework. Instead of the 10 incomplete multiplication problems staring back at me, the entire back of her blue homework folder is covered in cats. One wears a tiny tiara, another has a patch over one eye, and Mia’s pencil is moving so fast it’s barely visible, adding stripes to a tabby that’s almost as big as the folder itself.
“Mia,” I say, and I can hear the edge in my voice, “That can wait. Math first, doodles later.”
She doesn’t even look up. “Just two more minutes. I have to get the stripes right.”
I step back, my hand hovering over her pencil, and the question pops into my head that I know every parent has asked about something their kid is obsessed with: Is this a waste of time?
I’m a 4th grade teacher, so I should have the answer ready, right? For years I’ve had kids doodle through my read-alouds and note-taking sessions, and I’ve done the same thing every time: I’d tap their desk, nod at the notebook, and wait for them to put the doodles away. Waste of time, I thought. They’re not paying attention if they’re drawing. Then last semester I changed my mind, after a boy named Javi turned in a project for our novel study. Instead of the three-paragraph response I asked for, he turned in a full-page doodle of the setting, with tiny labels for every character and their motivations. It was more detailed and accurate than any written response I got that quarter. When I asked him why he did it, he said, “I can remember it better if I draw it. If I just write, I get stuck thinking about what to say.”
That stuck with me when I was standing in my kitchen that night, staring at Mia’s cats. I’d spent the previous week scrolling through parent groups, seeing all the posts about making the most of after-school time—coding classes, reading practice, math flash cards, every minute planned and productive. Any unstructured time spent drawing or messing around felt like a minute wasted, like I was falling behind on giving my kid every advantage.
But Javi’s project was still in the back of my head, so I didn’t take her pencil. I said, “Okay, you have five more minutes. Then we do math.” She finished her stripes in four, closed her folder, and got her math done two minutes faster than she usually did, no complaining. I realized that before that, I’d been interrupting her right when she was deep in focus, and she’d spend half the math session still thinking about the drawing she left unfinished.
I started paying closer attention after that. I used to assume doodling was just something kids do when they’re bored, but when I started asking Mia to show me what she draws, I found it’s anything but. She keeps a beat-up spiral notebook full of nothing but cat characters, each with a full backstory. She writes little captions under each one: “Luna the vet helps sick animals.” That’s spelling practice, she’s sounding out words she doesn’t know, without me asking her to do a spelling list. When she was stuck on fractions a month ago, she drew a birthday cake for Luna cut into eight slices, each for a different cat. “See mom, three cats got cake, that’s three-eighths,” she said. I couldn’t have explained it clearer with a textbook worksheet.
I’ve started bringing this into my classroom too, and I tell other parents the small, low-friction things that work for me, no big schedule overhauls needed. First, instead of immediately stopping whatever “unproductive” thing your kid is doing, set a clear timer and let them finish what they’re working on. It takes 2 extra minutes, and it means they don’t carry that unfinished focus into whatever you want them to do next. Second, when you’re wondering if it’s a waste, just ask one 10-second question: “Can you show me what you’re doing?” More often than not, you’ll find they’re practicing problem-solving, storytelling, or fine motor skills without even realizing it. Third, block off 10 to 15 minutes of unplanned, unstructured time every day that has no agenda. It can be doodling, stacking rocks in the backyard, chasing the dog, whatever they want. It’s not taking away from learning—it’s the time their brain processes all the stuff they learned at school that day.
Of course it’s not that simple. Some days Mia spends that 15 minutes just crumpling up paper and throwing it at the dog, and I still catch myself thinking, we could be practicing reading right now. Last week I found her doodling all over the edge of her math test, and I had to stop myself from marking it as off-task. She still finishes her work a little later some days when she’s deep in a drawing.
I still have days where I worry I’m not doing enough. I don’t have a neat conclusion that all this doodling will get her into an Ivy League or anything. But what I do know is that before I started asking if it was a waste of time, I was missing what it was giving her: a space to tell her own stories, practice focus, and work through ideas on her own terms. I still haven’t figured out every part of this productive vs unstructured time thing. But I’ve stopped asking “is this a waste of time” and started asking “what is this giving my kid?” So far, that’s been enough.
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