Is Doodling During Homework a Waste of Time? A Teacher’s Practical Thoughts
I was folding up reading worksheets after after-school tutoring last Wednesday when Mia’s mom pulled me aside, voice low like she was sharing an embarrassing secret. “Can I ask you something?” she said, nodding toward 9-year-old Mia, who was already scribbling in the corner of her multiplication homework, filling empty space with tiny tabby cats with googly eyes. “Is this a waste of time? Should I be making her stop before it becomes a bad habit?”
I used to think the exact same thing. When I was a new 4th grade teacher 12 years ago, I had a strict no-doodling rule. Any kid drawing on worksheets got their drawing tossed, a reminder that work comes first. There was Javi, who drew tiny T-rexes in every margin, every worksheet, every spelling test. I sent three notes home about it in the first month. I thought he was just distracting himself, wasting time he should have been spending on the lesson.
Then one parent-teacher conference, his mom told me he’d been drawing that way since he was 5. If his hands weren’t busy, his brain would take off running to whatever caught his interest, and he’d forget what he was supposed to be doing. I didn’t believe her, not really, until I stopped managing his behavior and started just watching. A few weeks later, I let Javi draw during our silent reading time, as long as he answered the comprehension questions when we were done. He got 8 out of 10 right that week, compared to 4 out of 10 the week before when I’d made him stop drawing. That’s when I started questioning this whole “anything that isn’t writing the answer is a waste of time” idea.
Back to Mia: I stood with her mom by the door, watching her. She got stuck on 9×6, twisted her pencil, drew a little curly tail on one of her cats, frowned for 10 seconds, then wrote 54 down and moved on. When she finished the whole set of 25 problems, only one was wrong. That’s the thing, I told her mom: I’ve watched Mia for two months now. She doesn’t doodle the whole time she does homework. She doodles when she’s thinking, when her brain feels too wiggly to sit still on just one problem. She told me once, “My hand gets bored if I just sit and wait for my brain to figure it out.”
A lot of the stuff kids do that looks like wasting time is really just them self-regulating. We’ve all heard that multitasking is bad, but this isn’t the kind of multitasking where they’re watching TikTok and doing homework. This is small, low-stakes activity that takes up just enough of the extra brain space that would otherwise wander off to what they’re doing after dinner, or the game they played at recess that morning. For some kids, that extra busy hand keeps the wandering under control. For others, it’s actually a distraction—there’s no one rule, which is why the first step isn’t banning anything, it’s just watching.
The concrete guidance I shared with Mia’s mom, that any parent can try with very little effort: First, spend three days just noting when your kid doodles (or builds mini Lego towers before homework, or paces around the living room while memorizing spelling words, whatever thing you think might be a waste of time). If they only doodle when they’re thinking through hard problems, and finish their work on time with mostly correct answers, it’s not a waste. If they’re doodling through whole reading assignments and can’t repeat back what they just read, then it’s a problem worth adjusting. Second, if it’s working for them, just set one small boundary: give them a 2-inch margin on their homework, or keep a small 4×6 doodle notebook next to their desk, so they don’t end up drawing all over the actual assignment that needs to get turned in. That’s an easy fix that keeps everyone happy. Third, if it is distracting, give them a smaller fidget to replace it—something like a textured rubber band wrapped around their pencil, or a small foam ball they can squeeze in their lap. That still gives them the busy hand they’re craving without pulling their focus away from the work.
Mia’s mom said she’d never thought of it that way. She told me the week before, she’d made Mia put away all her drawing paper before homework, and Mia ended up taking 40 minutes to finish that same set of 25 problems, got 6 wrong, and kept saying her brain felt itchy. That line stuck with me: brain itchy. That’s exactly what happens when that extra brain capacity doesn’t have anything to do. It itches, and kids end up scratching it by daydreaming or getting up for a snack every two minutes, which actually wastes way more time than a few doodles.
We agreed she’d try the doodle notebook trick for two weeks, and we’d check in. Last Monday, Mia came in with a brand new spiral notebook covered in cat stickers, full of drawings she’d named after every multiplication fact up to 12. She finished her homework 12 minutes early that day, and we had time to add googly eyes to the cat named 7×8 before her mom showed up.
It’s easy to default to thinking anything that doesn’t look like “proper work” is a waste of time. We grow up with this idea that work has to look a certain way: sitting straight at a desk, eyes on the paper, pen only moving where it’s supposed to. But every kid’s brain works differently. What looks like a waste of time to us might just be their way of getting their brain ready to work. We still don’t know if Mia will still be doodling when she gets to middle school. Javi still draws dinosaurs in the margins of his high school notes, last I heard from his mom, and he’s still getting good grades. It works for him, so that’s all that matters right now.
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