Is My Kid’s Constant Doodling a Waste of Time? A Teacher Mom’s Experience
Last month I sat across from my 10-year-old son Leo’s 4th grade teacher in the school library, twisting my coffee cup lid between my fingers, while she gestured to the stack of his worksheets spread across the table. Every margin was crammed with half-finished sketches: stick figure dinosaurs, tiny dragons with googly eyes, rows of cartoon penguins holding numbers. “I don’t want to overstep,” she said, “but I’ve been noticing he draws through most of independent work time. I can’t help but wonder—isn’t this a waste of time? He could be finishing early, reading a chapter book, getting extra help with fractions if he wasn’t busy drawing.”
As a 4th grade teacher myself, I get the question. I’ve had a dozen parents ask me the same thing about their own kids over the years, leaning in across my desk during conference time: Is all this drawing just a distraction? Is it a waste of time that’s holding them back? I used to think the same thing, actually, back when I was a new teacher, and I’d take away sketchbooks from kids who doodled through my read-alouds. That changed when I got to know Leo.
Last fall, Leo got stuck on a week of long division homework. He’d slump at the kitchen table, stare at the worksheet for 10 minutes straight, and huff that he just couldn’t do it. One night I leaned over to help, and I realized he wasn’t just staring. He was drawing tiny 10-by-10 grids in the margin of his paper, shading in sections as he worked through each problem. He’d figured out how to represent division with the grids on his own, and he was using the doodle to work through the problem step by step. When I asked him why he didn’t just use the grid paper the school gave him, he shrugged and said “This is more fun. It doesn’t feel like work.”
A couple years ago I had a student in my class who failed every reading comprehension quiz for the first two months of school. She’d sit through my lessons, staring out the window, notebook open to a page full of doodles. One day I didn’t take the notebook away, I just knelt down next to her desk and asked what she was drawing. She showed me a comic strip that was basically a retelling of the chapter we’d just read, with all the main characters and the key plot points. I’d been asking kids to write one-paragraph summaries, and she was turning the story into a 10-panel comic instead. We made a deal: she could turn in a comic instead of a written summary if she hit all the points I asked for. By the end of the semester, her quiz scores were up 18 points, and she was one of the top readers in the class.
So when people ask me if doodling is a waste of time, I don’t say yes or no. It depends on how you handle it. Leo and I worked out three simple rules a couple years ago, and they’ve worked for us, and I’ve suggested them to a dozen of my parent and teacher friends, too. First: Doodling only starts after you’ve written down the assignment or listened to all the instructions. If you miss what you’re supposed to do because you’re drawing, you put the pencil down for five minutes and pay attention. Second: If we’re doing a hands-on activity or taking notes that need your full focus, the doodle notebook goes in the desk, not on the table. Third: If you finish all your work early, doodling is the first free activity you get to do, no questions asked.
That doesn’t mean it works every time. Last month Leo had a substitute teacher who didn’t know our routine, and he spent the entire 45-minute math period drawing a comic about a farting unicorn instead of doing the worksheet. He came home with a zero, and we had to talk about what happens when you break the rule. He still forgets sometimes, when he’s really invested in a new drawing. Last week he forgot to study for his spelling test because he was finishing a map of the school playground he’d been working on for three weeks. He got a B minus instead of his usual A, and he was frustrated, but he didn’t stop adding new secret spots to the map.
I get why we’re so quick to label any kid activity that doesn’t have a clear, grade-sized outcome as a waste of time. We’re all rushing, we’re all worried our kids are falling behind, that every minute they’re not checking a box is a minute lost. But that map Leo’s been working on? It has every spot labeled: where the best acorns grow for his collection, where the 5th graders hide to skip line for recess, where the rain drips through the playground roof so you can jump in the puddles after it storms. That’s not nothing. He’s practicing spatial reasoning, he’s writing, he’s processing the social dynamics of his school day, figuring out what parts of his day he likes and doesn’t like. The doodles aren’t taking away from his learning—they’re where a lot of his real learning happens.
Last night I was grading papers at the kitchen table, and Leo was next to me finishing his homework. I looked over at his worksheet, and every single margin had a tiny penguin doodled on it, each holding a different number from the problems. He turned it in, got 10 out of 11 correct. I pointed to the penguins and said “Those are really good.” He said “They help me add. I don’t get why everyone thinks drawing is a waste of time.” I closed my grade book, and grabbed my coffee, and said “Most people just haven’t met counting penguins yet.”
We still have days where the doodling takes over, where we have to reset and remind each other of the rules. Some days I still wonder if we should be stricter about it. But for now, the penguins are working. So I’m not going to argue with them.
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