Is My Kid’s Constant Doodling a Waste of Time? A Teacher’s Perspective
The mom folded her hands on the table between us, leaning in like she was about to admit something embarrassing. “He draws all the time. On every worksheet, on the margins of his math homework, even on the back of his homework folder. Is this just a waste of time? Should I be making him stop?” I pulled Milo’s most recent reading response out of the folder in front of me, and sure enough, the margins around three paragraphs about Charlotte’s Web were covered in tiny dinosaurs building a space station. One had a hard hat scribbled in green colored pencil, labeled “Foreman T-Rex.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d had the exact same conversation with my son’s teacher six months earlier, standing on the other side of that same conference table. My 10-year-old Jax had come home with a note saying he “wasn’t focused during independent work” because he was doodling all over his social studies handouts. That night, I found him drawing racing cars all over his history study guide mid-review for a quiz, and I lost my cool. I crumpled the guide up and tossed it in the recycling bin, told him he was wasting time throwing away his school work. He sat at the kitchen table staring at the bin, eyes wet, and didn’t say a word for 10 minutes.
Later, when I pulled it back out to smooth it out, I noticed he’d drawn little timelines of the gold rush right next to his racing cars, labeling each stop on the route the way the teacher had told them. He’d already memorized all the dates without even quizzing himself. That’s when I started paying attention, both to my own kid and to the 28 kids in my 4th grade class, to see what all this doodling was actually about.
What I found surprised me. Of the 11 regular doodlers in my class this year, 9 are hitting or exceeding grade level benchmarks in reading and math. Only one is struggling, and he’d be struggling even if he stopped drawing—his issues are with decoding text, not focus. I’ve timed independent work: doodlers finish in roughly the same time as non-doodlers, and their accuracy is almost identical. The difference is, doodlers almost never get up to sharpen their pencil, ask for a bathroom pass, or stare out the window daydreaming about recess.
A few years back I read a small study that said doodling uses just enough of your brain’s extra processing power to keep it from wandering off to more distracting things. If you’re sitting doing 20 minutes of multiplication problems that you already know how to do, your brain gets bored. If your hand is busy drawing little squiggles or dinosaurs, that extra brain space is occupied, so you don’t check out entirely. Milo told me once, when I asked him why he draws while he works, “My hand has to do something so my brain can think. If my hand just sits there, my brain starts thinking about my Lego set.” It’s that simple. It’s not defiance, it’s not disinterest—it’s self-regulation.
So what do I tell parents who ask me if it’s a waste of time? First, do a quick check: is the actual work getting done? Is the work legible, and are the answers correct? If the doodles are just in the margins, not covering up the actual assignment, leave it alone. No need to nag, no need to take the pencil away. If your kid is covering up their work, don’t ban doodling—just tape an extra blank page to the back of their homework notebook, or keep a pack of sticky notes in their pencil bag for them to draw on while they work. That’s a 30-second fix that costs almost nothing.
Second, if you’re still worried, test it yourself. One night, tell them no doodling during homework, time how long it takes, count the mistakes. The next night, let them doodle as much as they want, do the same. I did this with Jax after the study guide incident: same number of math problems, same difficulty. No doodling took 45 minutes, three wrong answers. Doodling took 32 minutes, one wrong. I’ve had a dozen parents tell me they got the exact same result.
Of course, there are boundaries. Doodling during whole-class discussion when we’re supposed to be making eye contact and sharing ideas? I ask kids to put their pencils down. Doodling on the desk or the library books? We clean it off and talk about what’s okay to draw on. It’s not a free for all. But most of the time, the doodling that parents think is a waste of time is actually helping kids focus.
Milo’s mom told me he even draws during family movie night. She said she worries he’s not even paying attention to the movie, that he’s just tuning everyone out. I asked her if he can recap the plot after, if he laughs at the jokes and talks about the characters later. She nodded and said he actually remembers more details than her older daughter, who sits and stares at the screen the whole time. That’s the thing—we assume if a kid’s hand is busy, their brain is idle. It’s usually the opposite.
Last week, I saw Milo at recess drawing a giant dragon on the blacktop with chalk. His mom waved from the pickup line, and she smiled when she saw what he was doing. I still catch Jax doodling on grocery lists when I bring him to the store, and I don’t crumple them up anymore. Sometimes I even draw a little flower next to his racing cars. Most of the doodles aren’t going to be anything special, just silly squiggles and dinosaurs and dragons that get thrown away when the notebook is full. They look like a waste of time if you’re only counting the things that look like productive work. But so far, letting them draw has worked for us. I don’t know what the next thing I’ll worry about is, but for now, the doodles can stay.
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