Is My Kid’s Constant Doodling a Waste of Time? A Teacher’s Observations and Practical Tips
The plastic chair across from my desk scraped the linoleum last Tuesday as Javi’s mom leaned forward, pulling his crumpled math notebook out of her tote bag. She flipped to the middle, and there it was: page after page of fraction notes, all wrapped around tiny detailed rocket ships, asteroids with googly eyes, and little aliens holding slice after slice of pepperoni pizza. “I keep telling him to stop wasting time drawing when he should be doing school work,” she said. “Is this just a waste of time, or is there something I’m missing?”
I’ve been teaching 4th grade for 12 years, and I get some version of this question at least once a month. Is it a waste of time that my kid spends two hours rearranging their rock collection instead of finishing their book report? Is it a waste of time that they watch Minecraft build videos after school instead of playing outside? Is it a waste of time that they twist their hair or tap their pen the whole time I’m helping them with homework?
I almost took Javi’s notebook away myself back in September, when I first noticed the rocket ships taking over his margin notes. I walked by his desk during a fractions lecture, saw the pencil moving across the page instead of on the notes I’d written on the board, and my hand was already halfway to the spine before I paused. I leaned down and asked him what 3/4 of 12 was. He didn’t even look up from his drawing. “Nine,” he said, and then added “the alien divides his 12-slice pizza into four groups, remember? You said that yesterday.”
He’d been paying attention. He just wasn’t paying attention the way I expected him to.
I thought of my own 7th grade year, when I spent every social studies class braiding friendship bracelets for my friends. My teacher sent a note home saying my fidgeting was a distraction to the whole class, and my mom made me leave all my string and beads in my locker before school. I didn’t suddenly start paying attention better. I just started daydreaming about what bracelets I’d make after school, and my test grades dropped 10 points that semester. Turns out, my busy hands kept my busy brain from wandering off somewhere it shouldn’t.
The thing no one tells you when you’re a new parent or a new teacher is that most of what we think of as “wasting time” is just a kid doing what their brain needs to focus. It doesn’t look like learning. It doesn’t look like productive work. So we assume it’s useless. But that’s not how every brain works. Some of us need to do a small, low-stakes side activity to keep the part of our brain that gets bored occupied, so the other part can focus on the hard stuff.
The first thing I tell parents who ask this question is to spend two full days just observing, no nagging, no intervening, and answer two simple questions. First: Is the required work getting done? Is it turned in on time, and is it about as good as you’d expect from your kid? Second: Is anyone else being hurt or distracted by this activity? If both answers are no, it’s not a waste of time. Full stop.
If the answer isn’t no—if work isn’t getting done, or the activity is distracting other people—I don’t tell people to ban it outright. Banning the side activity usually just makes kids hide it, or find a more distracting thing to do instead. Instead, try a simple, clear boundary. For Javi and his mom, we suggested letting him doodle while he does homework at home, but if he gets less than 80% on a quiz for two weeks in a row, they’ll try a 20-minute work / 5-minute doodle schedule instead. For a kid who watches Minecraft videos instead of doing their chores, the boundary can be “chores and 30 minutes of reading first, then you can watch videos.” If a kid doodles over all their notes so they can’t study for a test, give them a small 5×8 sketchbook to keep on their desk, so they can draw there without covering up their work. That’s a tiny adjustment that takes two seconds to fix, instead of a big fight.
I had a parent last year worried her son spent every recess digging a hole in the backyard of their house instead of playing soccer with the neighborhood kids. She thought it was a total waste of time. Turns out, he was testing how different types of soil hold water after rain, which was exactly the science unit we were doing that month. He brought in a whole journal of his notes for extra credit, and got an A. The thing that looked like just digging a hole was his way of exploring what he’d learned in class, on his own time.
After Javi’s conference, his mom still looked a little skeptical. She said she’d spent years nagging him to stop drawing during work, and it was hard to just let it go. She said she’d try, though. Last week, Javi brought in a six-page comic he drew about our fraction unit, where the alien crew splits their space snacks equally to avoid fighting. I taped it to our classroom bulletin board by the door, and half the class crowded around to read it after morning announcements.
I still don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer to the question “is this a waste of time.” Sometimes it is. I’ve had kids who use doodling or fidget toys to avoid doing hard work altogether, and we have to adjust the boundaries when that happens. Some days Javi gets so wrapped up in drawing a new rocket that he forgets to write down the homework assignment, and I have to remind him to look at the board. It’s not perfect.
But I’ve stopped assuming that any activity that doesn’t look like learning on the surface is automatically useless. We spend so much time as parents and teachers trying to fill every minute with something that counts, something that feels productive. But a lot of the time, the “wasted” minutes are the ones where kids are doing their best learning. For right now, Javi still draws rocket ships in his math notebook. His fractions grades are still solid. And the doodling keeps him busy enough that he doesn’t bother the kid next to him anymore. That’s a win for everyone, I think.
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