Is My Kid’s Constant Doodling A Waste Of Time? What I Learned As A Mom And Teacher
I tipped my 9-year-old Jax’s backpack upside down over the kitchen counter last Tuesday, and a shower of crumpled paper, a half-eaten cherry lollipop, and one very soggy cheese cracker tumbled out. Underneath it all, every single worksheet from the week, every reading log, every permission slip, was covered in tiny doodles. Each one was a Minecraft Creeper, each with a slightly different lopsided smile, some with tiny party hats, a few with hand-drawn googly eyes. Not 20 minutes later, a dad sat across from my desk at my 4th grade classroom for parent-teacher conferences, pulled out his 9-year-old daughter’s notebook, and asked the question I’d been asking myself off and on for a year: “Is all this drawing a waste of time? She does it during math lecture, during reading group, even during assemblies. I tell her to put the pen down and pay attention, but she can’t seem to stop. Am I letting her develop a bad habit that’ll hurt her grades later?”
That question hit close to home. Six months earlier, Jax’s 3rd grade teacher sent me a note asking if I could talk to him about stopping his doodling during reading group. I went home that night, leaned against the kitchen doorway watching him draw for 45 minutes straight while I waited for pasta to boil, and felt that familiar twinge of parental guilt. That 45 minutes could be used for extra reading practice, or multiplication flash cards, or anything that felt “useful.” What if this was just time he was throwing away that could help him get ahead later? I almost sat down and told him he had to stop after homework was done, that doodling was only for free time on the weekends. Then I got busy grading my own students’ papers, and forgot. That turned out to be a good thing.
A month later, I graded Jax’s end-of-unit math test. The last question was the tricky one that almost half of every 4th grade class gets wrong: a party has 47 guests, each table fits 8 people, how many tables do you need? Most kids divide 47 by 8, get 5.875, write down 5 or round to 6 without thinking through why. Jax didn’t just write down 6. He drew out every single table, 8 little stick figures in each, the last one with 7, and drew a tiny Creeper peeking out from under the last table. He got it right, and his work showed he actually understood the problem, not just memorized a formula.
That’s when I started paying attention to the doodlers in my own classroom. I went through last semester’s test scores, sorted them by how much doodling I see on their papers, and there was no real gap between the doodlers and the non-doodlers. If anything, the doodlers scored slightly higher on the open-ended questions that required you to pay attention to the lecture and apply the information. I remembered a low-key professional development session I went to a couple years back, where the presenter said that for a lot of kids, doodling isn’t distraction—it’s the thing that keeps their brain from wandering too far away. If your brain processes information a little faster than the teacher is talking, or you have extra energy that needs to go somewhere, doodling fills that small empty space so you don’t check out entirely. I thought about how I doodle little daisies on the margins of my meeting agenda every time we have a staff meeting, and how I still remember everything that gets talked about. I just need my hands to be doing something to keep my brain focused.
After that conference with Mia’s dad, I gave him three small, specific things to try instead of immediately taking her pen away. First, for a week, after homework ask her two quick questions about what she learned that day in the subjects she doodles the most. If she can answer you, she’s paying attention, and the doodling isn’t hurting anything. Second, if she’s actually missing information because she’s too focused on drawing, set a clear small boundary: the front half of the notebook page is for notes, the back half is for doodles. Or, you can doodle while the teacher lectures, but when it’s time to do independent work, the doodle pen goes in the desk until you’re done. Third, don’t feel like you have to replace after-school doodle time with extra academic work. If she wants to draw for an hour after school instead of doing extra flash cards, that’s fine.
He tried it, and texted me a week later. Mia could answer every question he asked about long division, the topic she’d been doodling through most. They set the boundary that the front of the page is for notes, and she’s adjusted to that easily. She got a B+ on her last long division test, the best score she’s had all semester.
I changed my own habits with Jax, too. I used to hover while he drew after school and subtly suggest other activities. Now I let him sit at the counter and draw while I make dinner, and I ask him about his day while he works. He tells me all about the story behind each Creeper, what their name is, what they like to do, and I get way more information about his life at school than I ever did when I made him do flash cards instead. Last week he finished a 12-page comic about a Creeper who wants to be a vet, with full dialogue and everything. I never would have gotten that if I’d decided his doodling was a waste of time.
I still have those moments, sometimes. Last Saturday it rained all day, and Jax sat on the couch doodling for three hours straight instead of building the new Lego set he got for his birthday or reading the new graphic novel he’s been excited about. I felt that old twinge, that question popping up again: is this a waste of time? I still don’t have a perfect answer for every kid. Some kids do get too wrapped up in drawing and miss what’s going on in class, and boundaries are necessary. But more often than not, the thing we think is just a mindless waste of time is actually working for our kids, even if we can’t see it right away. There’s a tiny doodle Jax drew of me, stirring pasta at the stove, with a speech bubble that says “I love you even when you draw on homework,” taped to my fridge. It’s not going to get him into college, I guess. But I don’t think that hour he spent drawing it was wasted.
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