Is My Kid’s Meaningless-Looking Play a Waste of Time? A Teacher Mom Answers
Last Sunday, I was folding fitted sheets at the dining table while my 7-year-old Lila hunched over a stack of blank index cards half a foot away. My mom had stopped by with chocolate chip cookies, leaned against the back of the chair, and nodded at Lila’s work. “Honey,” she said, quiet enough that Lila couldn’t hear, “isn’t that just a waste of time? She could be working her way through that new chapter book, or practicing those multiplication flashcards you bought, even drawing a picture that actually looks like something. One sticker per card? That’s just… nothing.”
I nodded along at first, because I’ve had the same thought a hundred times. As a former 2nd grade teacher turned part-time babysitter and full-time mom, I’m just as susceptible to the quiet panic that every unstructured minute is a minute wasted. Summer slide, reading levels, fine motor gaps—all of that buzzes around in the back of my head when I see Lila spend an hour doing something that doesn’t produce a grade, a finished project, or any obvious skill gain. For three straight weeks now, her go-to after breakfast activity has been peeling stickers, sticking one on an index card, writing the date and where she got the sticker on the back, and tucking it into a neon pink shoebox under her bed. She’s at 52 cards now. It looks like nothing to an outsider.
I remember thinking the same thing about Javi, a student I had when I was still teaching full-time. Every day during free choice time, he’d pull the jar of paper clips from the supply bin and sort them by size, over and over. I’d walk by, smile, and fight the urge to nudge him toward the reading nook or the block center, things I’d been trained to see as “productive.” After a month of this, I finally stopped and asked what he was doing. He pushed the sorted piles toward me and pointed: “The medium ones always run out by Wednesday. I’m counting how many we have of each so we know how many more to ask the office for.” He’d spent three weeks counting, categorizing, and identifying a problem no one else in the class had even noticed. By the end of the week, he’d taped a little hand-drawn inventory chart to the lid of the paper clip jar, and we didn’t run out of medium clips the rest of the semester. No one assigned that project. It just came from his weird little repetitive activity that I’d almost written off as a waste of time.
That memory popped back into my head Sunday as I watched Lila press a new unicorn sticker down with her thumb three times, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth to concentrate. I walked over and knelt down, tapped the shoebox. “Show me the newest one,” I said. She flipped right to it, the sparkly rainbow unicorn she’d gotten from the dentist the day before. “I wrote that I didn’t even flinch when they cleaned my teeth,” she said, pointing to the back. “This one’s my favorite because I got it with you after.”
That’s when I started sorting through the small, concrete things I’ve learned over the years about these “wasted time” activities. The first thing is: if it’s not cutting into non-negotiables—homework, bedtime, meals, the soccer practice they asked to sign up for—don’t interrupt it. I used to wander over every 15 minutes and suggest something “more fun” that I thought was more useful, and that just breaks their focus. Kids build way more focus stamina when they’re allowed to stick with the thing they chose, even if it looks boring to us.
The second thing is: ask one small specific question instead of redirecting. It doesn’t have to be a big talk. Just “Which one’s your favorite so far?” or “What’s the coolest thing you’ve noticed while you do this?” Nine times out of ten, you’ll find out they’re learning something you can’t see. Lila’s been practicing her handwriting on the back of every card, she’s counting how many she has from different places, she’s telling little stories about each one. That’s all the same skills she’d practice in a workbook, but she cares about it way more.
The third thing is: if you really do want to suggest another activity, frame it as an option, not a correction. Instead of “Put that away, it’s time to read,” try “We have 20 minutes before dinner—do you want to work on your stickers or play the new board game with dad?” It doesn’t dismiss what they’re doing as useless, and it still gives them control.
Of course, it’s not that every activity is useful, no matter what. If Lila was skipping her reading homework every night to sort stickers, I’d step in. But most of the time, the things we write off as wastes of time are just kid-led learning that doesn’t look like the learning we’re used to. We’re so used to seeing learning as something that’s assigned, that produces a result we can grade or hang on the fridge, that we forget most of the important stuff kids learn comes from the stuff they make up themselves.
My mom still teases me about letting Lila hoard all those sticker cards. She says the shoebox is just going to end up in a garage sale in 10 years. She’s probably right. But right now, Lila comes downstairs every morning excited to add a new card. She showed the whole collection at show and tell last week, and three other kids in her class started their own. Some days I still catch myself thinking I should fill her free time with more “enriching” stuff. I still slip up sometimes and suggest a different activity out of old habit, and I have to remind myself to back off. But right now, this slow, silly sticker collection is working. I’m still getting used to letting time feel “wasted” if that’s what it is. More and more, I think it’s not wasted at all—it’s just hers.
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