Is Unstructured Free Play a Waste of Time? What I’ve Learned As a Mom and Former Teacher
Last Saturday, I was folding mismatched socks on the couch, glancing out the back patio every few minutes, where my 7-year-old Jax had been hunched over the same spot for 45 minutes. He wasn’t on a tablet, wasn’t doing the reading flashcards I’d left out that morning, wasn’t even playing with the neighbor’s dog that usually drags him around the yard. He was just stacking rocks. My phone pinged with a text from my sister-in-law, asking if we wanted to join a kids’ watercolor class next weekend, then added, “Poor kid, he’s gonna get bored just sitting out there. That’s such a waste of time.”
I almost agreed with her, honestly. Ten minutes before that text, I’d felt that familiar twist of mom guilt, thinking I should go out there, corral him in, and get that 15 minutes of reading practice done before lunch. When I was teaching 2nd grade, five years before Jax was born, I would’ve called that kind of unoccupied messing around a waste myself. I had a strict routine for free time, every minute filled with a literacy center or math game, because I’d been told that any time not spent working toward a clear objective was lost. There was a boy in my class named Leo who never played along. He’d pull out a crumpled notebook and doodle cars and skyscrapers from the start of free period to the bell, every single day. I’d mark him down for not participating, once even took his notebook away for 10 minutes because I thought he was wasting the learning time I’d planned.
A month later, we did a class project on measurement, where kids had to design their own dream building. Leo turned in a drawing of a 12-story parking garage, with accurate scale measurements for every level, ramps that actually made sense, and even a little coffee shop on the ground floor with correct seating counts. He’d worked all that out himself, while he was doodling through my planned centers. I’d thought he was wasting time, but he’d actually been practicing the exact skill I was supposed to be teaching, just in his own way.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked out to the patio to look at Jax’s rock stack instead of telling him to come in. He’d sorted 11 rocks by size, heaviest at the bottom, lightest at the top, and propped a flat shale rock across the top to shade the ant hill underneath. He told me he’d already gotten 12 once, but the top rock was lopsided and it fell, so he was swapping one out for a lighter one. He counted the rocks out loud for me, pointing to each one, and told me how much heavier the big gray one at the bottom was than the tiny white one at the top. I stood there for five minutes watching him adjust the base, and I realized I’d just watched him practice fine motor control, trial and error, basic weight comparison, and sustained focus – all things I would’ve paid for a workbook to teach him.
It’s so easy to call anything that doesn’t have a clear parent-approved or teacher-approved goal a waste of time. I still catch myself doing it. Last month I signed Jax up for a $120 kids’ coding class, because everyone says coding is a useful skill, and he spent the entire four weeks drawing robot doodles in the margin of his worksheet instead of following the class lessons. I was fuming on the drive home, telling him we’d wasted our money and our Saturday. By the time we got home, he’d cut his doodles out and taped them together to make a paper robot that moves its arm with a rubber band. He’d taught himself more about how mechanical parts work that day than he would’ve learned from the class’s pre-written drag-and-drop code projects.
What I’ve started doing, when I get that urge to label something a waste, is three small, easy things that don’t take extra time or planning. First, I pause for two minutes and just watch, instead of stepping in right away. Nine times out of ten, I can spot at least one skill my kid is working on that I didn’t plan for. Second, if I do have a required task waiting – homework, spelling practice, whatever – I tie it to whatever he’s already doing, instead of making him put it away. If he’s stacking rocks, I ask him to write his spelling words on little sticky notes and label each rock by size, instead of making him sit at the table to do a generic worksheet. He’s way more willing to cooperate, and it still gets the practice done. Third, I leave 20 minutes a day of free time that I don’t plan at all. No classes, no structured games, no chores, just whatever he wants to do. It doesn’t cut into our other plans, it just means I don’t fill every little gap with something “productive.”
Earlier this week, Leo, that 2nd grade doodler, posted a photo on Instagram of a public library he just designed in our old hometown. He said he still doodles through most work meetings, that it’s how he works through his hardest design problems. Today Jax added three new smooth rocks he found on our walk after school to his stack. It’s still standing, 12 rocks high, shading the ant hill.
I still have days where I feel the panic, like I’m not doing enough to get him ready, that we’re wasting afternoons that could be spent on soccer practice or flashcards. I don’t know if this rock phase will lead to anything big, or if he’ll lose interest by next weekend and move on to collecting bottle caps or something else that looks like a waste from the couch. But so far, it’s teaching me that time doesn’t have to check a box to be worth it. Some of the things that look like the biggest waste of time are exactly what a kid’s brain needs that day.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Is Unstructured Free Play a Waste of Time