Is Your Kid’s Doodling Or Hobby A Waste Of Time? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last month, I sat across from a 3rd grade mom in my cluttered classroom conference spot, the table still dusted with crushed Cheeto crumbs from the morning’s snack. She pushed her daughter’s math worksheet across the table toward me, and there they were: eight tiny hand-drawn cats tucked into every blank margin, one napping on a 7, another wearing a party hat next to the equals sign in 8 x 3 = 24. “I yell at her every night for this,” she said, leaning in. “She’ll spend 15 minutes drawing these instead of just finishing her homework. Is this just a waste of time?”
I didn’t give her an answer right away, because 10 years ago, I would have agreed with her. When I first started teaching, I collected crumpled doodles off desks at the end of every day, tossed them in the recycling, and reminded kids that work time is for work. Any minute not spent on the assigned task felt like a minute stolen from learning. I remember calling Javi’s mom in my second year, concerned that he spent almost every science period drawing Tyrannosaurus Rex in his notebook instead of copying notes about the water cycle off the whiteboard. She was frustrated too, and took his sketchbook away for two weeks. After that, Javi didn’t doodle anymore. He just sat at his desk, staring at his blank paper, and turned in almost no work at all that unit.
That incident stuck with me, so I started asking our school’s occupational therapist about what I was doing wrong. She told me something that changed how I look at “extra” activities kids do: for a lot of kids, repetitive, low-stakes activity like doodling or folding paper keeps the part of their brain that gets distracted occupied, so the rest of it can focus on the work you want them to do. It’s not a distraction—it’s a focus tool.
I pointed to Mia’s worksheet on the table between us. She’d gotten 11 out of 12 problems correct. The only wrong answer was a simple mix-up between 4 x 6 and 4 x 7, the kind of mistake even the most focused kid makes. “She’s still getting the work done,” I said. I told the mom about the rule I use in my classroom for kids who doodle: as long as your work gets done, and the doodles don’t distract your neighbor, you can draw. It’s not a waste if it’s helping you focus.
I’ve been on the other side of this question too, as a mom of a 10-year-old. Last year, my son spent every free evening folding origami dragons. He had a shoebox full of scrap paper, and he’d fold the same basic design 10 times in a row, tweaking the wing angle or the tail length each time. My husband kept asking me when we were going to encourage him to do something “more productive”—practice his clarinet, work ahead on his math, anything that showed up on a report card. I get the impulse. We all grew up thinking that every minute of a kid’s day needs to add up to something measurable. If it doesn’t get you a better grade, a trophy, or a skill colleges can see, it must be a waste.
But over time, I’ve come up with a simple, low-effort check I use now when I’m asking that question, and I tell parents to try it too. First, ask if the activity is actually getting in the way of non-negotiable tasks. Does your kid skip homework to doodle? Do they stay up two hours past bedtime folding origami, so they’re tired in school the next day? That’s when you set a boundary. But if they just do it after they finish their work, or while they’re listening to a podcast or a read-aloud, it’s not interfering. Second, notice what they’re getting out of it that you can’t see. My son figured out how to adjust a lopsided wing after 12 tries, no help from me. That’s persistence, that’s problem solving—skills we say we want kids to have, but we rarely let them practice them on something that doesn’t count for a grade. Mia told me a week after that conference that she draws cats because her family moved into a new house two months ago, and all her stuff is still in boxes, but her cats are always right there in her notebook. That’s how she works through big, messy changes, something an extra multiplication worksheet could never do.
The adjustment I suggested to Mia’s mom wasn’t to let her draw all through homework. It was a small, specific boundary: one cat after every three finished problems. That gives her something to look forward to, keeps her focused through the work, and cuts down on the endless drawing marathons that made homework run late. For my son, we agreed 30 minutes of origami after homework and clarinet practice is his, no questions asked. No ban needed, just a clear limit.
Last week, I saw Mia at recess, huddled with her friends, passing around a small notebook full of nothing but cat doodles, each one with a little name written under it. Her mom sent me a quick email a few days ago, saying homework fights have almost stopped, and Mia’s multiplication quiz scores went up 10% since they stopped fighting about the cats. I still have days where I glance at my son’s growing pile of origami dragons on his dresser, all stacked in a messy tower, and I wonder for a second if it’s a waste. Some days, when I’m stressed about his upcoming state tests, I even hint that he could spend that time doing a practice test instead. But then he pulls out a new design he made up himself, a three-tailed dragon with spiky wings, and walks me through how he figured out the new fold step by step. I don’t have a perfect answer for every time a parent asks me if something their kid does is a waste of time. Some things do take up too much time, and do need boundaries. But more often than not, the things that look like wasted time are just time kids spend learning how to care about something, how to solve problems on their own, and how to calm themselves down when the world feels too big. It doesn’t show up on a progress report, but it’s never wasted.
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