The Virtues of Down-Time

Sports, crafts, clubs, after-school classes, tutors...all of these follow each other in an endless hamster wheel of activity. Then, hours of school homework leave neither place nor time for leisure, genuine curiosity, or...boredom. 

With their lives being structured and over-organized by adults (parents, teachers, tutors, coaches) from a very young age and into high school, our children are missing important educational moments to spontaneously enjoy life, freely explore, thoroughly consider, and persistently reason on issues that excite and interest them. As a result, they learn to quickly become bored once adults stop organizing and entertaining them. This manifests in a variety of ways later in life, one of which is the immense challenge our children face once they enter college and must balance their life and studies. 

As parents, we want to provide our children with a well-rounded education, to expose them to as many different experiences as possible, and so we pack their schedules with activities. But it's important that we don't lose sight of the virtues of down-time so that our children have the space to answer the call of curiosity, find their own productive ways to overcome boredom, and to organize their leisurely activities around their own interests. All of these factors shape our kids' personalities, perhaps even more than any activities we can sign them up for.