Oh, sweet Saturday morning. No plans. No rush. I’ve blogged before that I get anxious about downtime, only because I get that lingering feeling that I’m supposed to be doing something “productive”. And, yes, sometimes Olivia gets antsy when we have unstructured time, but I really believe that it is crucial for children.

I was a kid with a weekly itinerary. There was something scheduled for almost every day of the week, even Saturday mornings. I remember wanting very badly on some of those days to just not go. I think I can even recall a conversation with my mother when I asked to give up going to ballet lessons on Saturday mornings because we also had art school on Saturday mornings…. So, I just know from my own childhood experience that it really is important.

And I could take this into the subject of “free range kids” that has been floating around in the media recently. I love to see my son and his next door neighbor resort to creativity to come up with things to do. Claiming space between bushes as their “house”, actually picking up sticks… ha! Last week I looked out my front window to see Jackson and she with a pail of dirt and water, and a pile of weeds/flowers along side them while they dug in the flower bed next to my sidewalk. (no real annuals planted there yet, so they couldn’t do any damage.)

Here is a pleasant article from Highlights.com

Parents, Kids, and Downtime By Istar Schwager, Ph.D. – Highlights Parents.

Parents, Kids, and Downtime
By Istar Schwager, Ph.D.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
From “Leisure” by W.H. Davies

I remember how pleasant it was, as a child, to simply look out the window, daydream, and eventually meander into an activity or think up a project. Boredom inspired resourcefulness. Now many kids don’t have an opportunity to be bored. Today, children are spending more time in adult-supervised activities and less time in more leisurely pastimes. Some of the reasons are understandable–for instance, neighborhood safety and parents’ work hours. Yet lost, along with downtime, is the ability kids once had to organize their own activities, observe nature, invent games, form sandlot teams, draw pictures, read, think and dream.

There are lots of reasons why tranquil, unscheduled interludes deserve to be valued. We live at an age when input is constant–just about every store has music blasting, in case someone isn’t already plugged into his or her own headset or cell phone. Quiet time has become scarce. Yet kids and parents each need quiet moments alone to reflect on the day’s events, process experiences and imagine possibilities that extend beyond day-to-day life. Families need time to converse when there’s no place anyone has to rush off to. Children benefit from creating their own activities, alone and with friends–playing board games, staging spontaneous skits, and learning how to cooperate as well as compete in child-directed sports. That great observer of children, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, noted the importance of child-directed play for learning how to apply rules, consider what’s fair, and discover how others might see things differently. Those impassioned arguments about whether an out-of-bounds ball is a “do-over” actually serve a purpose. They help kids learn about social interactions and others’ perspectives.

Some studies show that parents fear that their children will get into trouble with unstructured time. Kids themselves are out of practice using downtime constructively. Of course, children benefit from well-run after-school programs, Scouts, sports, and other organized activities where they can interact with friends and learn new skills from capable adults. Yet there needs to be a balance. Children also need time to stop and stare. The ability to take pleasure and interest in one’s own ideas and imagination requires practice. Looking out the window has its benefits in developing creativity and resourcefulness … sometimes quite literally. In one of my favorite A.A. Milne poems, “Waiting at the Window,” the narrator names two drops of rain, then creates a pretend drama as they make their way down the pane. As he watches to see which will get to the bottom first, he imbues their contest with as much suspense as any episode of American Idol.