Beauty for Boredom

A Summer Exercise in “Free Play”

A friend recently told me about her sister-in-law’s “1990s-themed” summer. Her previous summer had been too programmed, so this season, she deliberately cut the extracurriculars. The family played more board games. They deliberately left margin for downtime.

As a child of the 1990s, I can appreciate the sentiment. Mine was perhaps the last generation that roamed freely. There was a good-sized group of girls on our street, and we would travel to and from different friends’ houses all day long. I remember very little adult supervision, other than somebody or other’s mother feeding us lunch or handing out the occasional Band-Aid. I do remember being required to phone home (from the friend’s landline!) to alert my mother when I had moved houses. But for the most part, we were on our own. We even had access to a state park that backed up to our neighborhood.

Free Play & Self-Management

Alas, no more. News sources for many years have commented on the change in childhood play. Instead of wandering the neighborhood, children are shuttled from one highly organized, adult-supervised activity to the next—sports practices, music lessons, camps, and the list goes on. When kids are home, they are increasingly plugged into screens. But more recent studies have questioned the health of such activities. Unstructured play, studies now show, fosters social interaction, cooperation, creativity, problem-solving skills, and much more.¹ Other studies have shown a link between adolescent depression and a lack of free play as a child.

Even more alarming are the findings of psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play. As a young scholar, Brown was the investigating psychiatrist in the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting, in which former Marine Charles Whitman indiscriminately killed 15 people and injured 31 others. Brown subsequently interviewed 26 convicted Texas murderers and found some chilling similarities. Most were from abusive homes, and most—including Whitman—didn’t play as children.² Writes Melinda Moyer in Scientific American:

Brown did not know which factor was more important. But in the nearly 50 years since, he has interviewed more than 6,000 people about their childhoods, and his data suggest that a lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults.

In short, children must be allowed the opportunity to manage their own behavior, to decide the use of their own time, and to work out their own disappointments and conflicts if they are ever to grow into adults capable of doing these things.

Benefits for All

I have seen the benefits of “unstructured play” for my own children this past summer. For many years, we have enrolled our older children in a variety of camps all summer. Boredom, I thought, breeds misbehavior. Bickering commences. My couch gets jumped on. People get angry and start throwing stuffed animals. It’s not pleasant.

But for a variety of reasons, we didn’t do that this summer. We took a few small trips, but for the most part, the kids had to work out their own entertainment.

I have to admit, even though I’ve long been academically aware of the benefits of unstructured play, I was hesitant to let it happen in my own family. But I was more than pleasantly surprised. We have four children, ages 2–10, and they played beautifully together. On many days, the older two spent hours playing Legos together in their room. Even my five-year-old daughter and her two-year-old sister could play house or dolls or doctor for at least an hour at a time, and often longer.

My children also demonstrated increasing ability to participate in what might be called “homemaking” activities. My oldest drove the lawn tractor over our acreage, watched his little sisters while I prepped dinner, and even did some light cooking himself. My five-year-old daughter’s weekend “chore” was to play with her little sister while the rest of us cleaned. In a pinch one day, I asked my older boys to make chocolate chip cookies for a family from church. They did so, elated. Nobody was injured. The house is still standing. The cookies were delicious.

Even more interesting—and this is something I fully did not expect—is that as my children demonstrated their ability to play together and take on more household chores, I had more time to “play” as well. I started baking my own bread. I learned to make tomato sauce from our garden tomatoes. I crocheted a baby blanket for my new niece. My kids were more helpful, and more capable, and thus my own time was freed up as well for homemaking tasks that I had long wanted to learn.

Toward Simplicity

All of this—my kids’ demonstrated abilities to handle themselves and my own increasing time to flex my creative muscle within our home—has made both parenting and homemaking a lot more pleasant. Don’t get me wrong—I fully enjoy parenting, and I also fully enjoy cheering on the sidelines when my kids are doing some organized activity or another. But perhaps it is time for parents to slow down, take a step back, and allow their children to simply play.

An unintended result, as I have seen in my family, may be that the parents, too, have more time. Family life may become less chaotic, less driven by the consumeristic need to be entertained. We might become more productive together. And we might reclaim some serenity and beauty in the family home.

Notes
1. Melinda Wenner Moyer, “Unstructured Play Is Critical to Child Development,” Scientific American (May 1, 2016).
2. Ibid.