Let’s Indulge Our Kids in a Little Couch Rot

For the past 10 weeks, I’ve taken my toddler to a gymnastics class every Sunday morning. His level of participation is rather tepid, despite bribing him with a muffin afterwards from the coffee shop next door. So for 45 minutes starting at 9 am, I do a lot of gymnastics in hopes that my enthusiasm will eventually rub off.

We signed up for gymnastics because honestly, I wanted something to get us out the door on Sunday mornings that would help tire him out. Improvement of gross motor skills and having fun are also perks, plus we know three other families joining. Before we started gymnastics, we did swimming, and on Saturdays, he takes a year-long music class. When you take into account his full-day preschool from Mondays to Fridays, my kid has an activity scheduled every day of the week – and he’s barely three.

The Apple Never Falls Far

In many ways, my child is just like me. When I was in preschool back in the late ‘80s, I was featured alongside a couple other high-achieving toddlers in a local news broadcast titled, “Are we pushing our kids too far?” For a week, a cameraman followed me around to ballet lessons and (finger) painting class while a reporter interviewed my mom. The verdict on the program’s titular query? Maybe. And we were certainly an unusual bunch for the times.

Many of my friends spent their childhoods leading much less scheduled and arguably chiller lives. Some of them ran track, others sang in choir, and a few were even involved in Brownies and then Girl Guides, which took them away on camping trips some weekends. But rarely did they do multiple extracurriculars at the same time, and most of my classmates did nothing outside of school – at least nothing structured or scheduled.

Time to Get Bored in the ‘90s

Instead, a lot of kids in the ‘90s were encouraged to find their own fun. For some, this meant hours of playing Super Mario or building their own Sim City megalopolis after school. For others, free time was spent outdoors on bikes, skateboards and rollerblades. Kids around the neighbourhood would organize games of street hockey and Capture the Flag. Tween girls would get together to figure out the choreography to Spice Girls and Britney Spears music videos (I can still do the “Stop” dance in my sleep). Bottom line: kids in the ‘90s had a lot of free time to get bored – and to figure out how to get themselves out of boredom.

Contrast that with kids’ schedules today: filled with athletic practices, music and dance classes, volunteer experiences, and other pursuits to pad their college applications. Sports are increasingly serious and competitive at a younger age, and as a result, kids are forced to specialize in just one thing – so they have time to practice it three to five times a week – much earlier.

Millennial parents end up spending most of the hours outside of work driving their kids to practices and classes on weeknights, and accompanying them to out-of-town competitions and camps on weekends. Perhaps we’re scared that our kids will fall behind if they rest and what lesson will they learn if we just let them quit?

Alternatively, unstructured time and boredom also holds value. For one, it teaches our kids to be self-reliant and creative. Sometimes this unscheduled “free” time even leads to unlocking a talent they didn’t even know they had. Realistically, my kid doesn’t need to excel in gymnastics. In fact, we’re probably going to quit or at least take a break after this session is over. Maybe my toddler already knows he doesn’t like gymnastics as an extracurricular, and I just need to listen.