It may not work well just to take our kids’ phones away or limit screen usage without something to put in its place. While each family has their own comfort level and belief system around technology usage, you may want to continue to monitor the balance. The advantages and disadvantages time spent on screens adds to your child’s life. When the time is over, what’s the takeaway? Was your child’s free time spent developing ideas, skills and aptitudes that will serve your child later?
Cal Newport talks about high-quality leisure activities. What do those look like for a kid? Most of us have lots of ideas for young children with the many opportunities for enrichment, but what about middle schoolers and high schoolers? I think for many of us, we can look to our own leisure lives. What do we do with a free day, a free afternoon? What curiosities do we explore? What skills might we learn?
For me, I typically take on a new skill during my longer working breaks. I’ve done this my entire life. I have an everchanging list of skills, projects and pursuits that I would like to explore when I have the time and support to be successful. The list might include such things as improving my Swedish, learning how to make sourdough bread, homemade kombucha or kimchi or improving my wok skills. Crafting projects such as embroidery, felting, knitting, doll making, or greeting card creation are intrigues. Art skills, such as oil painting or advancing my watercolor skills are on the list. Athletic skills such as pickle ball or salsa dancing will have their time. Travel skills such as learning about a new place or learning all the countries in the world on a map was a recent deep dive. You get the idea. It might be anything and everything that your curious about, knowing that you can learn absolutely anything given time and support.
I typically take on a bigger project over a longer vacation break, but a weekend is good for many skills. I gather materials ahead of time in the way of books, videos, courses, materials, etc. and that process primes the excitement for the activity to come. Sometimes I have to wait weeks to begin, but when the time for exploration comes, I am excited and ready to dive into the struggle stage of learning. Whether it’s wildlife photography or ballroom dancing, there’s usually some type of project involved or goal to reach in the real world and usually I partake alone, but sometimes with others, depending on the activity. When I look back on these undertakings, these skills and experiences make up some of the best moments of my life. Some pursuits have stayed with me for weeks, months, years or decades and others have briefly come in and out of my life. There are no rules, but instead I let “what I look forward to” guide me.
Do your kids do this? Do you? For me, this is the way I define a high-quality leisure life. Maybe your kids have an activity that they spend most of their time on without pursuing other interests. While that indeed may be your child’s most enriching leisure time, niching down can lead to burnout and a feeling of stagnation for some kids. Too many pursuits at one time can prevent our kids from mastering specific, desired skills and gaining expertise and instead leave them overwhelmed and lacking focus.
We can level-up life satisfaction and psychological health, along with continuing to build our children’s creative force by helping them to design a high-quality leisure life. Over the holiday break my 15-year-old daughter and I started to learn how to embroider. I bought a high-quality online course and the materials, and we sat down to learn. Each day we would learn a new stitch and then practice, following the course. Once our competence increases, we each have a proper project to complete. This was a wonderful choice for an activity we could do alone and yet together. She found it soothing and meditative, and she reported that it helped her focus. Sometimes we worked in silence, other times we laughed and shared stories with each other and other times we listened to music or watched television together. It’s an activity that we can continue to share even when we don’t work on it together and we can help each other with feedback and with personal opinions on the work we do. Leisure time can be a great equalizer between parent and child. Kids are frequently more skilled than us in activities that we haven’t spent a lifetime learning. Children can offer their expertise, support and guidance, which is highly empowering.
When my oldest son was in high school and college, I made a point of reading the same books he was reading for school. This enabled us to have engaging and focused conversations with one another while avoiding the awkward pressure sometimes felt during those years. Now in his mid-twenties, my son and I continue this practice, sharing books and podcasts with one another and discussing the contents. These shared, leisure activities with my children are one of the most enjoyable areas of my life.
This doesn’t mean that your child won’t use screens. Block out time to use screens, but also block out time for more substantial activities each day or week. Perhaps we can’t expect them to put down the screens when there aren’t any other interesting curiosities that they have the means to explore. In this process, we are helping our children learn to know what owns their attention and when we know where our mind is…we can make a conscious choice to engage in quality activities. Attention is one of our most precious resources and many of our kids are paying dearly. How do your kids spend their time? What is your child able to do after spending time engaged in leisure activity?
Happy Boldschooling!
