I was asked by a visiting eleven-year-old today what the boarders can do on a Wednesday afternoon, I paused in thought. In truth, it is a valuable time in the week when our children can down tools and explore. Undirected. But do I acknowledge this? Were our prospective parents hoping that I would reel off an assortment of supervised activities, in line with the highly organised and stimulated daily lives young people lead. I took the plunge and explained that Wednesday afternoon is a time when our children have a precious two hours to enjoy the facilities, fire up their imagination and mooch. So not to allow for any silence, I then rattled off a list of pursuits the children could engage in out of the watchful direction of adults.
It felt out of kilter with society to be promoting unstructured time. So, I made the point that we are in danger of stifling our children’s imagination by not giving them space and time to think for themselves. It reminds me of two recent interventions on this subject. Lauren Child, author of the ‘Charlie and Lola’ picture books, and former Children’s Laureate, is a firm believer in making time for children: “children don’t have enough idle time to think on things,” she argues, suggesting that, “ideas are only formed when you have time to be idle, to think alone and be bored”. More recently, Jeremy Vine imparted a similar message. Recounting a day when he and his brother made a plane out of paper and then tried to escape their Prep School in it, he regularly emphasises the importance of boredom in children.
The joy of self-discovery, fashioning one’s imagination, downtime and self-directed play cannot be underestimated in developing healthy growth. We regularly hear of inventors stumbling across their moments of brilliance during unstructured times. Pockets of aimless doing, daydreaming and imaginative play do indeed fuel creativity.
Avant-Garde composer John Cage once said, “if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it isn’t boring after all”. I am not suggesting that a week filled with structure is unhealthy, but I fear we are missing out on flashes of brilliance in our children if we don’t allow them just some time to their own devices.
Standing at the Wykey drop-off earlier this week, I overheard a Mum call out to her children, “Boys, go and discover”. Brilliant. It reminds me of Nemo’s first day at school.
Wishing all families a happy weekend.
