To Help Kids Find Their Passion, Give Them Free Time Kids need more space to explore weird pastimes and obsessions.
by Lenore Skenazy
Reason
December 2020
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A 2004 University of Michigan study calculated that between school and homework, kids were spending 7.5 hours more a week on academics than kids were 20 years earlier—and that's not counting the explosion of extracurriculars in the last couple of decades. COVID-19 has given them back a lot of free time and we've seen some encouraging leaps in independence, though the pandemic has also limited their freedom of movement and chances to interact with other kids in unstructured ways. But the general direction of childhood for the past two generations has been toward more and more time spent in organized activities.
Without free time, children don't have a chance to explore and expand. This isn't just bad for the kids. It's bad for the country, which loses out on the development of entrepreneurship and talent that makes all our lives better.
"The child is father to the man," poet William Wordsworth wrote in 1802.
It's a weird observation, but it's also true. We're kids before we're adults, which means our childhood selves have had a lot longer to influence us than our more recent incarnations. Our childhoods are the oldest, deepest parts of us. That's why it's so important to keep that time from becoming indistinguishable from adulthood.
It's obviously fine for kids to have some social obligations. But they also need the freedom to goof around and get something started, whether it's a project, a ballgame, or business. That's how they come into their own.
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