CHILDHOOD
Organized Activities For Kids Are Not The Same Thing As Leisure Time
The Experience Of Children Is Often Overlooked When We’re Planning Their Leisure Time
It’s no secret that all humans need a degree of leisure time. We need moments when the pressure is off, and we can just kick back and enjoy something for what it is — activities with no long-term, side-hustle goals attached. We need hours that we don’t tell everyone about in a staged-to-not-look-staged Instagram photo — time without trying to impress anyone — enjoying something just for the sake of enjoying it.
Kids need leisure too. And sadly, they’ve been getting less and less of it. It turns out that what we think is leisure time for them, isn’t always a relaxing and pleasant experience.
A fantastic new study published in Childhood, A Journal of Global Child Research, found that not everything we adults think of as leisure time for kids counts as fun or enjoyable play to them. It turns out that for children to feel their time is leisurely, they need:
- Less focus on proper or effective approaches
- For things to be taken less seriously
- No far-reaching objectives or functions
- Not to be rushed
