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[quote=Anonymous]I do think parenthood has become to subject to the same fallacy that "busyness=productivity" that the rest of American society has. Whether it's school or afterschool or weekends, a lot of people seem to think that if you don't have scheduled activities, you can't possibly be making good use of your time.

I agree with others that some kids don't get enough time being bored and having to address it themselves.

But to me the answer to that problem is not more activities (I'm not anti-activity, we do them just not constantly), but fewer screens. We have just put up with hearing "I'm bored" constantly for years, even though we could "solve" that issue with an iPad, and instead forced our kids to figure out ways to deal with their boredom without looking at a screen I think one reason our kids became strong readers very quickly once they were proficient is that they were bored and books rapidly became an obvious outlet. We've never let them have an iPad in the car even on long car trips but they could have as any books or podcasts as they wanted, and I think this zoomed them up in literacy more quickly.

So I don't think scheduling is really the central issue here. The truth is that much of what kids are scheduled to do is boring -- much of school is boring, many activities involved a lot of waiting your turn or focusing on a single skill that might not be that interesting. Unstructured time is great, but if it's filled with screens, kids aren't really learning to entertain themselves anyway.

So I guess I'd rather my kid have an activity every afternoon of the week than be spending time on an iPad or zoned out in front of the TV. I'm not really sure that being home with a nanny/SAHM or even playing outside with friends is THAT much better than just going to aftercare or soccer or dance class[/quote]

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