25 Reasons NOT to Keep Your Children Busy

1.) Books + Time + Imagination = Endless possibilities!

Want to raise a bookworm? Try interest-inspired summer reading instead of summer reading lists. Books come to life when read with our hearts, not just our minds!

2.) There are forts to be built, people!

It is in the nooks and niches we carve out for ourselves (even as adults!) that the world seems a little smaller, a little friendlier, a little less overwhelming.

3.) Boredom is the workshop of innovation!

This nine-year-old boy spent the summer kicking around in his father’s parts store, and this is the amazing result!

4.) Trees need friends, too!

5.) Busyness left us in the dark (a.k.a. the struggle for survival kept us in the Dark Ages!), but the dawn of leisure led to the Age of Enlightenment!

Chill time is prime time for a Renaissance Girl 🙂

6.) Children don’t need to learn how to learn. They need to be allowed to learn.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Albert Einstein

7.) Who has time to cuddle when you’re always on the run?

If you give a toddler a book

He’ll climb into your lap

While he’s in your lap

He might lay his head on your chest

When he lays his head on your chest

He’ll hear your heartbeat

When he hears your heartbeat…

8.) Downtime is uplifting when imaginations take flight!

Let’s pack happiness into our children so the baggage they take into adulthood is goodness, confidence, and kindness instead of packing bags of hurt, struggle, and loneliness that will weigh them down for life. ~L.R.Knost

200 Ways to Bless Your Children with a Happy Childhood

9.) Board games get bored when they’re ignored!

10.) Wonders of the world don’t discover (or invent!) themselves!

In the world of a child wonders are as simple as sticks and sheets, leaves and books, boxes and giggles, and the promise in a rainy day. The Seven Wonders of the World of Childhood

11.) Superheroes need time to practice their superpowers!

Successful reading means far more than possessing the ability to read. Engaging the hearts of students moves reading success beyond a life skill and turns it into a life style. And graphic novels are too powerful of a tool in our arsenal to be disregarded because of pride or prejudice. Raising Super Readers~The MARVELous Power of Comic Books!

12.) Playgrounds aren’t just for childsplay. Sandboxes can be soapboxes!

Children need to process, too!

Playground Confessions~Look Who’s Talking!

13.) Children discovering how fossils are made is great, but children discovering who they were created to be really rocks!

“Who am I? What inspires me? What will I be?”

Chatterboxes and Dreamers~Middle Childhood

14.) Someone has to take care of the zombie infestation!

While video game playing certainly needs to be monitored and in moderation, there is measurable value in it. “Early studies on psychomotor skills have demonstrated that videogame players have superior eye–hand coordination, visualization skills, and faster reaction times” which may result in advancements in micro-surgery, remote intelligence operation capabilities, etc. In addition, ‘zoning out’ so-to-speak, has inherent stress-reduction benefits that are harder to measure, but of value, nonetheless.

15.) Mad scientists and inventors need time and materials, not busyness and schedules!

My inventor girl with her first creations, a calm-me-jar ‘shaker’ (don’t know how calming that will be, but that’s beside the point, lol!) and a super dooper telescope that can see anything no matter how far away it is!

16.) “Never underestimate the value of doing nothing” ~A.A.Milne

On a Winnie the Pooh style ‘long explore’ my little Pooh Bear discovered the world in The Many Adventures of My Little Pooh Bear

“What I like doing best is Nothing.”
“How do you do Nothing,” asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.
“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say, ‘Oh, Nothing,’ and then you go and do it.”

17.) Summertime is Muller Time!

The human brain needs time to process, categorize, prioritize, analyze, and otherwise make sense of all of the trillions of bits of information that it receives each day. Non-structured playtime for children functions much like sleep does for adults, giving their brains the time and space they need to move short-term memory to long term learning.

18.) There are dragons to be slain!

“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be beaten.” ~ G. K. Chesterton

Fairy Tales~The Lost Treasure of “Once Upon a Time…”

19.) When would they have time to come up with all of their amazing questions?

“Why don’t monkeys wear clothes?”

“Why don’t we live on the moon?”

“Why does ice have to be cold?”

“Why can’t my frog sleep in my bed?”

“Why do we have hair?”

“Why don’t clouds come in my window?”

Why, oh why do children always ask WHY?

20.) Creators need their rest, too!

Children are creating a whole new life for themselves in this great, big, beautiful world.

21.) Children live to play, play to learn, and learn to live!

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”~Fred Rogers

Love, Play, Learn!

22.) Children are happiness experts.

Perhaps it is time for a return to childhood, to simplicity, to running and climbing and laughing in the sunshine, to experiencing happiness instead of being trained for a lifetime of pursuing happiness…perhaps it is time to let children be children again. A Return to Childhood

23.) The impossible is possible in the carefree moments of childhood!