Unstructured Time with Children a Powerful Parenting Tool

Lately, as mothers have asked me parenting questions, I’ve felt the need to share a simple message: It’s vital to push back against society’s busy expectations. This is especially true in carving out unstructured time with our children.
I learned this lesson many years ago. I had signed up my two toddlers for a music class. The same class, the same hour. It looked lovely. The teacher was lovely and the curriculum was lovely also. I thought, “What an ideal setup.”
Later I realized, “What an ideal migraine.”
While the other moms sat quietly, I bobbed up and down like a kangaroo — not to the music, but chasing after my children. (I didn’t know they had to stay in the circle.) Others languidly watched their children clap, hop, dig and even lunge in time to the music. I felt as if I wore a neon sticker saying “Major Mother Loser,” one who can’t get her children to dance on cue because she gave them cereal for dinner during one entire summer.
As I sat there confidently smiling, then stone-faced as I fought thoughts of duct-taping my child to the piano, I felt my self-esteem start to shake, then rattle and finally roll over and play dead.
Thankfully, a bludgeon to the head from a flying xylophone mallet brought me to my senses. I thanked the talented teacher, swept up my kids and said, “Park!” Off we went to a nearby oasis with blazing sun, blue sky and wide-open running spaces.
In “Ten Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Went Out Into the Real World,” Maria Shriver shares, “Kids teach you things about yourself you couldn’t learn on your own — lessons about patience and selflessness … My children have taught me to let things roll off my back …”
Mothers can feel validated knowing that learning does not only take place in an official setting. We bus children to soccer, piano, swimming and T-ball, certain we must give them every opportunity available. But more does not always signify better. Author Linda Sonna shares in “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Children with ADD/ADHD” that ADD children and especially boys need more unstructured play time, which releases pent-up energy that enhances their ability to be still and focus.
That being said, this is not a picket against structured lessons by any means. My daughter takes piano and voice, and she learns more than I could teach her. But perhaps talking to your child about what they like and how they want to do it may be enlightening. What may be missed in constant structuring is the chance for parent and child to learn life’s lessons in subtle ways.
As with all things, balance is the rose with the thorn. Whichever way is best for your family, parents can know that daily they are teaching and growing their children just by the quality time spent with them.
After that morning — running all over the park — I heard music in my children’s laughter and realized they were still living, loving and learning, even if they weren’t in an official class.