“As American society reopens, going back to our children’s prepandemic activities looks like an enticing way to reintroduce upper-elementary through high-school-age kids to the outside world… But I suggest pausing before filling up their calendars again. We should not simply return children to their hectic prepandemic schedules.”
This New York Times opinion piece by Northwestern University professor of anthropology Shalini Shankar highlights the increasing pressure on young people to fill their schedules with organized extracurricular activities and invites caregivers to include more unstructured time for stress-relief and other benefits.
“For many kids today, scheduled time and down time on their screens are the only states of being. Paradoxically, scheduled unstructured time could address this. Cooking, reading a book, art projects and neighborhood walks are unlikely to completely replace screens, but routinizing blocks of time for these self-sustaining activities each day or several times a week could introduce children and teenagers to new pleasures, and at the very least invite calmness.”
