We wake up, go down the stairs, proceed to the living room and turn on the television. Kids remain in the living room while I do the work in the kitchen.

That was our picture before.

It has been believed that we ought to keep our kids busy. In turn, we simply hand them a gadget or get them entertained through screen time. I have never seriously considered the opposite possibilities until I noticed something from Chantry whenever we get out from bed:

Upon leaving our bed with neither gadget to entertain her nor television to keep her eyes busy, I saw her gathering a few blocks that were left in the living room and began playing by herself.

Here comes the realization that that she is capable of getting herself entertained with the inner resources available even without the television turned on or a tablet on her hand. This is called “unstructured play.”

Unstructured play is different from unsupervised play. Unstructured play is when a child decides by herself to utilize the inner resources that she can find so that she becomes preoccupied with something to do. When a child is bored and is not trained with a constant screen viewing, that is when she can explore the world to imagine, invent, and be creative with all the tools around her.

The misconception is that parents ought to keep their kids busy all the time. Consequently, our goodwill is to interfere by providing them technological entertainment or a structured activity. But that’s counter-productive. We have unconsciously become the inhibitors to further sparking our kids imagination and creativity instead of allowing them to explore the raw stuff which is what life is made of.

The Society of Health and Physical Educators (Shape America) recommends that preschoolers engage in some form of unstructured play for at least an hour each day. Several hours is even better. Moreover, the American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes that children also need unstructured time to themselves without the engagement of parents for social and cognitive development

“Kids are born scientists. They are born curious about the world,” said Neil deGrasse Tyson, a world-renowned cosmologist about a child’s innate desire for exploration.

So now, whenever we wake up in the morning, instead of me turning on the TV, I just let my kids do what they want after doing what they ought to do first such as putting on their slippers and drinking a glass of water.

Boredom can instigate new thinking and prod our kids into trying new things. When we allow them to motivate themselves by providing no structured activity for an hour or more, that’s when they follow closely to the stirrings of their heart — their passion. That’s when they explore their inner and outer worlds, learn decision-making and problem-solving, develop fine motor skills, parctises math concepts — as they imagine, create and invent with what they can find nearby.