How Kids Spend Their Time (And How They Should)

21:48Amy Wilson:Like these things all make sense. Oh, hi. Yeah. That's, I would take the other side of that because my kids would at least walk to school, walk home. Like you have to walk everywhere. Yeah, that's New York City, though. I think that that's a very specific anomaly. Yeah, yeah, so that's all the time. Like, I live in a suburban city area, basically, I would say. We get in the car, we drive to school, they go in the building, they come out. And now, I mean, obviously we know they've gotten rid of recess and all of this stuff, but huge factor. One thing I can say, I'm making some big, bold statements.

22:18Amy Wilson:Here's my next one. All kids should spend more time outside. All people should spend more, like, touch grass, right? Everybody should spend more time outside. Spend more time outside. And it's a reset that I'm going to make for my family as it starts to get cold here in New York. But I mean, we don't spend enough time outdoors. And we are mole people at this point. And then we go into winter, we become super mole people where we're just indoors all the time. And I am a very indoorsy person. When people say touch grass, there's little I hate more than sensation of touching grass. Like it gives me the willies, like little prickly spiny grass pieces.

22:56Amy Wilson:Walking barefoot in the grass, which people like talk about as the ultimate human experience, completely grosses me out. So I need this for myself and my kids need it. Gwyneth Paltrow calls that earthing. You have to walk barefoot. I'm not interested in earthing, Gwyneth. I am interested in flooring. In flooring and your sensible clogs, your indoor shoes. Flooring or couching. Those are my things. Yeah, of course, you've seen all those memes. They're like, here I am going on my grumpy midday outdoor walk to improve my mental health. and you don't want to go. And then you feel better afterwards.

23:29Yep.

23:30Amy Wilson:Yeah. And I think that it is really challenging to especially teenagers, you know, and they start to become us. Home from work, take off my pants, turn on my phone. That's life in 2025. And so it's another, I think, great goal to look at and say, and you can find a million websites and podcasts and people talking about how to spend more time outside. I think it's a great family goal. You could take one of those hours of screens. I will occasionally be like, we have a little outdoor furniture outside. I'm like, go sit outside on your screens. At least you're outside. But whatever it is, making getting outside a priority is important and it shrinks and shrinks and shrinks the amount of time we're spending outdoors.

24:20Longtime listeners of this podcast will remember the Danish baby concept, which was just our shorthand for during the pandemic. Just stick your face in the sun, your grumpy face on your back deck for 10 minutes in February because babies sleep outside in Finland and Denmark and they do great. So we were all Danish babies for a while. And then, yeah, we just put that away. Nobody wants to remember anything about the pandemic, but the Danish baby part wasn't so terrible.

24:46Amy Wilson:Yeah, the importance of just, and you know, when I have kids or people in my life who are struggling, I'm like, how much time are you sleeping? How well are you eating? And are you moving your body outside for 20 minutes a day? Like those are great touch points to start with. Put your face in the sun, move your body somewhere outside of your house for half an hour a day. And our kids are not doing this. And every year they're doing it less. And I mean, year by year, the calendar year and also age years. Year over year. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, when my kids were young, we went to the park every day, basically.

25:23Amy Wilson:I mean, having one of the things I really liked about having kids. So I'm like, we're going to the pumpkin patch for eight hours. I mean, my teens do not want to go to the pumpkin patch, you know, anymore. And so it's much easier not to take them. But it starts to become a story of like we are the mole people where we are all just inside and sitting on our phone. I mean, this is maybe one of those add something to the calendar. Like, OK, this weekend we are going to do this and they'll grumble about going to the botanical garden, but then they'll be fine once they're there. And if you don't put it on the calendar, then everybody just putters until it's getting dark.

25:56Yeah.

25:57Amy Wilson:And this is something that I think a lot of families have a natural set point of. And mine is somewhere where I'm not loving it. I feel like I look at my sister-in-law's family. Now she is a play-based educator. So maybe she's more oriented to this. But they're always, I mean, when they get together, they're like, who wants to go play volleyball? They set up a net in the backyard. They're just oriented towards what's the fun outdoor activity. and I feel like I am just so naturally a mole person. I'm like, we're already doing it. We're sitting around and watching TV and just getting outdoors. It's not an instinct of mine.

26:35Amy Wilson:I think sitting outside with a book is perfectly acceptable outdoor activity. But even that I don't do. I just, I like my coziness. If I'm on a book, my perfect book is like, I've got a mug of something toasty and I'm under a blanket on my couch. You know, I still I don't like the outdoors. I'm very indoorsy, I think is what I'm saying. But I want to challenge myself to be a little bit more outdoorsy. I think that's it. Just to underline that, if you go back and time track and you look at how much time your kids spend a week outside, the answer is probably going to surprise all of us on the downside.

27:11And then that's data that you maybe do something about.

27:13Amy Wilson:Then we want to talk about our other kind of North Star of time that is well spent that we might be under utilizing. And then it's time spent in unstructured play. This is for kids, obviously, but also this is why I do my paint by numbers. That's my unstructured play. It is time that I am using my mind. And there are two kinds of unstructured play, Amy. Quiet unstructured play. That's me doing my paint by numbers. and active unstructured play. That is me kicking the soccer ball around with my soccer team friends who exist only in my mind. I've never kicked a soccer ball around, but like going out and playing hoops in my driveway is active unstructured play.

27:55Amy Wilson:Doing my paint by numbers is quiet unstructured play. You know, I wanted to mention something that is completely true that we left out is that kids play differently outside. You know, studies have shown this. They're louder, right? When we talk about using your indoor voice, there's a reason we are louder when we're outside. They make bigger physical gestures. They're louder vocally. They're more free. And so that's another reason why it's worth playing outside is that kids play differently outside. So it's worth bundling them up and sending them into the yard. And I guess worth it for us, too, to have like indoor play, indoor voice play and outdoor voice play.

28:31Amy Wilson:Absolutely. And we've talked to a million experts on this and we can find some episodes and link to them. the disappearance of unstructured play is so profound. Let's define unstructured play for somebody who's new to the term. Unstructured play, and we will in our part three be going through this very, very specifically by ages and stages, but I am going to say that unstructured play is an activity that does not have rules and is not run by an adult. So it is play, whether it is an 18-month-old sitting with a pile of blocks and seeing if they can stack them and then knocking them over and squealing because look at what they did.

29:12Amy Wilson:That's a version of unstructured play. As opposed to sometimes we have the instinct to go over. Let me show you what you can make with these blocks. Mom makes it. It's play that is supervised, but it is not structured. It is the game of stickball that happens out in the street. It is two kids shooting hoops outside. It is three people playing Barbies and just in that world. It is not soccer practice. Soccer practice is structured play. There is a coach. He is telling you what to do. You are arriving at a set time. And I think that we have replaced a tremendous amount of unstructured play with sports.

29:54Amy Wilson:Sports are great in a lot of ways, but they are not unstructured play and they do not offer the same rewards as unstructured play. Sports are structured play. There's rules and there's a person enforcing and supervising the rules who is a supervisor. Yeah. And unfortunately, in the case of the adult, like I'm thinking about my kids used to do soccer practice when they were three and it really was just like, let's all kick balls around with other kids with very light supervision. But even so, if two kids started fighting or somebody didn't want to do this, there's an adult there to moderate that.

30:28And the argument is that kids need to figure out what to do with this ball and who gets to have the next turn without an adult deciding it for them.

30:35Amy Wilson:And that recess used to be very unstructured play, which had upsides and downsides. People were getting bullied. People were getting hurt. There were reasons why we started overly supervising recess. But now we've ended up at a place where there's much less unstructured play. So we're going to go through ages and stages of play when we come back. So I wore my new Zenni glasses the other night. My husband and my kids were immediately like, new glasses? Cute. Considering how much attention they usually pay to literally anything I wear, I knew my Zenni glasses are, as the kids no longer say, on fleek.

31:12The kids definitely no longer say that.

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33:35Amy Wilson:And now, summer life versus winter life. From the What Fresh Hell podcast, Summer Life. Honey, have you seen the kids? Huh, I guess they're still playing over at the neighbors. Winter Life. My children, I am literally begging you to stop talking to me and go anywhere else. Maybe you could go outside and throw ice at each other. Summer Life. I've been wearing sunscreen, but my legs still have that nice summery glow. Winter Life. Why is my skin sloughing off in patches no matter how much aqua for I put on? Summer life. I love summer because it is a great time to eat fresh and healthy and get plenty of outdoor exercise.

34:19Winter life.

34:20Amy Wilson:Yes, I am eating a chicken pot pie in bed in the dark at 5 p.m. And no, I don't need to explain myself. Summer life. Gosh, we've got our trip to Texas to see grandma. and then we'll drive up for a week to see your cousins almost right after we get back. And then we're off to the shore. Winter life. I was thinking we could go out to dinner on Friday, but they're saying an inch of freezing rain. So I guess we'll just stay in and watch shows we hate on Netflix again. This has been Summer Life vs. Winter Life from the What Fresh Hell podcast.

34:56Amy Wilson:So the Cleveland Clinic has a great guide to how play develops in children. And what kind of play develops with children? And I'm going to give you some examples. Children, babies start with unoccupied play. Rattles, balls, touching different textures, playing with blankets, just like basically touching and exploring. It's not active play. It's just basically exploring their world with their fingers, mouths and bodies. Then we have solitary play. I'm not going in age progression order. These are types of play that you'll see kids exhibit. Solitary play, shape sorters, stacking cubes, cardboard books, blocks.

35:39Amy Wilson:A kid, that's my 18 month year old example. A kid doing and exploring something by themselves, solitary play. onlooker play no particular toys are recommended but if your child likes a toy they see another child playing with you might want to get them one too so this is like i see this kid my kid looking at another kid playing cars i give them a car you're the onlooker but you're not driving the game let's make them race let's touch the cars together you're just kind of vaguely facilitating there's one dumb truck and two kids you might just put another truck somewhere in the vicinity of the second kid.

36:16Amy Wilson:Figuring it out. Parallel play, we hear this term all the time. This is two kids who are playing with blocks, art supplies, dolls, or cars. They're playing individually in the same room with the same toys. That's parallel play. That's like two to three years old. Yes. Very, very common. Like two-year-olds can't share, but they might parallel play. Yeah, they're parallel playing, but they're not like, my car and your car are in a race together. They're not really, they're playing in the same space and maybe they're banging the cars against each other sometimes, but they're not doing what is associative or cooperative play, which comes next.

36:55Amy Wilson:This stage focuses on socializing so parents can seek out opportunities for children to play with other children. Options may include a play date at a local park or a neighborhood ball game. If you can find a neighborhood ball game. Yeah, sure. You know, all those neighborhood ball games that are happening. But cooperative play is kind of the final stage of play that we all then enter into. And that's what play we think of, which is it's my sister and I playing Charlie's Angels. We're on our bikes. We decide which Charlie's Angels we are. And then we're driving through the neighborhood fighting crime by basically riding our bikes in circles.

37:31But I think it's important to say that like your kid moves towards cooperative play where they would rather play Charlie's Angels with the girl next door. than be in the house by themselves. But you might still come upon that same kid with their dolls later that night, like kind of talking to themselves and very lost in a world. And like, they learn these types of play in order, but then they can move among these types of play and they should. Your kid should be able to keep themselves occupied happily on the floor for half hour.

37:57Amy Wilson:Exactly right. And these types of plays don't replace each other. So it's not like, oh, I went to cooperative play, no more solitary play for me. Like you are still doing solitary play yourself when you're like spinning your pen in your hand later on. And kids on the spectrum, kids with ADHD, other neuro differences can struggle with associative and cooperative play and may prefer solitary play or parallel play. And it's just, again, something to be aware of. And so the lessons that come from cooperative play are vast. I did an episode with my sister-in-law, Christina Martin. We'll link to it, talking about the value of play.

38:40Amy Wilson:You're learning things in play that are like how to share, how to make roles, how to be cooperative. I was watching three kids at the beach this summer, and they had set up three chairs that were the bases, and they were playing baseball. And so if the ball went outside of the first base chair, it was foul. But then as it went sailing, they were fighting about well that wasn't foul that didn't actually go over that that went over the chair that was a fair ball no it was definitely foul they're doing exact I was watching them and I was like look at these kids doing life's work cooperative play like how do you work out my kids and their cousins invented a game called wall ball my least favorite of all the games because we have a large wall on one side of our very unusually shaped house and one is this giant wall with very few windows and they throw the ball against that side of the house.

39:35Amy Wilson:And then there's something about who catches it. And it's kind of like some version of squash basically, but it's played with their hands. It's kind of handballed, but it's called wall ball and they invented it. And it almost always ends in a fight. Wall ball. Like you cheated at wall ball, a game that doesn't exist that we made up our own rules for, but they constantly have to work out. Do I want to keep playing enough to let the kid who kind of cheats at wall ball cheat a little bit? Like you're figuring out so much of life by playing games. So how does this fit into time? Like that makes sure that somewhere in your kid's week, is it the more the better on structured play?

40:13Amy Wilson:It's that we have five to six hours of leisure time we established in part one, right? We are currently spending four hours of that on screens. What is being pushed out of that five hour circle by screens? I would say it's a lot of outdoor time and a lot of cooperative play. And so as you talk to your kids about how they're spending their time, are we looking at that? And you say, you know, you only have five hours of free time on average a day. You have more on the weekends, less maybe on the weekdays. How do we want to be spending that five hours? or with your little kids and you're thinking, oh, I let my kid watch a screen.

40:52Amy Wilson:All right. But as I look at how our time broke down, yes, we're spending three hours in cooperative play, imaginative play. We're spending time outside. It's fine for them to come home and then watch two hours of movies or maybe six hours on a weekend where I'm busy and need to catch up on work and I don't have care. It's just that knowing these things helps you make real decisions, whereas just kind of like every day is a mystery of crazy. That is, I think, where like the screens seep in and we lose the good time for the bad time. And it feels like I'm just a bad parent who does bad things. As opposed to the true story, I am a busy person.

41:33Amy Wilson:There is a gigantic industry trying to keep my kid on a screen as much as possible. And I want to change the way we are spending our time. And when I'm a parent of a young child, I have a ton of control over how we spend our time. And as my kids get older, they are going to start to have control over how they spend their time. And so I want to invite them into a conversation where maybe we spend a week saying, hey, let's spend a week, all of us, writing down how we spend our time. It would just be a fun, interesting experiment. And then also the conversation starts to become like, wow, I spent three hours this week playing Candy Crush.

42:16Amy Wilson:I would have said I spent half hour a week playing Candy Crush. Until you look at how you spend your time, you can't really know how you spend your time. And then I think your story can easily become life is chaos over which I have no control. Right. And I have no time. and I have no time right and this is how we started the conversation for ourselves as adults with Laura Vanderkam and other people we've talked about about spending time and it's worth it to do it with and for our kids as well and I think when we talk about screens we can talk about a couple of things that we've talked about that are antidotes for screen time so screens to me are like the water seeping through the leaks on the submarine.

43:06Amy Wilson:It's just coming in from all directions and you're drowning pretty quickly, right? And how do we start plugging some of those holes where the water is coming in? Here's what's working in my house. Number one, spaces and places for phones. We've slid back on this, but we were just talking to Dr. Jean Twenge about this And I'm like, OK, it's time for another back to one reset about this. We had forever in my house a no phone upstairs rule and no phones in the bedrooms. I am the number one failure at this, but it is something that I am trying. I have now at 930 at night reinstituted a phone turn in that I'm not going to lie.

43:47Amy Wilson:I am exempt from and I hide my phone and I bring it into my own room. But I do think no phones in spaces and places. I don't allow phones in the car while we're in the car. If we're on a long car trip and like, okay, let's for the first hour talk about what we're planning on the vacation. And then like after an hour, you guys can have an hour of phones. But just actively choosing phones as opposed to passingfully choosing phones. The number one way I find that we fix that is spaces and places with phones. Yep. And as Jean Twenge said, kids can be less resistant to this than we think or at least only resistant at first.

44:25because they, we, all of us need help with, the screen is always going to be more interesting than the real life happening around you, unfortunately. So you need a little help with that.

44:34Amy Wilson:Yeah, I need a lot of help with that. I am just like, whatever is going on on mother-in-law Reddit is more fascinating than my children's day. Please stop talking to me so I can get back to finding out what this lady I'll never meet's mother-in-law did at her wedding. Yeah, I'm terrible at this, Dr. Heald myself. I get it. The other thing is, I think, really mandating screen-free time. And mandating time around phones. And this is something that is going to be a constant back to one in your life. If our experience has anything to say about it. That's right. You're going to constantly have to be going back to.

45:09Amy Wilson:And I kind of fudged it in September this year because my kids are older. And I was like, we used to always say if the kids got home at three, four thirty with screens off. So like three, they would come in, have a snack, three thirty. that would give them an hour of screens after school. I always found that worked really well for my kids. I felt like my kids needed an hour of silence. Like I thought the screen time was actually good in that hour, basically. Now the problem is as your kids get older, this one comes home at four, this one comes home at seven, this one comes home at five, then this one has to go to work and this one has to go to scouts, blah, blah, blah, blah.

45:43Amy Wilson:But I think really making an active plan around screens, as much as I don't want to do it, I think it's something you have to do. Yeah. And as you said, as the kids get older and their schedules get more individualized, you're also able to include them in this conversation a little more. Absolutely. And then I'll give a last vote, as I often do, for scouting. My husband is the scout leader for our community and is very into it. But scouting or find other organizations if you need more help with this. There's a great phrase. Scouting is 90 percent outing. So spending time outdoors is not natural for us.

46:23So our kids do scouting. I have a scouting story. So I was at a family gathering and I have nephews who are scouts. And of course, some other like kids were there, friends, family friends, whatever, whose kids are not scouts. Anyway, my nephew, who was a scout, was visiting this house for the first time and showed the kids who lived there that there were frogs and worms and all kinds of things in the like, you know, edge of their house. their property that edged like a reserve, right? That there was like a wonderland right there. You didn't have to wander off and get ticks just right at the edge.

46:56Oh, I caught a... He was here for five minutes. Here were three kinds of animals. And just seeing these kids' eyes light up that that was all there in their literal backyard. Yep. But they didn't know. And it took this... This Boy Scout wasn't like, let me show you how to live your life. It just was his natural inclination. Right. Let's go outside and see what's out there. Yeah. It was a wonderland right there.

47:15Amy Wilson:One other thing I want to say is unstructured play continues for your entire life. And so there is an idea that like unstructured play and play is important for kids up until fifth grade and then life begins and you get serious. No more fun. My kids, I really encourage them like stranger things. Kids get on your bikes, go explore the town. Some of this is that we're taught that life is extremely scary and everything is terrible and someone has to be with them all the time. unstructured play. My kids being out on bikes and figuring out like, that person looks a little weird and they're coming over to us.

47:51Amy Wilson:What do we do? My God, it was an adventure. Unstructured play does not stop in elementary school. It should be a key factor in the lives of children through high school and then all the way into adulthood. That's why, Amy, tonight I'm going to do some of my quiet unstructured play when I do my paint by numbers. I'm going to do a puzzle and I'm going to think of you. Yeah. So spend a week, track your time. I think I might try to do it with my kids and really start to say like, is how we're spending our days, how we want to be spending our lives? Because Annie Dillard told me that is true. I learned a lot from this.

48:26Amy Wilson:Yeah. I really enjoyed researching this episode. It was cool. Please sign up for our newsletter if you haven't yet. In our newsletter, we send it once a month and then we send, you can tell us how your time tracking is going. Perhaps that'll be a part of our next newsletter. We talk about some of our favorite episodes, but also what else we're doing, reading, watching, listening to these cool new socks we found, whatever. We let you know what is making us happy in our lives. We send it once a month and you can sign up at WhatFreshallPodcast.com or in the show notes for this episode. There's a link you can click and sign right up.

48:56Amy Wilson:Go get that newsletter, people. And with that, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time. So long.

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