Why your kid needs to be bored this summer
Your child's summer schedule probably looks like a spreadsheet. Soccer Monday, art Tuesday, coding camp Wednesday, swim lessons Thursday, and if there's a gap, someone panics and fills it.
What if the most important thing you could give your child this summer is... nothing?
The boredom research
Boredom has a PR problem. It feels like failure — like you're not providing enough stimulation, enough enrichment, enough. But developmental psychologists have been saying for years that boredom is not a bug in childhood. It's a feature.
Dr. Teresa Belton, a researcher at the University of East Anglia, has studied boredom and creativity extensively. Her conclusion: children need time with nothing to do because boredom is the precursor to creative thinking. When a child has no screen, no scheduled activity, and no adult directing their play, they're forced to generate their own entertainment. That process — the frustration, the casting about, the eventual "I know! Let's build a bridge over that creek" — is where imagination, problem-solving, and self-direction develop.
A 2019 study in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity found that children who experienced periods of boredom subsequently demonstrated more creative thinking on standardized assessments than children who were continuously engaged in structured activities.
The screen problem
The average Canadian child aged 5–11 spends nearly 2 hours per day on screens outside of school, according to ParticipACTION's research. And only 28% meet the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity.
Screens are perfectly engineered to eliminate boredom. Every second is filled with stimulation — colours, sounds, movement, rewards. There is never a moment where a child on a tablet needs to figure out what to do next. The algorithm does it for them.
The cost is invisible and cumulative. A child who never experiences boredom never develops the internal resources to manage it. They become dependent on external stimulation. And when the screen goes away, they don't think "what can I create?" They think "I'm bored" and wait for someone to fix it.
What happens in a forest with nothing to do
Give a child a forest and an hour with no plan, and here's what typically happens:
The first five minutes are uncomfortable. They look at you. "What are we doing?" Nothing. "But what am I supposed to do?" Whatever you want.
The next five minutes are restless. They pick up a stick. Put it down. Pick up a different stick. Poke the dirt. Wander.
And then something clicks. The stick becomes a sword. Then a fishing rod. Then a bridge. Two kids start building something together. Someone finds a bug and everyone gathers around. A game emerges that nobody planned — it has rules that evolve, arguments that get resolved, and stakes that feel enormous to a 6-year-old.
This is what researchers call "child-initiated play" — and it's the most developmentally rich form of learning available to young children. It builds executive function, social skills, emotional regulation, and physical coordination simultaneously. No curriculum can replicate it.
What this means at Camp Howl
Our daily schedule includes structured activities — a morning hike, group games, nature art. But it also includes genuine free play time where the plan is: there is no plan.
During free play, the counselors are present (always watching, always counting heads) but not directing. The children decide what to do. Some days it's an elaborate fort-building project that spans three days. Some days it's 45 minutes of throwing rocks in a creek. Both are valuable. Both are the point.
We don't fill every minute because filled minutes aren't the goal. A child who comes home and says "we didn't really do anything, we just played in the forest" has just described the most important four hours of their week.
The counter-intuitive parenting move
Not scheduling your child's summer feels irresponsible. We're conditioned to believe that more activities, more structure, more enrichment = better childhood. But the research points the other direction.
The American Academy of Pediatrics published a clinical report in 2018 explicitly recommending that pediatricians prescribe play — unstructured, child-directed play — as essential for healthy child development. Not as a nice-to-have. As a medical recommendation.
Your kid doesn't need a busier summer. They need a slower one. One with mud, sticks, friends, and long stretches of time where nobody tells them what to do.
Let them be bored. Let them figure it out. Let them howl.
Camp Howl builds unstructured free play into every day. Ages 5–8, Stanley Park, 12 kids max. Register your interest →