Every May, without fail, someone asks:
“Will you run a summer camp this year?”
And every May, my answer is the same:
No.
Not because I lack “business sense”—
But because it doesn’t make developmental sense.
As educators, we don’t follow seasonal trends.
We follow the science of the developing brain.
And neuroscience is clear:
After months of emotional growth, exploration, problem-solving, and social regulation, the brain needs rest.
It needs sleep. Slowness. Boredom. Unstructured play.
These aren’t luxuries—they are critical for consolidation, for learning to settle, for connections to deepen.
Because the brain doesn’t grow only in moments of input.
It grows exponentially in the pause.
In the quiet.
In the boredom that births imagination.
Children need:
Slow mornings
Lazy afternoons
The time to be bored, to get frustrated, to figure it out
Time to water plants, visit family, climb trees, eat slow meals, laugh at silly jokes, and do absolutely nothing
In a world that tells them to be “busy” or at least appear busy,
Let’s teach them how to be.
Because if we want to raise thinkers, creators, emotionally secure and self-directed children—
We need to offer them something that the world has forgotten how to give:
Down time. Boredom. Stillness. Space.
This is not a guilt trip for working parents. I was (and am) one too.
This is simply an invitation to consider that doing less may actually give your child more.
Here’s what I did with my daughters when they were preschoolers, while I worked full-time:
We travelled—to farms, hikes, forest trails. Not fancy, just real.
while I worked, they joined whatever the conveninece of a condo living offered – swimming, jhoola parks, skating in the stilt parking — not to win medals, but to move, breathe, and be
They tried horse riding—not for sport, but to learn care and love for animals.
They dabbled in music—not to perform, but to play and tinker with sound.
We read. Again and again and again. And we put every book through the lens of philosophy.
And they played. All day long. Indoors. Outdoors. In lift lobbies. Was the house a noisy mess? I was willing to overlook that because while I worked, the joy of listening to their laughter in the background and being interrupted on every zoom call is priceless and I know I will soon miss these summers.
Today, they ride competitively. They sing and dance and play multiple instruments—many of them self-taught. They are voracious readers. Self taught artists and gymnasts. And boy do they negotiate – with such calm and articulated thoughts as though they were born to be professional negotiators in a high risk kidnapping situation.
Why am I sharing all this with you?
So when the world offers you FOMO,
I want to offer you HOPE.
That sooner is not always better.
That faster doesn’t mean deeper.
That doing “nothing” might actually be everything.
Let’s raise children who know how to be.
Because that, too, is a skill—
And the most radical one we can gift them.
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