Brains Need Plenty of Quiet Time

A sign in my father's office read, ''Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.''

Ungrammatical, but it captured the essence of my father. My dad spent a lot of time thinking and planning, but he didn't hesitate to take the down time of ''just'' sitting and doing nothing. Dad understood what was good for him, as well as for all the grandchildren that loved to sit on his lap, and just sit.

Children need opportunities to simply sit, rest, observe, quietly explore and be. My dad understood a child's need for this quiet time. With our children we need to balance activity with tranquil and undisturbed time.

Our children today seem to be bustled off to gym class, to swim, to dance, to lesson after lesson to try to maximize their learning or, heaven forbid, prevent them from being bored. Instead of trying to cram learning with activity after activity, it is better to have an environment where children can explore, investigate and inquire with help from a guide. If a child is interested in looking at rocks, an adult to offer a bit of information by perhaps pointing out the different structure of the rocks--igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic--and then to retreat, offers the child the quiet opportunity to do further exploration, thinking or simple consolidation of new and old information.

A child's learning is deeper when it comes from within versus being crammed in by using flash cards, worksheets, questioning and on and on.

If we each look at our individual style of learning, we'll perhaps see that we learn best when we choose our activity, do it to our satisfaction and then have a period of rest or contemplation to unify our thoughts. My grandmother resisted numerous attempts to buy herself a dishwasher, saying that washing the dishes by hand gave her time to think. My grandmother enjoyed that half-hour to reflect on the day's events and to begin looking forward to the next activities.

Children's brains need this time to consolidate new experiences and then to choose what activity to do to create meaningful learning. By the process of selecting what to do, our children reveal to us who they are. With time to choose, learning becomes personal and powerful. Through their choices, our children are telling us their likes, their dislikes, their interests, their passions, their weaknesses and their strengths. It all begins with being quiet and having time that is unencumbered with activities that aren't evaluated, judged or prioritized by adults.

When we fill up our children's days with busy work that does not tap into the brain's powerful way to learn through quiet reflection and choice, we do our children a disservice.

Our children need this valuable unstructured time for contemplation and true learning. The brain for proper development needs quiet time, to sit and think and sometimes to ''just sits.'' One could say that a child and a child's brain need time on grandpa's lap.

Next Week: Noise Surrounds Us

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

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