Intentionally Incorporating Rest
by Dr. Emily A. Snowden
A child leans on her caregiver’s shoulder in a restful moment.
It is incredibly important to expose children to a variety of developmentally appropriate experiences in their earliest years. We want them to interact with others, participate in events, try new activities and hobbies, have a variety of sensory experiences, see the world, and be able to encode what people now like to call “core memories.”
Though this may be a radical suggestion to some, I would like to add something important to that list of early experiences: rest.
Now, when I say rest, I don’t mean a longer-than-usual nap or even “resting” through a jam-packed vacation full of novel experiences. I mean sitting around doing absolutely “nothing” and letting that be enough.
Today, we have become obsessed with the idea of being productive. We must be on the move, making things happen, constantly in a state of doing or consuming. However, our bodies and natural human rhythms are worn down by this pace. We tend to forget–or perhaps disregard–the fact that to be productive we also need to have moments where our body-mind can digest and make sense of the experiences we have fed it. These periods of rest and reflection are vital alongside periods of exploration and excitement.
What happens when we deprioritize rest?
As humans, when we are constantly “on the go” and deprioritizing rest and reflection, everything seems fine at first. Maybe we’re a little tired, or we feel our body muster up an energetic spike to get us through it. However, when we finally take the time to rest, digest and integrate the experience, we recover.
From a neurobiological perspective, this return to our natural rhythms allows the nervous system to transition control from the “sympathetic” to the “parasympathetic nervous system.” This amazing and intelligent involuntary response to stress helps (and has helped) humans navigate and survive threatening situations. In this state, we can focus on surviving the stressful event. However, the compromise is that the body deprioritizes other things that lessen in importance in a survival situation (e.g., eating, reproducing).
Unfortunately, when we stay operating in this stressful state for an extended amount of time, we start to crash. Our bodies are just not made to sustain at that level. This “toxic stress” has a harrowing effect on both our bodies and our minds. In the words of Harvard Health:
“Over time, repeated activation of the stress response takes a toll on the body. Research suggests that chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity, both through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more) or indirectly (decreasing sleep and exercise).”
Living in this state of stress is harmful to us all. However, it becomes particularly dangerous for young children who are still rapidly growing and desperately need these “rest and digest” periods to support all aspects of their development.
Is it “lazy” or is it “rest?”
We often deny ourselves restful periods because we confuse rest with "laziness" and we don’t want to raise “lazy” children. Instead, we want children to willingly do their part in the world–both to take care of themselves and the members of their community. Attached to this idea is usually the concept of self discipline, which we often see as necessary to overcome our own lazy tendencies.
However, the definition of lazy—while marked by a lack of production—also importantly emphasizes an unwillingness to produce anything at all. Like all words, this can have both positive and negative connotations. For example, a lazy, rainy afternoon sounds relaxing. A lazy employee, less so.
A child draws a picture on a foggy window during a rainy day.
We don’t want our children to be unwilling to contribute to their community, especially their unique gifts and perspectives. To be successful in this, we have to learn how to do things we might not necessarily look forward to doing. In these cases, we muster up self discipline and get it done. It’s like taking the trash out—something that is likely not a favorite or enjoyable activity, but we find a way to show up and complete the task regardless.
However, as stated above, this mustering of energy should not be our constant state of being. Our bodies and minds need time and space to encode and integrate the lessons and skills we learn from these experiences.
As we enculturate our children, we have to stay aware of some of the areas we may be doing their biology and development a disservice. While this can come from more distant sources, like the blatant pushdown of K-12 norms in ECE at the cost of play, it can also happen when we are running our children ragged. Whether we have the best intentions or not, the impact on their development can be quiet but real.
What can we do?
As I’ve said before, we cannot make meaningful change if we become overly critical of modern parents and caregivers, denying them of their humanity.
Here, this means that we have to address the fast pace at which we are often demanded to live our lives. As adults, we are trying to work, pay bills, feed ourselves and our children healthy meals, get everyone to sleep on time, keep up with medical and dental visits, tend to our own relationships, keep our homes clean and organized, escort our children to a variety of extracurricular activities (that we also must pay for, of course), and more, all while we have constant digital access to the true horrors unfolding around the world. This wears on our bodies and our spirits, and our children grow up watching this and considering it “normal.” The challenge here comes in slowing this pace—even if just incrementally—so we can actually let rest happen for ourselves and our children.
Of course, much of this requires systemic support that US families are often lacking, like paid parental leave and access to affordable healthcare. However, on a larger scale, modern science is catching up to support this biological need for rest. Research on four-day work weeks (particularly the “100-80-100” model) is promising for both workers themselves and the companies they work for, with many studies reporting that these shortened work weeks actually increase productivity on top of supporting many personal benefits. These kinds of changes can become the norm for us and our children if we support them together.
However, while we rally for these systemic changes, we can create and honor these restful moments for our children, both in their general schedules as well as in the small moments throughout the day. To support this shift, I make three suggestions:
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Structured activities are adult-led and paced, while unstructured activities are child-led and paced. Though kids can of course “have fun” either way, the demands on their brains to be attentive, compose their behavior, and move at a pace they do not dictate can only be sustained for so long before their bodies and minds need a break. If we pack too many structured activities into their schedules, children unfortunately don’t have the opportunity to meaningfully engage in them.
When looking at our children’s schedules, both daily and more broadly, we want to identify when they have structured activities and balance that with unstructured time.
With larger events, especially in the summer, the recommendation is that “for every one week of intensive activity or sleepaway camp…children need three weeks of less-structured time.”
Similarly, when it comes to the moments we stack in their daily schedules, we want to make sure that we are patterning and balancing structured and unstructured activities in the day. Whether at home or in childcare, if we ask them to tightly follow a structured set of rules and expectations (e.g., Circle Time, tummy time, sports, games with rules, music lessons, project art), we need to balance that time with less structure and expectations (e.g., process art, free play inside or outside, a movie, free choice centers).
While the exact activities will of course depend on each child, their setting, their development, and their interests, this alternation between active and rest periods is an established developmental need for young children, and one that should be honored in their homes as well as any childcare programs where they are cared for.
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In the day-to-day, we can focus our energy on slowing down the pace in small pockets of presence and togetherness that we intentionally sprinkle in.
It’s particularly important that we engage in these moments like unstructured activities–meaning we interact with children without imposing any expectations on them (e.g., look at my eyes). My go-to in moments like this is truly, literally “look at what their eyes are looking at” and talk to them about it with genuine interest. These kinds of interactions not only serve to bond us with our children and create feelings of safety, but they also become key in helping young children learn to navigate stressful moments.
In my experience as a new parent, I find that these aren’t always planned. More often than not, I find I have to be led (or maybe forced) into these “nothing” circumstances. However, when we allow ourselves to steep in this nothingness for a bit, we have the opportunity to give children our full attention.
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When faced with opportunities to truly rest, we can actually be terrified of the boredom that may creep in. This is true both for ourselves and our children. I know my generation loves to joke about how continually consuming content on screens helps us “prevent thoughts from occurring,” however there is medicine in this nothingness and the associated boredom.
You see, boredom is linked to two important things–creativity and its very close relative, problem solving. This phenomenon, labeled by psychologist J.L. Singer as “positive-constructive daydreaming,” supports our mental well-being, giving space for innovation.
When we are steeping in nothingness, we have the wonderful privilege of figuring out what we will do with our time. This is when we lay outside and cloud gaze, naming the shapes and patterns we see in them as they pass.
Children desperately need these soft moments just to take in their environment. With this time and space to explore, they can experiment with the world around them and their impact on it. It is from this kind of nothingness that new things are created.
In the words of Dr. Estés, “art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
A toddler explores the properties of a pencil while freely making art.
Bringing it together
Today, we have an endless variety of entertainment and opportunities for learning that become overwhelming when unbalanced with time to just “be.”
Though we want to meaningfully expose our children to a variety of experiences, we need to also remember that rest is among the most important of them. In quiet, unstructured moments, we find time to bond, to create, to get to know our children as they get to know themselves. While it may seem counterintuitive, it is in these quiet moments that creativity, innovation, and problem solving abilities are born.
Now more than ever we need art, humanities, storytellers. We need inspiration and creativity. These things can come from many places, but an important one is when we rest and then play in the realm of boredom. This is an aspect of the human experience that our children deserve to know–the nothingness from where newness is born.
If we find that our children do not get enough of these quiet moments, we need to intentionally slow the pace and reevaluate their schedules. While it can be hard to move away from casting these moments as “lazy” or “idle,” we have to remember that rest is necessary to our mental and physical well-being. Beyond that, our children deserve these opportunities to know the world at its natural pace.
Today, I leave you with a poem: Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles
through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
Wild geese fly over a lake with a mountain range in the distance.
Additional Resources
(Mayo Clinic) Boost your brain with boredom. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/boost-your-brain-with-boredom
(University of Florida IFAS) Let ‘Em Play: How Unstructured Time Benefits Your Child. https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/fycsdept/2014/07/14/let-em-play-how-unstructured-time-benefits-your-child/
(Pathways.org) Parents’ Guide to Structured vs Unstructured Play (includes a Video). https://pathways.org/videos/parents-guide-structured-vs-unstructured-play
