Downtime and Taking Breaks

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I wanted to share this post about taking breaks and letting your child “do nothing” from time to time as a gentle reminder. With a child’s greatest potential for learning being in the first six years of life, it is easy to overdo it. We want to fit as much as possible into every last minute of our child’s waking moments and to make sure we don’t waste a single precious minute of this time. Unfortunately, the adage that “too much of a good thing can be bad” is very true, especially in this case. Studies on brain development and how we learn demonstrate why this is a mistake. We all need “downtime” (periods of idleness) to help us consolidate what we have learned.

Downtime is an opportunity for the brain to make sense of what it has recently learned, to surface fundamental unresolved tensions in our lives and to swivel its powers of reflection away from the external world toward itself.

Scientific American

Downtime and Memory

Jill Stamm, author of Bright from the Start, explains that filling every waking moment of your child’s day with activity is like cramming the night before an exam. You may learn a lot in a short period and be able to regurgitate what you learned in the exam the next day, but your retention of that information over the long term is very poor. How much from that cramming do you remember four weeks later? Chances are, not much. If you had studied that material over time with suitable breaks in between, you would remember much more.

Without having “downtime” (periods of doing nothing), the brain isn’t able to transfer what it has learned from its short-term memory into the long-term memory banks. A two-year-old learning new words at such a rapid rate needs “downtime” to transfer those new words efficiently into long-term memory.

Daydreaming is Productive

What was even more interesting is what we can achieve while daydreaming. It is often during those moments of mind wandering that we solve tough problems. When we’re driving on the road, taking a shower, or doing any semi-automatic activity that does not require the brain’s full attention, that is usually when our “Aha!” moments arise. Many epiphanies are often the result of subconscious mental activity while doing “nothing”. An interesting study from Science in 2006 supports this:

80 University of Amsterdam students were asked to pick the best car from a set of four. Unbeknownst to the students, the researchers had previously ranked based on size, mileage, maneuverability and other features. Half the participants got four minutes to deliberate after reviewing the specs; the researchers prevented the other 40 from pondering their choices by distracting them with anagrams. Yet the latter group made far better decisions.

Scientific American

It should be noted that the distracting task has to be relatively simple – such as solving an anagram or engaging in a routine activity that does not necessitate much deliberate concentration, like brushing one’s teeth or washing dishes. It is theorised that the right kind of distraction allows the subconscious mind “to integrate more information from a wide range of brain regions in more complex ways than when the brain is consciously working through a problem”.

Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the UUT. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

Psychological Science, 2012

Taking Breaks Boost Learning

An article from HuffPost explains how study breaks boost learning. Sometimes, when we’re trying to master new material, a break may be more helpful than continuing to slog away.

…researchers asked 35 adult study participants to memorize pairs of photos in two separate series. In between each series, the participants were given some time to rest and think about anything they wanted. Participants who used the time to reflect on the first series of photos, according to brain scans taken during the break, then outperformed themselves on the subsequent series. This was especially true in cases where minor details of information overlapped between the two tasks.

In the case of our early learning activities, we need to give our little ones time for their subconscious minds to make connections with what they have learned. Downtime allows them to consolidate what they have newly learned and link it with what already know (past knowledge).

Downtime Boosts Creativity

One group was lulled into boredom through the mindless task of sorting beans by color. The other group was given a more interesting task. The result? The bored group generated more ideas and more creative ones.

Forbes

The absence of external stimulation allows us to use our imagination and think in different ways. If we’re too busy receiving a constant stream of new information, we don’t have time to flex our creative muscles.

Downtime Recharges the Brain

If you have ever run too many programs on your computer and noticed that everything starts lagging and slowing down, this is an example of what your brain is like when you are overloaded with too much information. Being bombarded with too much information can lead to a reduced attention span. You might have noticed this when you have written an article and reviewed it for spelling and grammar errors. No matter how many times you re-read it, you can’t see the errors. After taking a break, you can spot errors you couldn’t see before. Downtime allows the brain to recharge its attentional resources.

Examples of Downtime for Children

• Sleep – this is the ultimate downtime and where more consolidation of learning occurs.
• Undirected play – allowing your child to play on their own without input from you or others (providing input to your child as they play falls under “directed play”.  For undirected play, you can fill the room with interesting objects and let your child investigate them on their own through “free play”.
• Hanging out – just lying around chatting and giggling and having fun together.
• Watching the world go by – sitting in a stroller or grocery cart where your child is free to let their mind wander.

When Children Need Downtime

Here are some of the signs when a child needs downtime:

• Babies will look away, refuse to follow your gaze (no joint attention), become wriggly/restless, whine, and cry.
• Toddlers lose the ability to focus on the task at hand, demonstrate aggressive behaviours, become hyperactive (frenetically running from activity to activity), increase in defiance, become cranky or resist bedtime, and have trouble falling asleep even though they’re tired.