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ing their kids doing nothing while there is the housework to be done. Instead of leaving them in front of TV for too long they need the homework to keep them occupied." After conversations with chil- dren from all walks of life, one is left with the same feeling: the negative notion of 'free' time and the lack of it to begin with. Children don't enjoy any unstruc- tured time. There is no unpre- dictability. No surprises. Nothing that doesn't involve planning or instruction. Nothing that allows messing around and experimenta- tion. No quiet, self-reflection time either. In praise of boredom 'Free time' carries negative mean- ing because time in today's terms has been translated to mean money. Indeed, time implies something lin- ear, sequential, and distributable – a commodity that needs to be re- spected, used, organised, applied, followed. Time implies the meaning of filling up and emptying, of a begin- ning and of an ending; the necessity to start and finish; the framework of a factory mind, which must complete a task and a target. The failure to do so means total failure, wasted time, wasted life. As Marshal McLuhan points out, "money is a specialist technology like writing; and as writing intensifies the visual aspect of speech and order, and as the clock visually separates time from space, so money separates work from the other social functions". This is to say that free time implies wasted money, or, in a child's life – a wasted opportunity to acquire necessary skills that one day will translate into money. Two precarious dimensions stem from this allusion. The first one has to do with the tech- nological lives children live today. Tech- nologies, as Sherry Turkle says, drives life at a pace that makes people "reactive and transactional". One follows. Worse – one tries to keep up with the pace technologies dictate. This affects every- one, not just children. To overcome this, one should try and find one's own pace – children, too. Take moments to pause, to reflect, and to recuperate. Back-to-back activities, homework, and a mountain of task-lists, don't guar- antee future success. To begin with, one needs to define success. Curiously, children often suggest two versions - their own and that of their parents! One might want to make time to hear their version! The second dimension has to do with 'free time' itself – that sort of free time that borders with boredom. As any athlete would acknowledge, to perform well, rest is just as important as training. Free time is exactly that: time to rest and reboot. More than that, however, free time – time to get bored – can lead to creativity. "An idle mind will seek a toy", David Burkus writes in the Harvard Business Review. Boredom can take the mind to the cognitive tasks of generating an idea and exploring it as a need to escape boredom. Boredom allows one to take time for re- flection; to see; to hear, and to feel the sur- roundings; to pause, and consider different options; to change the rules, and the mean- ings of the things that, mechanically, due to lack of time, one tends to take for granted, and often follows blindly. Children are masters in finding new meanings to things, of being creative. Chil- dren will see the broom turn into a horse, the bed sheet – into a tepee, the folded white socks – into snowflakes. Adults must acknowledge such qualities, never disregard their necessity, and allow children more time to practise. Free time allows children to take charge of their own lives, even if it only means that they design their own Sunday afternoon. They become empowered to take decisions – what to play with, how to organise their time, how to distribute tasks among their friends or siblings. They learn social skills. They experiment with identities. In such moments, children become acquainted with their surroundings. They learn to ap- ply their own capabilities, qualities, and strengths. They connect with their own emotions; identify their drives. They also learn to deal with their own frustrations and weaknesses, too. This is not to say that children must be left unattended or neglected. This is to raise the thought of what might happen to chil- dren when they are overscheduled, when instruction pours constantly. This is to ar- gue that the overscheduled child can only take so much from the tools available to him. The digital device simply becomes an escape from reality, a place to collapse and surrender, not a place to explore, experi- ment and learn. The tightly structured lives they are wrapped in stop children from discover- ing their innate capacities; obstruct hearing their inner voices. Free time allows them to stop to think, to imagine, and also to re- charge. With free time, they can also find their own pace: A pace for how and what they learn; a pace in which they can figure out why they do whatever they do in the first place. In a way this will give them a lit- tle leeway to take charge of their own lives. Then they will begin to use the tools avail- able to them differently, too. Velislava Hillman is completing a PhD on the effects of digital devices on creativity and learning in children with the University of Westminster 17 News maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY 2017 BALLET, CATECHISM… FREE TIME FOR KIDS? Boredom allows one to take time for reflection, see, hear and feel the surroundings