The Case for Doing Less
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Independent Play, Boredom, and Why “Underparenting” Might Be Exactly What Your Child Needs
By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC
If you have ever felt guilty for not playing with your child, for letting them sit in their boredom a little too long, or for wishing they could just (for once) entertain themselves for twenty minutes while you finish something: this article is for you.
There is a growing movement in child development research and in parenting culture pushing back against the idea that good parenting means constant involvement. Terms like “slow parenting,” “free-range parenting,” and “underparenting” are gaining traction...not as excuses for neglect, but as correctives to a decades-long cultural drift toward hyperinvolvement that research now suggests is actively harming children.
This is not a parenting-shame piece in a new direction. It is an invitation to step back...strategically, intentionally, and with the research behind you.
What the Research Says: A Mental Health Crisis and a Missing Variable
Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents in the United States have been rising for decades. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association issued a joint statement declaring child and adolescent mental health a national emergency.
Researchers and clinicians have pointed to many contributing factors likke social media, academic pressure, the pandemic, fractured communities. But a landmark 2023 paper in The Journal of Pediatrics offered a less-discussed culprit: the systematic decline in children’s opportunities for independent activity.
Peter Gray (Boston College), David Lancy (Utah State University), and David Bjorklund (Florida Atlantic University) reviewed decades of evidence and concluded that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is the gradual but significant decline in children’s opportunities to play, roam, and engage in activities independent of direct adult oversight. Their argument is not simply that kids need more fun. It is a developmental and psychological argument about what unsupervised, self-directed activity builds in children...and what its absence costs.
The Gray, Lancy & Bjorklund (2023) Framework The researchers identify two key mechanisms through which independent activity supports mental health:
Conversely, as children’s lives have become increasingly adult-directed and supervised (more scheduled activities, less free roaming, less unsupervised peer play), their internal locus of control has weakened. They increasingly experience themselves as passengers in their own lives rather than agents. Gray, P., Lancy, D. F., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2023). The Journal of Pediatrics. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.02.004 |
This framework matters because it reframes what looks, on the surface, like a matter of parenting preference (how closely you supervise, how much you schedule) as something with significant developmental consequences. The question is not just what kind of parent you want to be. It is what kind of person you are helping your child become.
Underparenting, Slow Parenting, and Free-Range: What Do These Terms Actually Mean?
The terminology in this space can feel loaded. “Underparenting” sounds like neglect. “Free-range” sounds like a parenting style for people who make their own granola. “Slow parenting” sounds like a luxury available only to those with ample time and resources. It’s worth clarifying what these frameworks actually share...and what they don’t.
What They Share
A belief that children are more capable than modern parenting culture tends to treat them
A critique of intensive, adult-directed parenting as the default...not because love and involvement are bad, but because constant oversight crowds out something essential
An emphasis on giving children age-appropriate autonomy: the ability to make choices, take risks, experience failure, and solve problems without immediate adult intervention
Recognition that boredom, frustration, and difficulty are not experiences to eliminate, but they are experiences that build capacity
What They Are Not
Neglect or disengagement. The goal is not less parenting...it is more appropriately calibrated parenting
Abandonment of warmth, responsiveness, or emotional presence
A one-size-fits-all prescription. Children with anxiety, ADHD, trauma histories, or other vulnerabilities may need a different pace and more scaffolding before independence is sustainable
Permission to skip safety. Age-appropriate independence is different for a 4-year-old than a 12-year-old, and context matters
The Helpful Distinction: Involvement vs. Intervention Being an involved, present parent is not the same as intervening in every difficulty your child encounters. Research consistently distinguishes between:
The target is the second behavior, not the first. The goal is a parent who is present and warm and who trusts their child to struggle a little. |
The Helicopter Parenting Research: What Overinvolvement Costs
The evidence on overcontrolling, or “helicopter,” parenting has grown substantially over the past decade. The findings are remarkably consistent across studies and cultures:
Higher rates of anxiety and depression in adolescents and emerging adults whose parents were highly controlling (La Rosa et al., 2024; Carollo et al., 2024; Hwang et al., 2022)
Reduced self-efficacy — children who are frequently rescued from difficulty develop less confidence in their own ability to cope and succeed (Schiffrin et al., 2019; Sharma & Narula, 2024)
Weakened internal locus of control — children raised with intensive oversight are more likely to believe that outcomes are determined by external forces rather than their own actions (Kwon et al., 2016)
Increased social withdrawal and difficulty in social situations (Jiao et al., 2024)
Impaired decision-making and problem-solving, because the prefrontal cortex systems that govern these capacities develop through practice, not observation
In a 2025 study of Dutch adolescents, weeks with higher levels of parental psychological control were followed by lower self-esteem and higher depressive symptoms in the following weeks (Boele et al., 2024)
Research also points to a counterintuitive pattern: children interpret frequent parental intervention not as love and support, but as a signal that the parent does not trust them to be competent. Over time, they internalize this message.
None of this is to suggest that involved, attentive parenting causes harm. The problem is not involvement... it is the specific pattern of stepping in to solve what the child could solve, deciding what the child could decide, and managing what the child could manage. The “over” in overparenting is doing real developmental work in the wrong direction.
The Science of Boredom: Why “I’m Bored” is Good News
Few things activate parental anxiety faster than a child saying “I’m bored.” The cultural script is that boredom is a problem to solve... a failure of planning, enrichment, or engagement. The research tells a different story.
Psychologist Dr. Sandi Mann has studied boredom extensively and describes it as a cognitive state in which the mind, deprived of external stimulation, begins seeking it internally through imagination, memory, and creative association. Far from being an empty state, boredom is the precondition for a kind of thinking that busy, stimulated brains rarely get to do.
Researchers Karen Gasper and Brianna Middlewood (Penn State) found that boredom functions similarly to positive emotional states in one important way: it motivates approach behavior. Bored people, like happy people, reach toward something — they explore, create, and seek meaning. The difference is that boredom’s approach is specifically oriented toward novelty and self-direction.
What boredom builds in children:
Creativity and divergent thinking: unstructured mental space is where imaginative play, original ideas, and novel solutions emerge. The research on divergent thinking consistently shows that “minds that wander find” what directed minds cannot
Self-direction and executive function: deciding what to do with unstructured time is itself a cognitive task requiring planning, goal-setting, and initiation — core executive function skills
Tolerance for discomfort: children who regularly manage boredom develop a higher threshold for frustration and a more flexible relationship with uncomfortable internal states
Intrinsic motivation: when children discover interests through boredom rather than scheduling, those interests are genuinely theirs. Self-discovered passions have different motivational staying power than assigned activities
Identity: what a child reaches for when left to their own devices tells them something about who they are. Boredom is, among other things, an invitation to self-knowledge
The Child Mind Institute (reviewed 2024) notes that boredom also helps children build planning strategies and problem-solving flexibility, and specifically helps them develop independence rather than relying on external direction or entertainment. The key, clinicians note, is allowing children to sit in the boredom long enough for the creative response to emerge — rather than rescuing them from it.
A note for parents of children with ADHD: boredom is neurologically more aversive for ADHD brains, which have a harder time generating their own dopamine in low-stimulation states. This does not mean boredom should be avoided — but it does mean these children may need more support building tolerance for it, more interesting materials available, and more scaffolding in the early stages of independent play.
What to Say When Your Child Says “I’m Bored” The most effective parent response to “I’m bored” is one that acknowledges the feeling without solving the problem:
What not to say: “You can watch TV.” Screens end boredom instantly and permanently, which is exactly why they short-circuit the developmental process that boredom is supposed to initiate. |
Independent Play by Age: What It Looks Like and How to Build It
Independent play is not a switch you flip. It is a capacity that develops over time, with a parent who is available nearby (especially for young children) but not actively directing. Here is how it develops across childhood and adolescence — and how you can support it at each stage.
Infants and Toddlers (Ages 0–2): The Seeds of Solo Play
Independent play begins earlier than most parents expect. Infants given safe, interesting environments and a securely attached caregiver nearby will naturally orient to objects, explore with their senses, and spend meaningful stretches absorbed in self-directed activity. This is not neglect — it is one of the most important developmental experiences of early childhood.
What independent play looks like at this age:
Exploring safe objects with hands and mouth (sensory engagement is cognitive engagement at this age)
Babbling, vocalizing, and narrating to themselves
Stacking, dumping, filling, and emptying — repeated physical experiments that are genuinely scientific
Simple cause-and-effect exploration: what happens when I bang this? drop this? squeeze this?
How to support it:
Set up a safe, bounded play space with interesting but not overwhelming materials
Be nearby and emotionally available — but not directing, narrating, or constantly engaging
Resist the urge to intervene when your baby struggles with an object. Productive struggle is the mechanism of learning
Let them be absorbed. If your infant is deeply engaged with a toy, do not interrupt them to show them how it “really” works
Preschool Age (Ages 3–5): Imaginative Play and the Roots of Self-Direction
Three-to-five-year-olds are capable of sustained, elaborate independent and parallel play when the environment supports it. This is the age of dramatic play, fantasy, world-building, and the emergence of narrative imagination — all of which happen most richly when adults are not directing the script.
Research on preschool-age play consistently shows that adult-structured play, while valuable for some learning, does not produce the same outcomes as child-directed play in terms of creativity, self-regulation, and executive function development. When adults play with young children, children tend to defer to adult framing and lose the self-authorship that makes play developmentally powerful.
What independent play looks like at this age:
Elaborate pretend play: stores, houses, hospitals, adventures
Art and building projects that evolve over time with no fixed endpoint
Playing with peers without adult mediation (even when it’s messy)
Narrating their own play out loud — a sign of developing executive function
How to build toward longer stretches:
Start with 10–15 minutes and gradually extend. Independent play is a skill that builds incrementally
Offer open-ended materials: blocks, art supplies, dress-up, loose parts, play dough. These invite invention rather than prescription
Set up the activity and then step back. You can start something and then withdraw
Tolerate mess, noise, and imperfection. A child deeply engaged in imaginative play may not be quiet or tidy
When they come to you complaining of boredom, redirect warmly without solving: “I wonder what you could make with those blocks?” Then leave
Elementary Age (Ages 6–11): The High-Value Window for Autonomy
This is arguably the most important age range for building the habits of self-direction that will carry children through adolescence and into adulthood. Children in this window are cognitively capable of complex planning, sustained projects, and rule-governed peer play. They are also at exactly the age when modern parenting culture tends to ramp up structured enrichment activities, homework demands, and adult supervision — crowding out the independent time they most need.
The 2025 Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health (a nationally representative survey of 2,029 parents conducted in August 2025) found that risky outdoor play — activities like tree climbing, bike riding, and exploring unfamiliar areas — boosts confidence and self-esteem and helps develop problem-solving and risk assessment in young children. These are not incidental side effects. They are core developmental outcomes.
What meaningful independent time looks like at this age:
Neighborhood play without adult accompaniment (appropriate to the child’s maturity and the environment)
Long, self-directed creative projects: building, writing, drawing, making
Cooking or baking with real ingredients and real stakes
Reading for pleasure, chosen by the child
Peer play that children manage themselves, including the conflicts
Chores and household contribution done independently — not just supervised tasks
How to back off appropriately:
Let them be bored. The complaining is temporary; the creative response is lasting
Resist the impulse to fix peer conflicts immediately. Kids this age are capable of navigating social problems — and need the practice
Stop answering “what should I do?” every time. “I don’t know, what do you think?” is a complete and developmentally appropriate answer
Allow natural consequences for their choices. Forgot to pack a snack? That is important learning that no lecture can replicate
Let them fail at things that are safe to fail at. A failed recipe, a lost game, a project that didn’t turn out — these are not problems to prevent
A note on over-scheduling:
Multiple enrichment activities per week, homework, and structured family time can fill a child’s schedule to the point where independent, unstructured time essentially disappears. Child psychologists and researchers have found that over-scheduling prevents children from discovering what genuinely interests them, because they never have the blank space in which interests can emerge. Ask yourself: does your child have at least an hour of genuinely unstructured, child-directed time on most days? If not, that may be worth examining.
Middle School (Ages 11–14): Independence as an Identity Project
Middle school is when the developmental need for independence becomes both urgent and visible. Adolescents are wired to individuate — to differentiate themselves from parents and discover who they are. A parenting style that continues to provide the same level of oversight that worked at age 8 is working against the developmental tide.
This does not mean abandoning structure, expectations, or connection. It means adjusting the form that involvement takes. The appropriate parenting move shifts from directing to consulting, from managing to mentoring, from solving to asking questions.
What independence looks like at this age:
Managing their own schedule within family-set parameters
Handling their own social challenges and conflicts with peers (with parental availability, not management)
Taking on genuine household or community responsibility
Developing skills and interests that are their own — not parent-chosen
Making low-stakes decisions and living with the outcomes: how to spend free time, how to organize their room, how to manage a small budget
The parent’s job at this stage:
Be the stable, curious, non-reactive presence your tween needs to launch from. They need to know you’re there — not that you’re hovering
Ask questions more than give answers: “What do you think you’ll do about that?” is more developmentally powerful than “Here’s what I think you should do”
Let the natural consequences of their choices teach the lessons you would otherwise try to deliver through nagging
Notice and name competence: “I noticed you figured that out yourself” lands differently — and better — than “Good job”
High School (Ages 14–18): The Launch Preparation
The research on helicopter parenting’s effects is most pronounced at this stage and into emerging adulthood. Young people who have had their problems solved, decisions managed, and failures prevented throughout childhood arrive at young adulthood without the coping skills, self-efficacy, or internal locus of control they need to function. College counselors, therapists, and researchers have documented this pattern extensively over the past two decades.
Parenting a teenager well means giving them increasing latitude to manage their own lives — with your presence, not your control. The goal is not to let them fail unnecessarily, but to resist engineering their success in ways that undermine their confidence in their own capacity.
Practical applications:
Let them manage their own academic work. Your job is not to ensure they turn in every assignment — it is to be available when they ask for help
Resist the urge to contact schools, coaches, or employers on their behalf for problems they can handle themselves
Have explicit conversations about the difference between support and control: “I am here for you. This is your call to make.”
If your teen has never experienced failure because you’ve prevented it, consider whether a small, safe failure now might be protective against a larger one later
Connect what they’re doing now to who they’re becoming: not “Do your homework” but “What kind of person do you want to be about this?”
The Parent Side of This: Why We Over-Involve
It would be easy to read the research on overparenting and conclude that the solution is simply to do less. But that misses something important: the degree to which modern parenting culture has been shaped by anxiety, not just love.
Parents over-involve not because they are unaware of the research, but because stepping back is genuinely anxiety-producing. What if they get hurt? What if they fail? What if I’m judged for not helping? What if something goes wrong that I could have prevented? These are not unreasonable fears — they are the fears of people who love their children in a culture that has made intensive involvement the metric of good parenting.
The surgeon general’s 2024 report on parental stress found that approximately 41% of parents in the US reported being “so stressed they cannot function,” and 48% reported that most days their stress was “completely overwhelming.” One contributor to this: the pressure to be constantly present, engaged, enriching, and available in ways that were simply not part of parenting in previous generations.
Interestingly, the research suggests that giving children more independence is not just good for children — it is associated with lower parental stress. When parents are not responsible for engineering every outcome, they can relax into a different kind of presence: available, warm, interested, but not on the hook for every moment.
Questions Worth Sitting With If you are noticing patterns of overinvolvement in yourself, these questions are not meant as criticism — they are invitations to curiosity:
There are no right answers here. The goal is awareness, not perfection. |
Special Considerations: When Independent Play Is Harder
The research on independence and self-direction applies broadly, but children’s ability to access independent play varies. Some children need more scaffolding, more time, and more thoughtful structuring before independence is sustainable. This is not a failure — it is a developmental reality.
Children with ADHD
ADHD involves executive function differences — difficulty with initiation, sustained attention, and transition management — that make unstructured time particularly challenging. Boredom is also neurologically more aversive for ADHD brains. This does not mean independent play is inappropriate; it means it may need more environmental support: a well-stocked, interesting play space; a clear starting point (“Here is a project you could do if you want to”); and more practice with shorter stretches before longer ones become possible.
Children with Anxiety
Anxious children may find unstructured time genuinely distressing, not just boring. For a child whose anxiety is managed partly through predictability and control, open-ended time can feel threatening rather than freeing. Gradually increasing independent time, with explicit acknowledgment of their feelings and clear availability (“I’m right here if you need me, but I’m going to let you figure this out first”), tends to work better than abrupt withdrawal of structure.
Children with Autism
Autistic children may have specific preferences for independent activity that should be honored, but may also struggle with unstructured transitions or the social dimensions of independent peer play. Supporting independent play may involve more explicit preparation for what the unstructured time will look like, and clearer environmental setup. The goal is the same — self-direction, agency, and the developmental benefits of self-chosen activity — but the path there may look different.
The Important Distinction: Independence vs. Isolation
Independent play and healthy development require a secure base. Children who have experienced trauma, insecure attachment, or significant disruptions in early caregiving may not yet have the internal resources to tolerate independence in the same way. For these children, building the relationship first — ensuring that the child truly experiences the parent as reliable, available, and safe — is the foundation from which independence can later grow. Rushing independence in a child who lacks a secure base can look like abandonment, not growth.
When to Seek Support
Sometimes a child’s difficulty with independent play or unstructured time is a signal worth exploring professionally, not just a developmental stage to wait out. Consider reaching out if your child:
Cannot tolerate any unstructured time without significant distress, regardless of age
Has never shown interest in self-directed play, even in early childhood
Uses constant activity or stimulation (including screens) to manage anxiety or emotional discomfort
Struggles significantly with transitions, initiation, or completing self-directed tasks in ways that suggest executive function differences
Shows signs of depression, anxiety, or significant emotional dysregulation
Has experienced significant early adversity that may have impacted the development of a secure attachment base
These are not reasons for alarm. They are reasons to gather more information. A comprehensive evaluation can clarify what is going on and point the way toward the most effective support — whether that is parent coaching, therapy for the child, a formal diagnostic evaluation, or something else entirely.
Summer is often an ideal time to pursue this kind of evaluation or support, before the pressures of a new school year begin.
How Minds in Progress Can Help At Minds in Progress, we support children and families across the full spectrum — from questions about everyday development to more complex concerns about learning, attention, autism, anxiety, and emotional regulation. We also offer parent coaching and consultation for families who want support thinking through how to best support their child’s growing independence. Our services include:
Get in touch: minds-in-progress.com | St. Charles, MO |
References
Gray, P., Lancy, D. F., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2023). Decline in independent activity as a cause of decline in children’s mental well-being: Summary of the evidence. The Journal of Pediatrics, 260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.02.004
Yilmaz, A., Artan, I., Gurbanova, U., & Aliyeva, A. (2025). From the nest to the world: Helicopter parenting and challenges in young adult social integration. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1432859
La Rosa, A., Ching, B., & Commodari, E. (2024). Helicopter parenting and psychological distress in emerging adults. [Cited in FAU Thrive, April 2025.]
Boele, S. et al. (2024). Psychological control, self-esteem, and depressive symptoms in Dutch adolescents: A bi-weekly study. [Cited in PMC12331812, 2025.]
Carollo, A., De Marzo, G., & Esposito, G. (2024). Non-overbearing parenting and anxiety in college students. [Cited in FAU Thrive, April 2025.]
Clark, S. J. et al. (October 2025). Parent perspectives on play. C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, Vol. 48, Issue 2. mottpoll.org
Child Mind Institute. (Reviewed November 2024). The benefits of boredom. childmind.org
The Conversation. (December 2025). It’s more than OK for kids to be bored — it’s good for them. theconversation.com
U.S. Surgeon General. (2024). Report on parental stress. hhs.gov
Kwon, K. A. et al. (2016). Internal locus of control and intensive parenting. [Cited in Han et al., 2022, Sage Journals.]
Han, C. S., Brussoni, M. J., & Massé, L. C. (2022). Parental autonomy support in the context of parent-child negotiation for children’s independent mobility. Sage Journals.
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