children and imagination

...just thought this was interesting and wanted to share it.

"Teresa Belton, a researcher in England, noticed something while reading a lot of stories written by children. They were boring and unimaginative. So she looked at their schedules and noticed they had very full, very exciting days. With absolutely no dead time. Which is to say, no time to daydream, to teach their minds to wander and imagine.

The problem with this habit, Belton says, is that it kept the kids from daydreaming. Because the children were rarely bored - at least, when a television was nearby - they never learned how to use their own imagination as a form of entertainment. “The capacity to daydream enables a person to fill empty time with an enjoyable activity that can be carried on anywhere,” Belton says. “But that’s a skill that requires real practice. Too many kids never get the practice.”

--summary found at worldmagblog

--original in-depth article found at The Boston Gobe