{Originally posted on The Hip Mom’s Guide.}

When I was a girl, I used to spend a couple of weeks each summer with my grandparents. Most mornings, after making me breakfast, my grandmother sent me outside to play while she began her daily chores. It seemed like she was forever folding laundry and vacuuming her living room floor. There weren’t many other children in the village where she lived, so I spent long hours figuring out how to amuse myself. One of my favorite activities, on a hot summer afternoon, was to gather my books from the library and read in the shade beneath the giant oak tree at the entrance to her neighborhood. I loved to watch the cars go by; I remember wondering who all of those people were and where they were all going. Did they wonder about me, too? Thirty years later those memories are strong: I can still feel the cool grass under my bare little legs and see the sun peeking through the thick leaves above.

By the time my children came along, kids’ summers were filled with camps of every sort. Basketball camp, swim club camp, any-activity-you-can-name camp. What startled me about all of these choices wasn’t really that they existed, but how many children were enrolled in them from the youngest of ages. At first I resisted the peer pressure, partly because in addition to my three-year old, I also had an infant; partly because these camps cost a lot of money; and partly because it just didn’t seem right to book my three-year old son’s summer chock full of organized activities. Didn’t he get enough of that during the pre-school year?

But slowly, and surely, I started down the slippery slope of enrollment. “Oh, what’s one little camp,” I thought. “His friends are all doing it; he’ll love it.” And he did. But one camp turned to two, then two kids turned to three, and before I knew what hit me I found myself living out of a mini-van and shuttling three boys from ocean camp to soccer camp to crime-science investigation camp. A mini-van was most definitely not where I wanted to spend my summer.

And so I decided: our summers will be different. They will be slow. My children will be bored. They will have to learn to play b-o-r-e-d games with one another, even though the youngest can’t add yet and the oldest insists on proper rules. And I will have to practice patience, again and again, while explaining once more why they aren’t enrolled in the Greatest Camps on Earth. But the trade-off is that they get to enjoy summers like I did: figuring out fun for themselves. They get to take long walks in the woods, check out hundreds of books from the library, and gorge themselves on s’mores roasted over the firepit during our summertime outside movie extravaganza.

And why? Other than long walks and s’mores by the fire, what do we gain from my insistence on this slowed down pace? Oh, the benefits are so very hard to articulate, but they are so very evident, so tangible when I see them. Let me try.

Time. The hours in our days fly by during the school year, filled with classes, sports, and extra-curricular activities. During our summer the clock slows down. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Sunny days are filled with time to explore dunes at the beach, play a game at the local tennis courts, and lie on the hammock.

Quiet contemplation. Without the constant distractions that define our “regular” life, there are whole spaces of time without noise. We go our own ways, in the house and in the yard, and find time to think. This benefit alone is worth everything. To watch my boys process their thoughts, to see their wheels turning, with the only computer available—their mind, is priceless.

Problem-solving skills. Despite the peaceful sounding nature of the previous two benefits, downtime isn’t all fun and games. It takes a while for kids who are used to soccer practice and football games and piano recitals and friends-constant friends!-to figure out what to do with themselves. Watching them create new games, listening to them plan and plot with their brothers, these are truly treasures.

Rapport. Every minute of every day isn’t filled with familial harmony. Creating new games, for example, brings new rules, and rule changes. You know how that turns out, right? But the consistency of this time—the long days, the nights by the fire, the not-in-a-hurry-to-get-anwhere-ness of it all—creates an environment of togetherness that is difficult to create during the hustle and bustle of everyday life. When we take this break, this extra breath, really, I see all of us respond to one another in kinder, gentler ways. And I like what I see.

When the school year rolls around yet again, and the scheduling and carpooling begin, we are rested. We are ready. We have played, and thought, and explored. Now we find a new rhythm and enjoy the busyness of classes and practices and friends. And we look forward to the next summer, the one that’s coming quickly now, when we will once again hear the slow tick-tock of our clock.

Editor’s Pick by MommyTime at Mommy’s Martini. Kirsetin’s post perfectly captures the spirit of the childhood summers I remember so well. (You can read the original and its comments here.) I admire how eloquently has been able to express precisely why and how a little unstructured “boredom” is not only good for kids but essential to helping them rejuvenate. Kirsetin is a great, creative mother of three boys, one who really thinks about nurturing every aspect of their lives as well as pushing them to think on their own too. I admire this piece for the same reason that I admire so much of what I’ve seen on her blog: she is extraordinarily thoughtful. If you are looking for a great new read that will help you remember the value of slowing down and savoring things, you couldn’t do much better than to subscribe to The Hip Mom’s Guide.