This summer, frustrated over my kids’ seemingly endless ability to sit around the house not doing anything, I worried I had failed them. Shouldn’t I have set them up with a series of challenging camp opportunists where they could learn archery and study amoebas in pond water, punctuated by museum visits and volunteer opportunities?
Which is why I was thrilled to read an article in the New York Times about how it’s good for kids to do nothing in the summer. At least I assume that’s what the article was about; I only read the headline making that claim, and—guilt fully assuaged—moved on to the next story. I call this style of reading “Inference Skimming,” and I highly recommend it.
Years ago, if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would panic about not being asleep -- which made the possibility of sleep less likely. But then I came across a long article in Scientific American about sleeping, which suggested it didn’t matter if a person was awake for periods of time in the middle of the night: that, in fact, sleeping through is a fairly recent concept. Most of our shared history men and women woke to stoke fires or tend to livestock, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep was unheard of.
Again, I didn’t read the actual article; just the description of it in the table of contents and some of the pull quotes and, feeling better, closed the magazine for fear that I might see a contrary opinion, some other quoted study shedding doubt on my new found “knowledge.”
Since then, I have been much happier and greet each interrupted respite as a delightful opportunity to read in a quiet house, secure that scientists think it’s fine.
At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what they think.
I’m Dan Libman, and that's my perspective
