Hey, chill out!
When school is out, children prefer to do nothing. Or to put it in their own language: they just want to chill out.
According to the 2018 JAMES study by the Zurich University of Applied Psychology, children's favourite leisure activities, apart from sports and PC games, are talking to friends and doing nothing.
Children love their free time and want it to be relaxed and unspectacular. One reason for this may be that our meritocracy no longer stops at children and leisure time has therefore become a rare commodity.
Free time is important and children have a right to it. In the truest sense of the word. The right to leisure and play is enshrined in Article 31 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Talents want to be promoted
It seems that the right to free time is a right that is forgotten far too often. A child's everyday (school) life leaves little time for free play. Many parents want to give their children as full a rucksack of skills and competences as possible, want to encourage their talents early on and eliminate possible weaknesses in good time.
When children come home from school at 4 p.m., or often not until 5 p.m., it's time to really get going: take a deep breath, have a snack, do homework, study. Then comes the individual programme: private English lessons, ballet, horse riding, football, tennis, youth club, piano or drawing lessons. There is hardly any time to simply «hang out», chill out and do nothing.
Many parents may think that having fun doesn't get children any further in life. But they underestimate the value of informal learning. Children learn by interacting with and supporting each other and play is an essential part of this. It's about trying things out, discovering new things and sometimes failing.
Learning what you enjoy
The Pestalozzi Children's Village tries to fulfil this need - and this right. Here, young people can initiate small projects in their free time, voluntarily and without obligation. After all, children must also learn to decide what they enjoy doing. Different forms of leisure activities can be organised and the local specialists support the children in this. Sometimes in the evening you hear young people at the Pestalozzi Children's Village say: «Now I just want to chill out.»
They have that right, not only here at the Children's Village, but all over the world.
About the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation
The Pestalozzi Children's Foundation is an internationally active children's aid organisation. Children and young people have been at the centre of its activities since 1946. The Children's Village in Trogen is a place of peace-building where children from Switzerland and abroad learn to deal with cultural and social differences.
learn to deal with cultural and social differences. In twelve countries around the world, the foundation provides disadvantaged children with access to quality education.
www.pestalozzi.ch