As the school year wraps up amid the buzz of summer camps, enrichment programs and extracurricular planning ramping up, a quieter countertrend is starting to gain momentum.
It’s called “kid rotting,” a tongue-in-cheek term for what used to just be summer: lounging, daydreaming, doing a whole lot of nothing.
But behind the viral phrase is a serious shift in thinking. More parents and experts are beginning to ask whether kids might actually need more unstructured time, not less.
“When kids aren’t scheduled every minute, they learn how to problem-solve, explore their interests and build confidence,” Nicole Runyon, a psychotherapist and author of Free to Fly, tells ABC’s Good Morning America.
One of the biggest hurdles to an “unscheduled summer” is screen time. What starts as a little “downtime” can quickly become hours lost to YouTube, gaming or social media scrolling.
That’s where intentional boundaries come in.
“Make screens something that happen with you, not just around you,” Runyon advised. “Watch a movie together, try a cooking tutorial as a family, or limit screen time to certain hours. But make the default for summer real life.”
Ultimately, a “rot” summer might be the reset children need after a year of packed schedules and digital overstimulation. And for parents, it may be an opportunity to reframe success.
“Letting your child be still, be curious, be bored, that’s not wasted time,” said Runyon. “That’s where they start to figure out who they are.”