If you wish to see your kids set their own goals and take action to meet those goals, make sure they spend enough time in less formal activities - from playing outside to reading books to visiting the zoo.
The more time children spend in structured activities like cricket practice, piano lessons and homework the poorer their "self-directed executive function", a measure of the ability to set and reach goals independently, becomes, a new research showed.
"Executive function is extremely important for children," said psychology and neuroscience professor Yuko Munakata from the University of Colorado Boulder in the US.
"It helps them in all kinds of ways throughout their daily lives, from flexibly switching between different activities rather than getting stuck on one thing, to stopping themselves from yelling when angry, to delaying gratification," Munakata added.
For the study, parents of six-year-olds recorded their children's daily activities for a week.
The scientists then categorised those activities as either more structured or less structured.
In that classification system, structured activities included chores, physical lessons, non-physical lessons and religious activities.
Less-structured activities included free play alone and with others, social outings, sightseeing, reading and media time.
The results showed that the more time children spent in less structured activities, the better their self-directed executive function.
The study appeared in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
