Last week before Christmas. What it should feel like.

I've been thinking about what my children will remember from December in twenty years. Not the presents — research on autobiographical memory is clear that objects rarely make it into long-term memory storage with any emotional valence attached. What makes it is texture: the smell of specific food, the quality of light on a particular afternoon, the sensation of being inside while it's cold outside, the specific weight of someone sitting next to you on a sofa doing nothing in particular.

The last week before Christmas, if it's managed quietly, is one of the most productive weeks of the year for memory formation of this kind. The children are home more. The schedule is looser. The expectations are lowered. There is more time to be bored, which is where most of the remembered texture comes from.

Screen time tends to go up in this week because the absence of structure makes screens the default. This is the week to reverse that default. Not with activities — with deliberate under-occupation. The child who spends three hours on a Tuesday afternoon building something from cardboard boxes because there's nothing else happening is the child who will remember that Tuesday. The screen-free afternoon in December isn't deprivation. It's the condition for the thing they'll remember.