Children need a chance to learn to amuse themselves.

Like wild animals raised in captivity who never develop their inborn potential to hunt for themselves, children who are robbed of the opportunity to come up with their own games and entertain themselves at those times in their lives when these capacities are developing may very well become dependent upon others to determine their good times.

Dana Chidekel, Parents in Charge: Setting Healthy, Loving Boundaries for You and Your Child (New York: Citadel Press Books, 2002),  pp. 94-95, quoted in Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2d ed. "with an update a decade later" (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 2011), ch. 12, note 40.