Today’s children are exhausted, and not just because one in three kids is not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation in kids (who require at least nine hours a night, depending on age) has been found to     1     decrease academic achievement, lower intelligence test scores, slow physical growth, and     2     to moodiness and irritability. While the argument for protecting our children’s sleep time is convincing, there is another kind of rest that is     3     and beneficial to our children’s academic, emotional, and creative lives: daydreaming.

Not all mental downtime (停工休息期) is alike, of course. Downtime spent playing a videogame or watching a television show may have its     4    , but the kind of downtime I am talking about is different. I’m talking about the kind of mind-wandering that happens when the brain is free of interruption and allowed to get rid of the     5     of the day. Television, video games, and other electronic     6     prevent this kind of mental wandering because they interrupt the flow of thoughts and memories that     7     the foundation of positive, productive daydreaming.

There is, however, another way of looking at mind wandering. For the individual, mind wandering offers the possibility of very real, personal reward, some immediate, some more     8    . These rewards include self-awareness, memory consolidation, future planning, simulating the     9     of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning.

In other words, daydreaming only seems lazy from the outside, but viewed from the inside or from the perspective of a psychologist, such as Kaufman, or a neuroscientist, such as Mary Helen, a complicated and extremely     10     neurological process is taking place. Viewed from the inside, our children are exploring the only space where they truly have autonomy: their own minds.

Many of you may be familiar with the     1     that all of us are connected to everyone else by an average of about six people. It was first mentioned in the 1920s by a Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy who discussed social     2     .

In 1967, an American sociologist called Stanley Milgram tried using a new method to test the theory, which he called the “small-world problem”. The experiment involved     3     of people who lived in America and giving them a parcel as well as the name, job and location of a stranger somewhere else in the country. The aim of the experiment was for the person to try to     4     to this stranger by sending it to someone they thought might know them. That person in turn did the same until the parcel reached the person it was supposed to.

Although hard to believe, it only took about five to seven people for the     5     to reach the person! The results were     6     and published by a magazine called Psychology Today and inspired the     7    , “Six Degrees of Separation”.

King Arthur is the figure at the heart of the Arthurian legends. He is said to be the son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine of Cornwall. Arthur is near     1    in Celtic stories. In early Latin records, he is     2    as a military leader. In later romance, he is described as a king and emperor.

One of the questions occupying those interested in King Arthur is whether or not he is a     3    figure. The debate has spread since the Renaissance, when Arthur’s authenticity was vigorously     4    , partly because the Tudor kings traced their ancestry to Arthur and use that connection as a     5    for their rule. Modern scholars have generally assumed that there was some actual person at the heart of the legends, though not of course a king with a band of knights in shining armor—though O. J. Padel in ‘The Nature of Arthur’ argues that historical     6     that we attach to Arthur can be associated with a figure who was not historical to start with.

If there is a historical basis to the character, it is clear that he would have gained fame as a warrior     7     the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Since there is no     8     evidence for or against Arthur’s historicity, the debate will continue. But what cannot be denied is the     9     of the figure of Arthur on literature, art, music, and society from the Middle Ages to the present. Though there have been numerous historical novels that try to put Arthur into a sixth century setting, it is the legendary figure of the late Middle Ages who has been     10     everyone’s imagination.