Is My Child’s Obsessive, Repetitive Hobby A Waste Of Time? What I Learned As A Teacher Mom
Last Saturday morning, I was folding clean laundry on the couch, my coffee going cold next to me, when my sister-in-law dropped off a birthday gift for my 8-year-old, Jax. She leaned over the kitchen table where Jax had been camped for two and a half hours, surrounded by scrap cardboard from my recycling bin, glue stick smears on his jeans, and a hundred tiny cut-out paper cars. “Isn’t this a waste of time?” she asked, quiet enough that Jax didn’t hear it over his favorite podcast. “He could be finishing his reading log or working on that coding camp worksheet you posted about last week. All this just… playing with paper?”
Jax didn’t look up. He was trimming a tiny ramp for his third-level parking garage, his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth. I nodded along at the time, because that’s what you do when a family member makes a comment that makes you second-guess everything, but I’ve been turning that question over in my head ever since. I’m a third-grade teacher, so I spend all day talking to parents about productive time use and skill building. But as a mom, I’ve caught myself asking the same question a hundred times over the last year: Is this thing a waste of time?
Six months ago, we spent a rainy Saturday at the city science museum. I’d bought tickets months in advance, planned to see the new dinosaur exhibit and the planetarium show. But as soon as we walked in, Jax spotted the old glass elevator that runs from the basement to the top floor, and that was it. For an hour and 45 minutes, he just rode it up and down. Got off on every floor, pressed the button for the next, counted the numbers as they lit up. I nagged him the whole time. Checked my watch. Reminded him we were missing the T. rex skeleton. We left before the planetarium show, both cranky, and I spent the drive home thinking that $40 admission was completely wasted.
A week later, I had a parent-teacher conference with a mom whose daughter, Mia, is in my class. Mia spends every single free choice period drawing the same orange tabby cat over and over on the back of every worksheet, on any scrap paper she can find. The mom asked me if I should be redirecting her to more “educational” activities during that time, if all that drawing was a waste of time that could be spent on extra reading or math practice. I told her no, that Mia was practicing focus and fine motor skills and creative problem solving, that repetitive play isn’t a problem unless it’s getting in the way of other things. That night, I realized I’d been saying one thing as a teacher and doing another as a mom. I’d called Jax’s elevator ride a waste, when it was the exact same kind of repetitive, self-directed play I defended in my classroom.
The thing I’ve started to notice, after that conference, is how much learning actually happens in these “wasted” chunks of time. When Jax spent three days building his parking garage, he got frustrated when his ramp kept collapsing under the weight of his paper cars. He tried folding the cardboard thicker first. That didn’t work. Then he cut small blocks out of a cereal box to prop the ramp up from underneath. That took him 40 minutes of trial and error, no help from me. He counted how many cars fit on each level to figure out how wide to make each floor. He negotiated with his 5-year-old sister when she insisted on adding her paper doll’s convertible to the garage, rearranging three spaces to make room for it. None of that was on a worksheet. None of it will show up on his next progress report. But it’s all skills he’ll use forever, way more than an extra 10 minutes of flash card practice would be.
I don’t have a fancy rule for this, just three small things I do now that keep me from redirecting Jax when he’s deep in something that looks like a waste of time. First, I do a 10-minute check: if he’s not hurt, not bothering anyone, not missing a scheduled obligation, I set a timer for 10 minutes and go back to what I’m doing instead of stepping in. Second, if I do want to engage, I only ask one question: “What’s the trickiest part you’re working on right now?” That lets me connect without taking over his project. Third, I block out three hours of unplanned time every week, no homework, no sports, no screens, no plans, just whatever the kids want to do. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough time for them to get deep into something that doesn’t have a pre-planned goal.
I still second-guess myself, of course. Last week, Jax had a multiplication quiz on Friday, and we had an hour before piano lessons on Wednesday. He wanted to dig for worms in the backyard instead of practicing his flash cards. I almost said no, told him that was a waste of study time. I let him go anyway, and we were two minutes late to piano, but he found three big nightcrawlers and moved them to our tomato garden to help the plants grow. His piano teacher said he played his recital song better that day than he had in a month—he’d gotten all his wiggles out digging, instead of sitting at the table staring at flash cards frustrated. He got a B+ on his multiplication quiz, too.
This morning, I walked past the kitchen table and Jax was already there, gluing a tiny charging station onto the side of his parking garage, cut from an empty blue toothpaste box. My lesson plans for next week are still sitting ungraded on my laptop, and I have grocery shopping to do, and a part of me still wonders if I should be pushing him to spend more time on things that look “important” on paper. But I lean against the doorway for a minute, and he holds up the tiny charging cord he cut out of construction paper, grinning, and I nod and go back to folding my laundry. It’s too soon to tell if it’s a waste of time, I think. But it’s his time to waste.
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