Is all the time my kid spends on their hobby a waste of time? Insights from a teacher and parent
Last month, I was grading 4th grade math papers at my kitchen counter, half a plate of stale goldfish crackers next to my laptop, when my 10-year-old son Jax shifted on the floor cross-legged and prodded a crumpled Pokemon card into the wrong slot in his beat-up binder. My sister dropped by to drop off a birthday gift for Jax, leaned against the counter, and nodded at him. “Isn’t that a waste of time?” she said, quiet enough that Jax didn’t hear, but sharp enough that I felt that familiar twinge of guilt. “He’s been at that for three hours. Couldn’t he be practicing multiplication or getting a head start on his book report?”
I almost nodded in agreement. I’d been asking myself the same question all week. Jax had brought home a B minus on his last math quiz, he’d mumbled that he “didn’t have time” to practice the piano song he’s supposed to learn for his recital, and I’d stayed up late replaying my choices as a parent: Am I too lax? Am I letting him waste hours that could be used to get ahead?
I hear the same question from parents of my students all the time. Just two days before my sister’s visit, a mom emailed me about her 9-year-old daughter Mia, who writes tiny one-paragraph fanfiction stories in the margins of every notebook she owns. “Is this a waste of time?” she asked. “Should I make her stop writing all that extra stuff during class and focus on the assigned work?”
It got me thinking about when I was 11, sitting at my own kitchen counter after homework, drawing the same horse over and over again on the back of every worksheet I brought home. My mom would tap the paper and say the same thing my sister said: Isn’t this a waste of time? You’ll never be an artist anyway. Why don’t you study for your algebra quiz instead? I never did become an artist, but I still remember how that drawing felt: it was the only thing I got to do entirely my way, no rules, no grades, no one telling me I did it wrong.
The thing no one talks about when we ask “is this a waste of time” is that we’re almost always asking the wrong question. We measure time by what it produces that we can see: a good grade, a mastered skill, a trophy. But most of the good stuff kids get from hobby time is invisible.
I started testing small changes a couple of months ago, when I noticed Jax’s Pokemon obsession wasn’t going away. First, I did a quick check that took two minutes: Are all his required responsibilities done? He finishes his homework before he touches the binder. He feeds the dog every morning without being asked. He’s in bed by 8:30 most nights, so he’s not skipping sleep to sort cards. The only thing he’s giving up is the 3 hours of unstructured time he has after school and before dinner, the time I used to fill with whatever silly thing I cared about when I was a kid.
That’s the first concrete thing I tell parents who ask: If your kid is skipping homework, neglecting chores, or staying up too late to mess with their hobby, set a clear limit. I give Jax a 10-minute warning before dinner, and he puts the binder away without arguing, because the rule is clear: hobby time comes after work is done. If all their responsibilities are checked off, you don’t need to fix anything.
The second thing I do is carve out five minutes once a week to let him show me what he’s working on. I used to just glance and nod when he tried to show me his new sorting system, but one night I sat down on the floor next to him and asked why he sorted by type instead of by number, like most kids do. He pulled out a little notebook he keeps in his binder pocket, where he’s written down every card he has, every card he wants, and which friends are willing to trade what. He explained that sorting by type makes it easier to find cards when they’re planning battles at recess. He’s doing inventory, problem-solving, planning systems—things that most 10-year-olds only practice in workbooks that feel like a chore.
For Mia, I told her mom not to ban the stories, just ask Mia to keep them in the back of her class notebook, so they don’t distract her from the lesson. Last month, Mia turned one of her stories in for our optional creative writing assignment, and it was one of the most engaging pieces I read all semester. Her mom said she’s now more excited to do her assigned writing, because she knows she’ll get extra time to work on her own stories after she’s done.
I still have bad days where the guilt creeps in. Last week, Jax skipped his extra basketball practice to stay home and sort a new stack of cards he got for his birthday, and I sat on the couch wondering if I was letting him throw away a chance to get better at a team sport. He still hasn’t finished that piano song for his recital, and his math quiz scores are still hit or miss.
But I also saw him last Friday, standing by the bus line, teaching three other boys how to make their own sorting systems for their card binders. He was confident, clear, he answered all their questions, he helped one of the boys rearrange his whole binder before the bell rang. That’s the thing we don’t see when we call it a waste of time. It’s not always going to turn into a new skill or a prize on the shelf. Sometimes it’s just practice at caring about something, at working on something no one is making you do. That’s not nothing. It’s probably more useful than an extra 10 minutes of multiplication flash cards, most days. I’m still figuring it out, but for now, I’ll stop calling it a waste.
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