When a Grandparent Questions Your Kid’s Hobbies: Is It Really a Waste of Time?
We were halfway through a slightly burnt lasagna when my father-in-law pushed his fork into the crusty corner and addressed my son, Leo.
“Still collecting those little cards? What is it, Pokémon?”
Leo lit up, launching into a rapid-fire explanation about a rogue-type Charizard and the latest expansion set. He was seven, and his card collection was his most prized possession. He slept with the binder under his bed, arranged by type and rarity.
“He spends a lot of time on it,” my father-in-law said, turning to me. He wasn’t being mean. He was genuinely puzzled. “I just mean, is all that time a waste? He could be doing math problems or reading a biography. That stuff is just… pieces of cardboard with pictures.”
Leo’s voice trailed off. He stabbed a piece of pasta. He understood the tone if not every word.
I didn’t have a good answer in that moment. I had a defense. I pointed out that he organizes the cards, that he reads the text carefully, that he trades with friends. But the question hung in the air over the table, smelling of garlic and old-school pragmatism: Is this thing a waste of time?
It’s a question that doesn’t just go away. As a parent, I ask it about the iPad games, the elaborate marble runs that collapse instantly, and the endless hours spent building with magnetic tiles. It’s hard to watch time slip by and not wonder if our kids are building something that matters for their future.
But there was a moment about two weeks after that dinner that changed my perspective.
Leo was trying to trade cards with his friend Sam. Sam wanted a shiny Gyarados. Leo wanted a holographic Eevee. The trade was stalled, stuck on the idea of “fairness.” So Leo, with an intensity I’d never seen outside of homework, started explaining scarcity. He told Sam that the Gyarados was harder to pull because it was in an older pack, and even though the Eevee was “cooler,” the production numbers were different. He built a case. He used terms like “value” and “demand” and, I swear, “market saturation.”
He didn’t get the trade. But he didn’t lose the friendship either. He negotiated a three-week loan of the card instead.
That’s when I realized my father-in-law was asking the wrong question.
The question isn’t “Is this thing useful?” The question is “What is the child actually getting out of this specific thing?”
It’s tempting to look at the content of the hobby. Cards are just art. A marble run is just plastic. A video game is just pixels. The surface looks like waste. But the process is where the real activity lives.
When I started observing more, the picture got clearer. The card collecting wasn’t about the shiny cardboard. It was about memorization and categorizing. He could tell you which cards were in which set, which types canceled out which, and the entire evolution process. That is reading and analyzing data, just with a Robert De Niro face on it.
The marble run wasn’t about knocking down a block. It was about testing gravity and angles. He would build a tower, watch it fail, and then apply a brace at a specific point he guessed would fix the wobble. That’s basic physics and engineering iteration.
The iPad game wasn’t about staring at a screen. It was about problem-solving and navigating social logic with peers, figuring out who was better at what and how to contribute to a team.
It’s hard to see in the moment. The mess of plastic bricks on the rug looks like chaos. The quiet staring at a screen looks like a trance. But we don’t always have to be the hall monitor of every activity.
Now, I’m not a total pushover. I still have hard limits. We don’t do pointless scrolling without some level of creation. We have a rule that screen time has to be interactive—either making something, exploring a question, or working with someone else.
But I realized that when I pulled the plug on “useless” things, I wasn’t just stopping the waste of time. I was stopping the practice of focus.
The other day, my father-in-law asked to see the binder. Leo, a little shy, opened it. He showed his grandpa the “chase cards” and explained why certain holographic foils were printed at a lower rate. He talked about the history of the franchise, the different artists who draw the cards, and why the Japanese cards feel different from the English ones.
My father-in-law nodded, looked at the cards, and said, “Well, you really know your stuff, kid.”
That was the whole point. It wasn’t a concession. It was recognition. He saw the result of the “wasted” time—the confidence, the knowledge, the ability to speak passionately about something complex. The facts might be geeky, but the skills are universal.
We still push Leo to read novels and do math. But I’ve learned to stop policing the subject of his attention so strictly. Instead, I look for the quality of the engagement.
Is he asking questions? Is he trying something new? Is he failing and getting back up?
If the answer is yes, it’s probably not a waste of time.
There’s a simple instinct I use now. Whenever I feel that familiar panic about wasted time, I ask the child what their plan is. If the answer is detailed, specific, and passionate, I leave them to it. If the answer is a shrug and a blank stare, that’s when I suggest a different activity or step in to offer a prompt.
We still have dinner with the grandfather and his practical questions. I suspect we always will. Last Sunday, Leo was building a complicated structure with his magnetic tiles at the kitchen counter, balancing a small toy dinosaur on top.
My father-in-law walked by, stopped, and said, “That looks like it’s going to fall.”
“It’s waiting to see if I’m right about the center of gravity,” Leo said, not looking up.
He walked on. I think he gets it now. Or at least, he gets that we don’t get to choose what earns our children’s attention—we only get to choose how we respect the effort they pour into it. For now, the balance is tipping toward letting them build their strange worlds, and being there to ask questions when the blocks fall.
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