What to do with free time?

The question:

CC-SA Athena Malmrose

Do you care what your kid does in his/her free time? 

says so much about a person's view towards parenting. 

The answers "yes" or "no" aren't quite enough -- you need to know the reasoning. Here's mine: 

No, I don't care to have control over what they do with their free time. I trust them to choose wisely.

Yes, I care because their choices tell me a lot about who they are becoming. 

A child (or person of any age) who is engaged in a solitary hobby-type task after school might be introverted or shy. I'd check to see if the hobby time rejuvenates them (good) or drains them (bad) then work to make sure they are being rejuvenated after school. 

A child (or person of any age) who watches TV in most moments of downtime might be depressed (unless that are passionately interested in producing media and headed to Hollywood someday). Or maybe they are watching TV because they know it bugs you or because they don't have access to whtaever it is they really want to be doing. 

You get the idea. You get clues about who they are by what they do when they have free time. 

http://damngoodquotes.com/which-step-have-you-reached-today/

With all four of my kids, they usually choose to play games, a wide variety of games though at times they are intensely interested in a single title for a span of time. They also watch educational videos on their own that they found on their own. Wild. 

This morning I got the ultimate payoff for letting my kids choose what to do with their own free time (and protecting that free time by cancelling other stuff that would minimize it). 

Payoff: It's 10 am and I just asked my daughter, "What have you been up to?" 

She said, "I was doing some recreational programming to wake up."

Ka-ching!! It involved 0 effort on my part and she's doing self-directed coding. Sweet!

Seriously. "Recreational programming."