Many parents I talk to have this notion that idle-time/free-time for their children is unproductive, a waste of time, and thus bad for their children. And that's why they feel the need to micromanage their kids' time - "If I don't give Timmy productive things to do, he'll just rot away."

There's a number of articles about this topic, but I just don't see parents accepting the message: boredom is good for young people. Heck, boredom is why I got into programming my Commodore-64 back in the day - Midwest winters are long and boring as shit, lots of time stuck inside.

- https://youthfirstinc.org/why-its-important-for-your-child-t...

- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-b...

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pavel_lishin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

We took away my kid's screens for a week because we caught her lying to us about something.

She was understandably upset and bored for a few days, and then found ways to occupy her time. Not productive ways - but ways that reminded me of what I did as a kid without screens.

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bitwize 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe that's why so many of the best demoscene coders are from northern Europe—Germany, Scandinavia, Finland? Bored kids with nothing to do but faff with their computers?

	▲	kqr 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		...who spends half the year in darkness, to boot. It's so bad they even have a national holiday to grieve the departure of the sun and call for its return!