[easyfrag]

I have 2 kids and have consciously tried to avoid the helicopter-parent mindset and let them play on their own. But now as they approach adolescence I find myself more interested in how they spend their free time. Not so much hovering but making sure they are busy, gentle encouraging team sports & activities as an alternative to just "hanging out."

I believe the audience here skews younger but for those of you that have raised kids to adulthood, any advice? And for you more recent adolescents, how did you experience parenting at that age? When I look back it seems to me that the smartphone has changed everything.

[cortesoft]

Why do you want them to do something besides "just hanging out?" What is wrong with just hanging out?

[ewhanley]

Indeed - their precious supply of "just hanging out" time will begin to evaporate quickly as they get older. There's plenty of time to be busy (shudder) when they are adults.

[mschuster91]

Because the simple act of "hanging out" on the streets might earn them an arrest for "loitering" or whatever, which in turn greatly diminishes employment when you got a record full of arrests.

As a German, it was absolutely normal for me to be outside on a public place and drink beers! From what I see on parenting-related HN posts, in US drinking beers in public is illegal in most places, and minimum age for a f..ing beer is 21.

I didn't spend all my youth drinking beer though, but just hanging out with friends at a park was daytime activity after school until I was 18 and had a driver's license - we ended up with driving around town, spending all money we had on gas, and generally having fun. Also, it was perfectly acceptable to grab a phone, drum up your friends for a spontaneous LAN party and basically spend the entire day with gaming and watching 240p porn downloaded via eMule.

My sister is a bit younger than me, and even then I saw the great difference in available time after school between her and me. Thanks to the G8 reform (instead of 9 years highschool after 4y basic school, they shrunk it down to 8y in Bavaria) not only the school days were longer, but the amount of homework and learning were massively higher.

If all your time gets eaten up by school, when are kids supposed to play or take part in outside-of-school activities like politics, sports, music, ...?