Don't crush your kids' hobbies.
I’ve been roleplaying for a long time, first picking up my aunt’s copy of Dungeons & Dragons around 1979.
Roleplaying in the 1980s wasn’t the idyllic pastime Stranger Things suggests. Adults, by and large, viewed it as weird and antisocial at best and Satanic at worst. My parents were split on the issue, with my mother wholly apathetic and my father actively contemptuous.
One of the more painful moments involving roleplaying that I ever experienced was thanks to my father. He was a gigantic prick on his best day, and this story isn’t an exception. But I credit him for asking about Boot Hill, a game I enjoyed back then, and being willing to see what it was all about.
Because I didn’t know what else to do, I conducted him through a sample quickdraw gunfight — Boot Hill is a western game, if you haven’t figured that out — and his reaction was, “That’s it?” Well, sure, if you stop with combat. We hadn’t done any actual roleplaying.
Later, when he was in one of his abusive moods, he lashed out at my hobby, saying, “And at least I don’t play games where I say, ‘I roll my dice to see if my gun is bigger than his!’” I guess he was bitter about losing that gunfight.
My point here is that if you’re a parent and your kid has a creative interest, don’t crap all over it. Maybe it’s not your thing, but it’s theirs, and it’s better than sitting on their asses playing video games.