I am not sure the free time definition fits all. "creative and imagination". Does that assume that when a child has free time, they cannot watch TV? They have to do something creative and imaginative?
Of course not. What Val wrote was
You can't be creative or imaginative unless you have a lot of this kind of time.
(I think, personally, that this statement may be too strong - or at least, that Val and I might have different ideas about what "a lot" means here - but at least it's clear that she made no claim that all free time had to be spent imaginatively.)
We live at the beach during the summer. Dd is on the beach from lunch until dinner. On weekends, she is on the beach in the mornings. She can swim, dig a hole to China, look for crabs or jellyfish -- whatever the project she or group of children are doing. Is that free time?
Of course.
She cannot choose to go to the playground, though there are swings on the beach and she choose to go there.
If you are going to define time as the child can switch and do something else on the spur, what are the limitations of choices? Do they have to stay in the house? In their room? Can they watch TV, use their computer? Can they do anything?
I would have thought it was sufficiently obvious that there will be, for a variety of reasons, constraints on what a child can do in any given time period, that it would have been pointlessly pedantic to include it in the definition. But all right: it's free time if
(a) the child can choose, within constraints that are imposed by by circumstance rather than with the intention of guiding the child's choice, what to do, and
(b) the child is free to change the choice at any moment.
What I mean to exclude here is choices which are constrained because of what the parent wants the child to do: e.g. "would you like to play the piano or read a book?" isn't free time, and nor is "tell me what constructive thing you're going to do for the next hour and then do it". The child gets to ask and answer the question "what shall I do now?" and to re-ask it as often as s/he wishes.
Of course there are grey areas. An example that comes to my mind is the time my son has on the bus (if he doesn't have homework that needs to be done). I don't mind what he does (including just looking out of the window) and he does find a variety of things to do, but of course the constraints there are very stringent!
FWIW, my DS doesn't get much in the way of free time during the week, by the time he's had school and the clubs he chose and he's done his homework and two instrument practices, and I think that's OK. I do think it's good that he gets some, and I resist scheduling our weekends, in order that he gets extended periods of free time every weekend.
