I'm both glad they found a system that worked, and very happy that I was not one of their kids. I agree with not babying your children (I was staying home alone after school by 10, and babysitting neighbors by 12), but having large amounts of unstructured time outside of school was actually incredibly positive for me overall. I was able to get a lot of introspection time in, and still got plenty of social time by engaging with the neighborhood kids in various shenanigans. Plus some people are just not cut out for sports.

FWIW, both me and my sister still grew up to meet this author's definition of financial independence & education "success", despite being picky eaters, having divorced parents, and never learning how to camp in the wild over vacation or take solo airplane trips as children (that stuff is expensive!).