[email protected]

**What one friend told me (and my parents too) was that I'm doing my kids a
grave disservice by not forcing them into a few activities. I've offered, we do
stuff on our own, but no one really has that desire right now.**

I tell people that I don't put my kids into any activities until they BEG.
:-) It's not strictly true, but it expresses well my attitude that this idea of
scheduling activities for kids "for their own good" is entirely the wrong way
to go about helping them into the world.

It also expresses my experience that eventually every one of my kids has
wanted to do things that stretched every bit of me in helping them find a way
toward their desired activity. They each at one time or another strongly wanted to
do things that were hard to locate, or hard to afford, or required massive
time commitments from both the child and a chauffeuring parent, or... Saving up
my energy to help them do those important to them things was a much better
use of my life than spending it pushing them into activities that didn't
interest them just for the sake of having them in something.

Deborah in IL