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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Pp with teen and tween. [b]I’m not sure what amount of pushing [/b]can get your kid to the finish line. I was and am a very involved parent. I was on the pta, did snacks for soccer, volunteered for swim team, did cub scouts and Girl Scouts, let my kids do robotics, ballet, cheer, hip hop, musical theater, chess, model UN, debate, science olympiad, spelling bee, anything and everything they were interested in.

My almost 13yo will barely take the trash out. There is absolutely no way to get a kid who isn’t motivated or has the will to do said activity.

I have spent the past decade taking this kid to children’s museums, science museums, reading together, playing board games, going on hikes, visiting national parks and all I could do to try to enrich this kid.

DH says we have good kids. It is up to them. I can’t force them to do anything. I will sometimes catch them dosing off and I can barely get them to brush their teeth or take out the trash. No way would they compete at some high level whether it is a sport or academics because the mom pushed them. I will offer supports if they need but I can’t force anything at this point.[/quote]

You have done a lot for your kids but very few would actually count as pushing. You were not supposed to have your kid "do anything and everything they were interested in". That's not pushing... that's spoiling, actually. Museums, reading tighter, hikes etc - that's not pushing it, either. Those are just good time you had together. You call that enrichment, find, but enrichment and pushing are very different things.[/quote]

It isn’t like they did all those activities at once. I have 3 kids. Many of the activities were after school activities at school. I[b]f they were interested, I was happy to sign them up.[/b] [/quote]

Fine, but that's not pushing. Pushing means making your kid do stuff they don't want to do. Typically, it's stuff they wanted to do, then it got harder - they then want to give up and start something else. When you push your kids, you don't let them do that. When, instead, you sign your kid for the next shiny thing, you are not pushing them.

Maybe you don't want to push your kids. Fine. But you can't say "I pushed my kids so much, they did these 234234 activities". No, you indulged them, not pushed them.[/quote]

This seems right to me. Even in kindergarten when we started activities, I always said if I sign you up for this thing you want to do, you are making a commitment. You’ve made a promise to yourself, to me, and to your team. If he does a season of a sport and he did his best but it’s really not for him, I’m ok with him not doing it for another season. [/quote]

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