Reply to Why are people here so averse to pushing their kids?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Why are people here so averse to pushing their kids?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Forcing your kid into the activities you’ve decided are good for them is just a recipe for breeding resentment.

My kid isn’t interested in playing sports. Should we force her? She would rather sing, draw, paint, dance, and act. She is in activities that center around those interests.

If a kid has no natural musical talent or interest in playing an instrument, it’s pointless to force it.

You seem to want to create a robot, not a person.[/quote]

OP here. So many people are bringing up the robot analogy. No, I have no desire for my kid to emulate a robot. But we value physical activity in our household -- and hence, the sports requirement. I would've been just as fine if DC decided to do dance or rock climbing or cycling instead of team sports, but they have no interest in any of those activities, which is why I forced them to join a sport at their school.

We are forcing DC to do something artistic and something physical -- the fact that it ended up being a team sport and an instrument just ended up being their choice (a middle ground). [/quote]

Unless you are literally compelling somebody to do something with physical force, you're not "forcing" them to do anything so you can stop using that term. Taking away privileges if you kids don't practice their instrument isn't forcing them, it's just enforcing household expectations. They could just live without the privileges if that's what they wanted to do, right?

I think that by my standards what you're doing is well within the realm of reasonable. When I read your OP I thought it wasn't, but if you're just saying "hey, ya gotta do something creative, what will it be?" and they pick? I don't think of that as your typical UMC high-intensity pushing. I think you're not being honest about the idea that it has nothing to do with college, and you're incredibly judgmental, and you don't seem to have ever had experience with a child who has actual mental health issues so you wouldn't know what it can mean to avoid pushing for the sake of a kid's mental health. But what you're doing isn't really the kind of pushing a lot of people take issue with.

Do you have just the one kid? I have two (which is not many, I know) and I have to take really different approaches with them. One will push back hard to being pushed, either with defiance or with internal shame. It's bad, and I cannot push her at all. My job as her parent is to be the one person in her world who doesn't tell her what to do (aside from brushing teeth and getting someplace on time), because she internalizes all other pressures around her so much.

DC2 is really relaxed and responds well to pushing. I actually was very hesitant to push him with because of my experiences with DC1, but I have learned that he can take it and he just needs more external motivation. Plus he asks to be pushed. The pushing comes in the form of setting reminders for him to work out and things like that. It's pretty mild. I was also pretty demanding as his homeschool teacher. I never could have done that with DC1. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics