"But if it doesn't come from within, if it's just "activities" for the sake of activities, it's really just more obligation, not fun, right? And then doesn't that perpetuate the lack of opportunity to FIND the kid's true interests? Caveat - I have an 8-year old, not a teenager. So I know nothing."
I have a 17-year-old rising senior, as well as a rising 6th grader, and I totally agree. My almost senior used to write a lot when she was young, but during 6th and 7th grade, she had 7 hours of school a day (all wasted time, due to lack of differentiation and teach-to-the-factoid-test curriculum) and a couple of hours of homework a day (also all wasted, for same reason). It wasn't until I took her out of school for 8th grade and did a semi-homeschool thing - only 4.5 hours a day, most of which was socializing with her friends who came over to the new schooling situation with us - that she had time to start writing again (and, sort of incidentally, winning an award that took her to her Carnegie Hall and have had a huge effect on her writing career and her life since then). Many children don't even know what they care about or enjoy by the time they finish high school.
The 17-year-old spends huge amounts of time in theater stuff at her school now, by her own choice. If she preferred to spend more time sitting at home daydreaming and drawing and maybe writing a short play every month, I would think that was no less valuable. The idea that the only activities that valuable are those with large groups of people, at other locations, or organized by adults seems very wrong to me. Now in some cases, a child who is slow to warm up or shy but extroverted or whatever, may need a push to start engaging in an activity that she will soon enjoy a lot. But that doesn't mean that a kid should not have substantial "down time" or that I would keep pushing a kid who is not enjoying an activity (on top of maybe a 8 or 10-hour school day) to be in activities. Certainly I would not force a kid who's enjoying riding bikes with friends to go do an "activity" he doesn't want to do. If you need a name for it, "social skills" are some of the most important skills there are.
Laurie (whose 11-year-old girl spent the whole day playing with an 11-year-old boy friend [not boyfriend] where they just ran the house and the nearby park, and acted out, with embellishment, stories from books they'd read, and who will spend 3.5 hours tomorrow in a astrophotography camp and then come home and spend the rest of the day reading, drawing, bugging her sister about her plans for college, and who knows what else....)
Last edited by LaurieBeth; 08/19/16 09:38 AM.
