I think that the line gets crossed when the child feels forced to do non-school, non-chore-related activities solely to meet parental expectations and without any internal motivation. I agree that this is a hard question to answer.
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I think it's important to ask a child --- in a neutral way and maybe by a third party sometimes --- if they really want to do an activity or if they feel forced.
DH and I have had this discussion recently. DS is involved in one extracurricular activity, at our insistence. It amounts to two hours per week and we're not that diligent with practice. We aren't so concerned with mastery as with the process. We don't intervene in the class, we casually observe from the sidelines. The only thing we've told DS with regard to the class is that he do his best and put forth some effort and he does.
If one were to ask DS10 if he really wanted to do it or if he felt forced, the answers would be "NO" and "yes" respectively. I hate that, although, I've seen him at class and he's engaged and having fun. The hardest part of it all for DS is stopping the fun of playing with friends or whatever else he's doing to go do this activity. He thinks he's missing out on something. Plainly put, if allowed, DS would do nothing but play all day. Unstructured play time is very important to us for him and we see to it that he gets plenty, but we also want to have an exposure to other things. If DS came up with an alternative or was interested in doing anything else, of course, that would be taken into consideration.
I feel we're doing the right thing by forcing this issue, but I do have moments of wondering if there will be some long-term deep-seated resentment because we made him devote two hours a week to an activity that got in the way of what he wanted to do. Only time will tell, I guess.
