our policy was going to be, "you must do one arts and one athletics + swimming because that's a life skill."
This is my policy too! I choose because of the young age of the child and if I can see that there is no real problem with any activity, my DS cannot quit until he has a compelling reason to do so.
We have been doing swimming from when DS was 8 months old (Daddy and me swim class and then moved on to training with a coach) because it is not negotiable.
He is 6 years old now and he has been doing Tae Kwon Do for 2 years (he wanted to do a martial arts and I chose TKD based on my research of all martial arts styles), Soccer for 3 years (part of afterschool enrichment at school) as sports. Last spring, I added in TBall and it got crazy for me. So, I am not adding in another sport any more until some sport in our schedule comes to a logical conclusion.
For arts, I chose piano, because he is very musical. He started group lessons at 4 and moved to private lessons after a year. He now wants to try other instruments while keeping the piano lessons going which will not happen due to no time in our schedules.
And DH wanted our kid in Chess, so he has been attending chess classes at a chess school for over a year. Since he is not doing great at it, we gave him the option to quit which he refused because he loves the classes!
