Re: After school activities - am I over doing it?

Donna Metler wrote:

Sounds like you have a gifted kid on your hands! One thing to remember,
though-even Gifted kids will have to work at skills to improve over the long
term, and even Gifted kids will have a harder workload as they get older.
You don't become good at music or dance without practicing-and 15 minutes a
day isn't sufficient.

And one of the key challenges with gifted kids is
helping them to develop a work ethic and a capability for
sustained hard work. Things come so easily for them for
so long that when they finally encounter a challenge, they
can fall apart, which is part of the reason that gifted
kids too often fail to live up to their promise. Sometimes
the things that are most challenging to teach our children
are the most necessary. It can also be a big challenge
with gifted kids to keep them from flitting from
one thing to another, always in search of a novel
experience and never pursuing anything for long before
they're bored with it. I'm not a fan of trying to get
young children to specialize, but there's a lot of middle
ground between over-specialization and never making a
commitment to anything. I certainly sympathize with keeping
a busy kid from running amok. My 3.5yo is going to dance
camp over spring break because I can't imagine her home with
no preschool or much of anything else structured for ten
straight days. She pitches a fit on the two days a week
she doesn't go to preschool. Still, I think there
has to be some limit.
My kids are pretty busy outside of school, and they
like their activities. We don't limit their activities
as much as some other parents choose to. Nevertheless,
I think it's important to draw some boundaries around
what they do to ensure that we have enough time as a family
together and they have unstructured time.

Best wishes,
Ericka
.