Extracurricular Activities

[Phoebe]

I am having a parenting dilemma. My 5 year old doesn't want to do anything outside or preschool. She is such a homebody. She doesn't want to go anywhere, do fun things like the library or the Children's Museum.

She even says she doesn't want to go to kindergarten or grow up because she wants to stay home with us forever. Does this mean she lacks self-confidence? If she had her way, she would sit all day watching TV in her pjs. Meanwhile, she doesn't walk anywhere in the house and is constantly dancing and jumping everywhere.

DH and I would like to encourage her to at least participate in a physical activity/sport to be healthy. She is very agile and enjoys movement. Once she gets somewhere she ends up having a good time. Am I wrong to push her to get some exercise beside jumping on our furniture? I try to give her a choice, but she shoots everything down. I am afraid if I let her say no to everything she will miss out on fun and skill development. She has tried soccer, swimming lessons, and gymnastics in the past. I feel like her saying no is a way to avoid feeling uncomfortable with the unknown.

[Gwendolyn]

Have you looked into parent/child classes? It no longer works for us, because James has a hard time focusing when I'm around, but there are a lot of martial arts family classes, or dance, or *clears throat* drama classes? Maybe if you were there with her she might be more inclined to settle in? It works very well in the parent/child drama class I teach and it was nice in the parent/child music class I used to do with James.

[Sheherezade]

I've gone both ways on this one. I let DS just sit at home for a year or so during fellowship when I got too tired of trying to interest him every time we had to head out the door. Exhausting - and expensive. He was 5-7 at the time. Now that we have more money, I'm more likely to sign up the kids to "try something" if they are not involved in any activities. If they don't like it, fine. The idea in this house is for everyone to have one active and one creative activity. I'm pretty liberal on how that is accomplished. It doens't have to be "organized" but we do try to work towards something. I think at 5 your daughter is getting old enough to understand that - but she's still pretty little. I'd probably go with the fun exercise time over a structured activity. She's still got plenty of time to get in to organized things later. (And then....you'll regret it with all the running around you'll have to do! )