How do you choose your child's activities?

[VickityBoo]

I mean like swimming, ballet, gym, music etc.

My daughter will be 4 later this year and is already doing 3 days at playgroup. I don't want to exhaust her, so she has one activity on a non-playgroup day. She loves it, but I feel that by not letting her explore many other options she may not find her true love.

I know she is young but I keep hearing about talented people who happened to pick up a guitar/golf club/piano etc at a young age and then go on to thrive at it.

I don't want to remove her from her current class as she loves it, is improving and doing well. It's lots of fun for her.

Am I the only one to think about it this way?

Well, maybe look at it this way - if she's going to be good at something, she will be, no matter what age she starts it at.

If she's enjoying her current activity, leave her doing that for another while, until she's interested in starting something else herself.

I'd try a little bit of everything and see what your DD seems to enjoy or seems to be good at? I.e. put music on at home, sing and dance to it, go swimming, go to the park, and abilities and interests will start to show I think. Beavers / rainbows are brilliant for building up a variety of interests and skills particularly socially.

I let my daughter try lots whilst she was at preschool and then she narrowed it down once she started school.

However, I was also directed by her endless energy, and so sent her along for gymnastics classes as I thought that might tire her out, It didn't work, and instead she was invited to join the competition squad. She is 8 now, and I still live in hope that one day it will

to be honest when they are this young they can want to do evrything yopu sign them up and they dont want to carry on. I would stick with what she is doing and wait untill she is a little older msybe y1 when she is begining to show an intered in specific activities. I had this with dd, she siged up for lots of things and chopped and changed. I have now stopped at swimming, dramma tennis and football and she is at the moment not allowed to do anything else or drop any of these for anything else as she will just flit between these and gymnastics and dancing. So I had to make the decdission to stick with the ones she consistantly enjoys.

If your dd has a talent or flair it will not matter when she explores it, it will be there, however would you not rather she was happy than searching for this hidden talent?

I have tried to encourage my dd to do the things I loved as a child (horse-riding, brownies, piano, gymnastics, swimming, netball, tennis, guitar). Big mistake, have now relaxed and let her choose. She does dance and drama. I do insist on swimming though, but to be honest they're both fairly useless at it. Am wondering if I'm wasting my time and money.

DD didn't do anything until she was 7, then she went to activities that she asked to go to (mostly ones her friends were doing) if it wasn't too inconvenient to me to take her.

She tried a few things over a year or so and now (age 10) has narrowed it down to some that she really enjoys.