Our daughter in S2 is starting to make her subject choices for her Nat 5 courses. English and maths are compulsory obviously, but other than those she has free rein to choose her remaining 5 (plus an additional 2 subjects which are then dropped at the end of S3).
We are advising her that, in order to keep her options open, she should take a minimum of 2 sciences and a language. She, however, wants to drop French and take only Biology from the sciences. To give some context - she doesn't know what she wants to do when she's older and she is perfectly bright and capable of doing what we are suggesting.
I know that she is feeling resentful at the prospect of us putting our foot down - she feels that she should ultimately be allowed to choose the subjects she wants - she says most parents would allow that. We feel that what we are suggesting will allow her to make her own choices when she has a clearer idea of the direction she wants to go in. The humanities subjects etc that she is more interested in, she can pick up in S5/6, whereas it would be more difficult to pick up a science in S5 and very difficult to pick a language back up (and I wish it were compulsory to take one!). But should we put our foot down?