And as a parent with a 4.5 year age gap between kids, you don’t always want to leave the younger kid home alone, or with Grandma, or with a sitter when attending your older kids’ events. Our youngest was drug around a lot. Now for a few years she’s been the focus.
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My son taught himself to code at a young age and did that on his own. If she is learning on her own, see if you can engage and discuss some topics. The world of info out there is unbelievably rich now.
Plus if she’s 11, why would she be dragged all over the place?
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bracelets. But, one of the problems would be that she would still get drug to a lot of her sisters' things. Sigh.
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Maybe she wants to chill for a while, or maybe she wants to do something herself, unscheduled and informal.
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We have 3 girls: 15, 13, 11. The first two are alphas at almost everything they do. Perfect grades, crazy and widely recognized athletes, big circles of friends. This leaves two pretty big shadows over the 11 year old who is in 6th grade. Compounding the problem is that the 6th grade class has the worst case of mean girls we have encountered so far, and she has one close friend and a couple acquaintances.
11 yr old is a good/average athlete, but she is small for her age. She has always played soccer, but has decided to give it up in the spring. She was good (which is fine for us), but not great (like her sisters). She is a very good ball handler for her basketball team and the starting point guard, but she is small which limits her ability to score. We have never made her play either sport, but have always told her she needs to play something (both for physical activity and social interaction). She is smart as a whip, devours books and information, gets great grades and is an absolute comedian. She showed some early interest in dancing, singing or acting, but after a class or two in that, gave it up.
If left to her own devices, she would do no extra curricular things. And, she has never really tried hard at anything. We are hearing a lot of "I'm not good at anything" and "its not fair that 15 and 13 yr old sisters are good at everything." We point out to her how hard those two work to be good at things.
I want to sign her up for swimming or tennis or acting/singing lessons or something for the spring, over her very significant protests. Do we do that and force her into something? Do we just let her be in nothing (kind of a foreign idea to both her parents and sisters). I will spend literally any amount of money for her to have a good experience and feel good at something. Anyone have any suggestions how to handle this?