[33girl]

There's a fine line between keep em busy, keep em out of trouble, and overloading the kids so much (I'm talking about the parents and the school) that they don't have time to be kids. There was an article in Talk magazine (R.I.P) where the 14 year olds were talking about how they were so overprogrammed and pressured during the week, they went crazy with drinking and sex on the weekends. If you give a child an adult schedule, it's not surprising that they will "relax" with what are considered adult activities.

My parents never pushed me, mainly because one of their friends' kids had a nervous breakdown from being involved in so many things. I think they were very wary of saying "well why don't you do more of this or that" because of her experience.

I mean, when I was 16, I could go to the drugstore and browse around the makeup and magazines for an hour, daydreaming. Do kids these days even know what daydreaming is?