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Your 8-year-old now
Harness your child's impressive energy and desire to please by involving her in household chores. What can an 8-year-old do? Plenty:
- Feed and water a pet.
- Make a bed.
- Keep her room tidy.
- Pick up toys.
- Set the table.
- Clear the table.
- Fold towels and sort laundry.
- Water plants.
- Use dustpan and broom to clean spills.
- Weed the garden.
- Empty small garbage pails.
- Pour milk.
- Pack her own lunch box (possibly with help).
Your life now
Are you an unwitting subscriber to "champ think"? That's the common mind-set shared by many parents that early involvement in competitive sports will give a child a leg up on peers and set her on the path to elite-athlete status.
Physicians and physical therapists consider it more important to expose a child of this age to a variety of activities than to focus on one specific sport. If she plays a single sport excessively, she risks overuse injuries in her still-growing body. Plus, she may burn out on it. That's why youth sports experts generally advise that 8-year-olds not be involved in more than one league at a time and not play a single sport year-round, no matter how physically gifted they appear to be.
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