<p>poetgrl,
I suspect that when you said you would require a kid to have ECs, you actually meant that you would create an environment where ECs would be an integral part of your child’s life. That’s what we did with our kids. We made sure they had something to do after school and also scheduled our lives around their ECs. But we never thought they we doing it for college apps. We wanted them to be involved in good, healthy activities for the sake of their development and also to make them busy. We didn’t have cable TV and limited video games. We had this idea that a busy kid busy wouldn’t have time to do something stupid. But of course, playing time with friends was also considered important.</p>