I’m the parent of a 5-year old DD who is entering kindergarten this year. While I’m not obsessing over her college admissions just yet, I’m trying to be better prepared for the long road ahead, and hoping to avoid making any common mistakes as we navigate the next 12 years of her life. One reason I’m here is that now that she’s 5, we’re faced with a plethora of choices for EC activities like tennis, soccer, ballet, swim team, piano, violin etc and various camps for summer 2021. My question for parents of high school aged kids is: if you retrace your steps to when your child was 5 years old, are there any activities you regret participating in, or feel especially good about when it came to raising a kid with selective-college potential? Thanks for sharing any tips or lessons learned.
music lessons/ instrument ! so important and if your child loves them she should try another or a few instruments
5 is too early to obsess. Pick a few things that serve as fun (fun enough) activities and see how your child develops. The music programs I’m familiar with generally start a few years later.
Of course, if your kid will turn out to be a fabulous athlete, musician, ends up fluent in several languages, whatever, many do get started early. But you can’t predict that at a tender age and imo, the first priority is to get them happy to learn and to participate. Not to develop competitive skills.
Add to that, a lot of the later relationship with your child depends on not pushing too much, too soon.
Watch cartoons in a foreign language with English subtitles.
Get her her own library card. Let her pick books. (You can suggest additional ones but never judge her picks). Read with her even as she gets older and can read perfectly well herself, make sure she sees you read.
Listen to classical music and tell her if she has favorites she can choose to play them.
Unless she’s already an athlete (if you have one of those, you know -and if it’s not obvious, you don’t) don’t enter the competitve sports mindset. Have her try sports that look fun, with no pressure.
Enjoying lots of things is the most important.
That I needed to let him fail and struggle a few times.
Just have fun. Try different things. At 5 she’s limited. Just develop how to play creatively. Can’t really do much now.
So as an aside… We tried soccer for both kids. Thousands of kids every weekend. My daughter just stood there and wouldn’t go chase the ball or run to the opposite goal and come back so we asked her why. She said, “why should I run all the way over there if their just coming back” 
… Yep, she became the goalie… Lol and only one season of soccer.
But we tried tennis but swimming and at our Y they had a team and she liked that. Wasn’t great but enjoyed it. Like softball in school.
But her love was dancing, singing, and acting.
For singing at around 8 or 9 she joined the Chicago Children’s Choir (your state most likely has one). She wanted private lessons but were told to do this instead. Great way to develop.
For music the recorder is cheap and an interesting way to see if they will enjoy learning. We always listened to music in our house. At 5… Listen to The Beatles. The lyrics are simple for kids at this age and fun. Twist and shout (yes we twisted and shouted), I wanna hold your hand, etc etc… Great music, they can sing along to the chorus, great introduction to music at this age. But play as stated Classical, Jazz, Rock and just have fun with it.
I would let their interests happen organically. Don’t force anything.
Definitely music. I stopped pushing my S’s piano lessons when he grew disinterested. He now regrets having discontinued it. Smh!
Lots of reading. Go to libraries and bookstores and let her choose what she likes. Also get a variety of books to have (science, history, nature, transportation, joke books, literally a wide variety)!
Thank you note writing. A must and never out of style. Benefits the receiver and sender. A true gift for both.
Lots of tactile experiences. Wind on her face, salt water, hills, butterflies, frogs, tadpoles (so fun), touching star fish and looking for hermit crabs, watching and participating in sports, kite flying, magic tricks, Halloween parties with different bowls filled with different items she and guests guess while blindfolded (spaghetti, peeled grapes, etc)!
Swimming. Boating. Areas of interest around your town and elsewhere.
Also a basket filled with costume dress up items (capes, hats of all types, robes, accessories), and musical instruments (harmonicas, drums, clappers, bells, etc).
You ought to be a good ten years away from “obsessing just yet” about college. For now, save money.
Slow down.
She’s five. As a parent of young adults, my advice to you is to please, please let her enjoy her childhood for as long as possible. Before you know it, her childhood will be gone.
It shouldn’t be “we”; but rather her who is faced with a plethora of choices. Don’t make the mistake of feeling that the path your tiny little kid should take is the one that involves spending a lot of money with a goal to ultimately ensuring her college resume is chock full of activities. Let her discover what interests her.
Who knows what college admissions will be like in 12 years when your child applies, but it’s probably reasonable to assume that colleges will still want to see kids pursuing what truly interests them.
At five, you are really jumping the gun to assume your child has selective college potential.
Yes to letting them fail. It’s a great lesson for them to learn.
If someone is fortunate to be able, expose your children to all kinds of opportunities. Don’t shy away from unique experiences. Let them not love most things they try. If there is interest in something, do what you can to learn about how to continue that path.
My kids participated in so many activities, and all found their passions (theater, running, soccer). The only one that wasn’t a choice was swimming, age 3 until they knew their strokes. My 17 recently passed his lifeguard test and he hadn’t had a lesson since the age of 8 (not going to lie, it wasn’t pretty, but he passed and got a job). Skating is also a nice skill to learn early if just even for birthday parties. If they want to quit and try something else, fine as long as they finish the season. Oh, and if you want to find activities that will drain your bank account, look into ice hockey and competitive irish dancing. 
Fortunately my hockey player gave it up for soccer/baseball/basketball/flag football, and my dancer chose xc and track for her HS sport (so inexpensive, and a something she can do forever). Just follow their lead, it’s really just about having fun.
With our D21, we decided at that age to enroll her in karate and dance (we totally were not even remotely thinking about college at this age). Both were taught in a group setting which allowed for peer interaction, but also taught discipline and body awareness. She continued to dance for 8 years and took karate until she achieved her black belt. With both, we were able to add in other activities for her to try, and both helped her develop a strong, flexible body which was conducive for other sports. This fall she will be heading off to college as a recruited athlete.
Actually, it’s my opinion you should NEVER obsess about what your kids are doing for fun.
I also think you would be better served finding a place where other parents of 5 year olds are posting.
We didn’t obsess at all…but we did have a house “rule”. We would only schlep our kids to one extra activity outside of school. ONE. So they both (one is a boy and one a girl) started out with dance and movement classes. We drove them each to these classes. Each them then wanted to be in an auditioned children’s chorus…choices choices. They chose the chorus which involved even more parent taxi service time (and was a great experience).
When I say “extra activity”…that’s what I mean. Both did recreational soccer or baseball. Both took piano lessons at home, but that was easy! Both did instrument lessons when they were offered at school (grade 4 or 5). Both did ski club offered through school.
The key is…they chose.
ETA…regrets? Only one. One of our kids wanted to NOT do a recreational sport in maybe 3rd grade. My husband insisted that the kid do it. The kid hated it and I wish we hadn’t made the kid do that.
We didn’t limit the kids, and we have 5. Lots and lots of carpools, many moving parts. I actually miss it, especially the activities they did for many, many years. I loved the kids and the parents, thank goodness we are still in touch. Great time management skills were developed, not to mention the ability to change clothes while wearing a seatbelt.
I just asked my kids what they remember as being the most fun when they were little.
Running around with friends in the garden.
Swimming (as in, being in the pool.)
Lots of made up games with cuddly toys. (Picnics and forts, etc…)
PlayMobil and Lego.
Sledding.
Traditional summer camp for a couple of weeks, not sleep away. They swam, went on little hikes, regular day camp activities.
Both did a few activities as littles. Ballet for a year because she wanted to feel like a princess. Karate because it looked cool. Both did soccer, both quit early on, but son loved getting a medal at Soccerfest every year (everyone got a medal) so he did it for three years.
Both loved art classes. Son hated music.
We had one rule in high school:
They had to choose at least one extracurricular activity. They could drop it for another, but they had to do just one thing apart from schoolwork. Both ended up doing a few things, though neither did tons of stuff.
We parents did make them do some things they didn’t want to do as they got older. But at the age of five, it was 100% just letting them play.
I’ll add.my son does some teaching. He mentioned once how he now understood and appreciated how we limited HS activities to a reasonable number. He has had to reschedule his teaching with some kids who have…ballet, gymnastics, art class, some sport, ice skating lessons, cooking classes. Not one of these but all. He says…he doesn’t understand why these students are doing so many different things. Plus it makes rescheduling almost impossible.
Read. Read to them, with them, let them read to you…and let them see you reading. Physical books, both for you and for them. Talk about what you read.
Put down your phone, device, etc. and turn the computer, tv, etc. off. Don’t sneak in a glance when you think they aren’t looking.
Take walks, talk about what you see.
Don’t belittle them - ever.
Be kind, empathetic and compassionate to those around you.
Be present with them.
If I could go back, there are things I might do differently, but absolutely none of them at age 5 would have anything to do with “college potential”. Even with my middle school kid, I am more focused on what she finds happy and fulfilling as a person than on what is going to go on her college app. My older kid did all but high school in a different country, so absolutely nothing back then was focused on “selective US college”, but she got into the one she wanted anyway.
I will echo others - reading and music!! Both are so important. Those activities will help them the rest of their lives.
My other advice - let her be a kid. Don’t pressure her. Let her know she is doing great. Hug her a lot, because before long she won’t want to hug you.
This really resonates. Looking back as a father, the one thing that I definitely have not regretted in raising my D22 was making the time to read to/with her before bedtime (for a stretch, I had to make up a new story each day to share with her at bedtime - became quite challenging for me as she got older and her expectations grew), play endless iterations of a Hawaiian wedding with her paper dolls, take her on long walks in the park to collect leaves/flowers/rocks, teach her to swim and bike (the latter took a bit of time and patience!), prepare her for the UK 11+ secondary school entrance exams (rather than hiring a tutor), accompany her on Saturdays to her music program, take her to school on the first day of each school year (until she asked me to stop a couple of years ago 
), etc.
@Mjkacmom – I miss those years too. when every day of our fall calendars had something kid-related for our 4 kids in HS/MS/ELM. Lots of joy in watching kids participate and grow and form connections. that season of being so busy really didn’t last long. It was just right.