My suggestion is to talk to your friends who have older children.  Anytime I start to agonize over the decisions I am making for my children (ex: should they be in montessori school tor reach their full potential? am I a bad mother b/c my children aren't being immersed in a foreign language now?),  I touch base with friends who can help put things in perspective.  Just recently,  I was talking to some of my college friends about the fact that my 5 yo pre-kindergartener can't read.  I'm not worried about it AT ALL, but he has a friend who can read and so he asks when he will be able to read...Both friends reassured me that while their children were not necessarily reading in kindergarten, they are now voracious readers who excel in school.  Sometimes, even when you know something on a gut level, it helps to hear it from someone else.  

Please always remember that kids learn more between the ages of 0 and 5 than all other years combined. Expose them to as much as possible in order for them to be able to make decisions regarding their options in life.

 This is not stress, it is fun to them at that age. I remember how cool I felt when I could first read a street sign. My parents did not force me to do anything, but they exposed me to the world. This is more educational than any rote memorization of geometric formulas!

 Mind if I am blunt here? Unless you live in Sweden, who cares what they do there? Things are how they are HERE and arent likely to change HERE any time soon. My personal belief is the stress you speak of is going to grow more than diminish. 

Further, it sounds like the stress is not on your child, but on you. It is an awesome responsibility having children and we all want nothing but the best for them. But it comes with a price. Sure, it would be nice to take the mediocre route and put them in the local "good enough" public down the street, but then that is no guarantee they will get into Stanford and support you later in life is it?

So, here is a way to deal wit the stress. First figure out how you want things to turn out for your child. Want them to go to Harvard? Find the best high school in your area which has graduates at Harvard. Next figure out the schools which feed into that high school. Next, figure out the pre-K program which gets them  into those schools.Now you are done. You have a school roadmap for your child for the next 18 years. So focus all of your attention on making it a reality. Once done, that leaves you to determine the best sports, activities, organizations and friends for your kid. Lots of fun.

Coach Coco

My opinion is definately yes...

we expect lot of from our kids...

as the result our kids are not happy....

thankx for the topic...

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bob