OK... I'll weigh in here. Not about the dolls, but about parenting and the ever present "play date."

This spring, we have very few activities. No sports anyone wanted to play this season, swimming lessons once a week, lots of down time at home after school. The problem? No one is home to play with. My 3rd grade son comes home from school and says "can I have a friend over?" So we get out the school directory and start phoning. No one is there. Everyone is at basketball, baseball, tae kwon do, tutoring, cub scouts, girl scouts, dance class, or music lessons. Or their parents work and the kid is in day care. Or the kid in question is being dragged along to one of the above activities that an older or younger sibling is involved in.

As the parent, I have to schedule proper play dates (where you talk to another parent, put it on the calendar, and make arrangements), or they don't happen at all.

Add to that, our neighborhood is bisected by a really big busy road with no cross walks or traffic lights. The only way to safely cross it with small children is in a car. Which means that to play with some kids, an adult needs to schlep the kids from here to there, and back again. Kids can't arrange that on their own.

I'm starting to let go the "mom leash" and let my son ride his bike to places close to home that don't involve busy streets. I'm seen as an oddball. I've had parents bring their kids in the car two blocks away with no busy street, because NO ONE lets their kids walk anywhere. Especially unsupervised.

I refuse to live my life being afraid of the invisible bogeyman who is going to snatch my kids off the street in a safe suburb in broad daylight. But many, many parents do live like that, and never let their kids out of their sight for a minute. Mine (at age 7 and 9) ride their bikes around the block! What a concept!

So it's all fine to say you'd let your kids choose their own friends and arrange their own play times. Except that if I did that they'd never play with anyone but each other.

Let the poor kid quit piano.

I also took piano lessons because my parents forced me, though for only four years. I wanted to play flute, but flute was not offered. Piano was it. I hated piano, I hated to practice, I haven't played a note since the end of the 6th grade when I could quit.

In the seventh grade, I joined the school band and took up the flute. Yes, piano was a good experience for me. I was light-years ahead of my classmates because I understood chord structure, music theory, and so on... and I saw the band director's score once and realized in a flash that he was "playing" all of us just like I played many notes at once on the piano.

Today, I play flute, several different recorders, and pennywhistle. I play in a recorder quartet. I've taken lessons in Irish flute. I still love these instrument, and anything that sounds vaguely like a whistle, from an ocarina to a bagpipe. I can pick out a tune on the piano, and can use it for tuning. That's it.

LW, the musical grounding that your daughter has in the piano is excellent. You've done your job. Let her find her own path. She will anyway. The question is, will she do it with your blessing, or with gallons of resentment? If you're doing this for her, as you say, you have to figure out at 13 how to be supportive of her interests, not controlling of them.

I think children have an obligation to finish what they start. In my house, that means finishing what they sign up for, and what we've paid for. My 5 year old begged for soccer, we signed her up, bought the shoes, socks, shorts, shinguards, and ball, and she hated it. We finished the whole godforsaken season to prove a point. we had paid for it, we bought all the stuff, and three months is not forever. Also, one practice isn't enough for her really to know if she doesn't like it. Three months, however, is. Same with any sport, activity, lesson, etc. The only thing they're not allowed to quit is swimming.

So you've made your point. She's finished what she signed up for. If she doesn't have the interest to do this on her own, she doesn't. That's all there is to it.

Somehow, the recording industry needs to come to terms with the "long tail" concept that has taken over in movies and books through services like Netflix and Amazon.com.

I think the idea of an album "going gold" is of less importance than finding the right audience for the right music. What's good? What's bad? Who cares? Your trash is my eclectic, and vice versa. If I'm looking for obscure titles by some independent Celtic/Rock fusion group I heard at a festival once two years ago... why isn't the music industry there to help me?

Truth is, that it isn't there for me. I have to find it myself, on the internet, on small low-profit labels I dig up for myself, or from actual musicians selling their CDs out the back of a van. I still buy CDs, but they're weird. The major labels are looking for the next "hit". They haven't figured out yet that I'm not buying "hits". Someone is, but not me. And I don't think I'm that unusual.

Music is bigger and will last longer than corporate radio, record stores, and major-name concerts. And by the music world, I mean music... acutal people playing instruments and writing songs and trying to eke out a living... not executives and marketing and so on.