amymarieanderson@gmail.com

I second this! In my head, since my husband and I are quiet introverts, our child would be, too. We ended up with rambunctious twin boys who at 2 want to spend their day running and flopping and digging and running toy vacuums. One of them does not stop talking and yelling from the time he wakes up to when he goes to sleep. We just switched daycares to one that has a rock playground with a sand box and water table. It also has an indoor gym for bad weather days (which is at least half the year where I live). They now come home tired and dirty and hungry instead of wound up and irritable.

While I agree with some of what you’re saying here, I think your attitude towards therapy and the reasons people might need it lacks understanding and empathy. My father was raised in much the way you described, in a poor farm family in the Midwest with no indoor plumbing, lots of work to do, and a lot of mouths to feed. I’m sure his parents didn’t spend time entertaining him as a kid. He is resourceful and a hard worker but absolutely would have benefited from therapy to learn some better skills for expressing emotions and communicating. Therapy is a tool for healing and expanding what is possible in our lives. I hope my two year old twins one day see therapy as a resource, should they ever need it, and I certainly won’t see it as a failure of my parenting or a result of me trying too hard to entertain them. Also, just for the record, I’m pretty sure pioneer folks drank if they had access to alcohol. Just saying.
I can relate a lot to the OP in that it’s hard to keep two year old twins busy after days of being stuck inside a small house due to illness and -27° weather. There are only so many chores they’re able to safely do, and I’d prefer not to have them on screens. We’re all doing our best, and I don’t think implying that the poster is setting her kids up for drug abuse is a helpful take.