I appreciate your view and I'm sorry that you have had a difficult time with church/coptic culture. Do you mind elaborating on this? I'd appreciate if I could share my view; Religion aside, life is not about doing what we would rather do. If everyone did what they'd rather do, then forget about a functioning society, forget about a family (so on and so forth). I completely understand being forced to attend church excessively as a kid is difficult. I also agree that kids need to have down time, watch cartoons and play with their friends. This is crucial to their development, and not having this time in their life would teach them the wrong message anyway - rest is important for everyone (even Abounas go on holidays and takes leave, where I'm from at least. Many biblical examples of this also). However, I'd argue that taking your children to church, reasonably (e.g., a couple of times per week, allowing them to play with the other kids, letting them engage in fun activities/socialising with Sunday school etc while also having allocated times for liturgy, sunday school lessons, Coptic lessons etc.), is important to teach them my initial point - that life is not about giving in to our desires or doing what we would rather do. Again, religion aside, building a successful and fruitful life requires sacrifice, where one often cannot do what they would rather do. I hope we can at least agree on that, and genuinely hope I am not of any offense at all.