DD has done three things that seriously.
1. Dogging, as Jon puts it. This one is year-round, and it's a minimum of 6 hours a week, but during the "season" it's a lot more time than that. If she's competing in freestyle and agility as well as obedience and conformation showmanship, then she bumps up the time commitment to about 10 hours a week-- mostly in short bursts, since a dog really can only train hard for maybe 45 minutes at a shot. DD also builds a partnership with her dogs-- the current model, a herder, goes running with her every morning for an hour. That's not training time, that's just "being with me" time for the dog, though DD also works with her (but more subtly). DD started doing this when she was about ten years old. She's put more time into it as she's gotten older-- she also has grooming-intensive dogs, so that's another demand. We do have to remind her about the grooming, which neither she nor the dogs enjoy.
2. Rifle-- this is 6-10 hours a week. This is range time.
3. Piano-- at (almost) six, she began formal lessons. Practice time was LIMITED at that point to 6 hours a week, and never more than 30 minutes at a time-- in order to protect her from over-use injuries to her hands.
Now at 14, she SHOULD probably practice about 14 hours a week, but doesn't. More like 5-7 hours weekly, and a lot of that is in short sessions (15min) and is improvisational and "just playing" so not what I'd consider "practicing." I've posted about her love-hate relationship with piano. It tweaks her perfectionistic streak, and she wants to be "perfect" but also wants to eliminate the stimulus that says she IS NOT perfect (ergo-- stopping the inputs that she gets when she sits down and plays).
None of those things is permitted to interfere with the core things that DD finds personal passions--
community service/volunteering
and
reading.
She regulates it pretty well on her own, truthfully.
