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    Joined: Feb 2012
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    During the school year DS8 does scouts, swim, golf and drama. DS5 does swim and wrestling. Not all of these go on at the same time. They both participate in a variety of kids' programs at the zoo and museums.

    We can handle about two week nights and one weekend day of activity before everyone gets cranky.

    I'm sneaky in that I push for activities that are easy to manage. Golf is near our house and after handing DS off to the coach, DH and I can go eat/have a drink at the great restaurant on site.

    I work out in another pool during the swim lessons. The zoo/museum programs are usually on the weekend so I work those into a date with DH.

    Wrestling can be a travel every weekend thing. Or not. It is the parents' choice. We travel when we want and the tournaments are fun.

    DS5 wants to try gymnastics and DS8 wants to play indoor soccer. We'll see how those fit.

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    Originally Posted by NotSoGifted
    you don't want the HS/college aged kid just being "relaxed" all of the time. Just my opinion...

    I guess my question here would be, why not? Didn't the kid already "earn" downtime by all the work in school/homework? And especially as they get into high school, it seems this would be even more pressing. Sure, you want your child to find passions. But if it doesn't come from within, if it's just "activities" for the sake of activities, it's really just more obligation, not fun, right? And then doesn't that perpetuate the lack of opportunity to FIND the kid's true interests?

    Caveat - I have an 8-year old, not a teenager. So I know nothing. Plus, DS does not like organized activities. He is uncomfortable in large groups with other children. If you add in noise or chaos, it's impossible for him to sustain absent profound interest. So activities I impose (e.g., swim lessons, because that's a safety issue) are really only successful once I find a 1:1 teaching setting.

    In addition, since I work at a job outside the home, DS has after-school care. Like MsFriz, I'm very grateful for this because the center is run by an awesome teacher, and there is lots of outside and free play. In the summers, he has an all-day sort of camp with this same teacher. This is great for him because it gives him a platform to have fun while working on social interaction skills with kids. But it is totally exhausting for him.

    My thinking is that a kid who works all day in school has already had a ton of "activities" for the day. If there is something they want to do and it fits a family's schedule and budget, I would say go for it. But I wouldn't say a kid who works all day in school and keeps up in homework is doing nothing.

    I really don't know the right balance and my hard-headed child won't "enjoy" things if they weren't his idea, anyway. So probably I'm just woofing here. YMMV. No - it will almost certainly vary! wink

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    DS8's favorite activity is a Pokemon club. They play the card game. It's like a bridge club for boys. They even do a potluck dinner with it. A very nice couple hosts it in their home once a month.

    When I think of who DS8's "people" will be as a young adult in charge of their own leisure time, I see a group far more likely to do a road trip to ComicCon than to a sporting event. A lot of kid's activities are for sportier types.

    I think parents probably follow their kids' lead more than they realize. If I was signing DS8 up for lots of sports he'd be miserable. It would be a struggle to get him to participate in an engaged and worthwhile way.

    DS5 is a more rambunctious and sporty kid. He's happy wrestling and will go hard and get sweaty. We'll likely sign him up for more sports because he likes them and they make him happy.

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    Originally Posted by MsFriz
    If he's in after care at school or going to a wildlife or farm camp during the summer, he's running around outdoors, exploring, doing creative play and having deep, face-to-face conversations with other kids--the kinds of activities that were the default mode for kids two decades ago.

    So, I often feel like his "scheduled" time is some of his best unstructured time. Like I am now paying for him to have the "boring" but incredibly important experiences that used to come for free.
    This is true for my DS as well. DS17 is busy all summer but a whole month of that "busy" is wilderness camp, with no electronics, no homework. He gets to hang with his friends, in nature and relax.

    Problem with their unstructured time being camp with other kids. Is I think kids do need some time to themselves, particularly introverted ones. And think it's healthy for kids to be bored and learn to work through how to solve that themselves.

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    Originally Posted by suevv
    Originally Posted by NotSoGifted
    you don't want the HS/college aged kid just being "relaxed" all of the time. Just my opinion...

    I guess my question here would be, why not? Didn't the kid already "earn" downtime by all the work in school/homework? And especially as they get into high school, it seems this would be even more pressing. Sure, you want your child to find passions. But if it doesn't come from within, if it's just "activities" for the sake of activities, it's really just more obligation, not fun, right? And then doesn't that perpetuate the lack of opportunity to FIND the kid's true interests?
    As for the H.S. kid. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes I might not have agreed with NotSoGifted. Counselors & school administrators kept lecturing that the kids who are involved in H.S. activities do better emotionally & academically and are less likely to take drugs, drink or get into trouble. We were told it could be any club or extra activity be it Math club, Latin Club, Sports, Marching band, Theater, start your own club. Doesn't need to be many things, can be just one. And it can be something outside of school (it's just outside things tend to dry up) just something other than school academics.

    I did push both kids to get involved in something. DD got involved in theater, and DS17 does marching band and is involved in a Robotics club. I'm convinced marching band kept DS from turning into a surly, non-compliant depressed teenager who hated H.S.

    Problem is homework takes up a huge amount of time. So it's tricky to balance the extra curricular, schoolwork and finding downtime. But if my son didn't do his extra activities he would probably just fill it with goofing off on the web & watching videos.

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    "But if it doesn't come from within, if it's just "activities" for the sake of activities, it's really just more obligation, not fun, right? And then doesn't that perpetuate the lack of opportunity to FIND the kid's true interests? Caveat - I have an 8-year old, not a teenager. So I know nothing."

    I have a 17-year-old rising senior, as well as a rising 6th grader, and I totally agree. My almost senior used to write a lot when she was young, but during 6th and 7th grade, she had 7 hours of school a day (all wasted time, due to lack of differentiation and teach-to-the-factoid-test curriculum) and a couple of hours of homework a day (also all wasted, for same reason). It wasn't until I took her out of school for 8th grade and did a semi-homeschool thing - only 4.5 hours a day, most of which was socializing with her friends who came over to the new schooling situation with us - that she had time to start writing again (and, sort of incidentally, winning an award that took her to her Carnegie Hall and have had a huge effect on her writing career and her life since then). Many children don't even know what they care about or enjoy by the time they finish high school.

    The 17-year-old spends huge amounts of time in theater stuff at her school now, by her own choice. If she preferred to spend more time sitting at home daydreaming and drawing and maybe writing a short play every month, I would think that was no less valuable. The idea that the only activities that valuable are those with large groups of people, at other locations, or organized by adults seems very wrong to me. Now in some cases, a child who is slow to warm up or shy but extroverted or whatever, may need a push to start engaging in an activity that she will soon enjoy a lot. But that doesn't mean that a kid should not have substantial "down time" or that I would keep pushing a kid who is not enjoying an activity (on top of maybe a 8 or 10-hour school day) to be in activities. Certainly I would not force a kid who's enjoying riding bikes with friends to go do an "activity" he doesn't want to do. If you need a name for it, "social skills" are some of the most important skills there are.

    Laurie (whose 11-year-old girl spent the whole day playing with an 11-year-old boy friend [not boyfriend] where they just ran the house and the nearby park, and acted out, with embellishment, stories from books they'd read, and who will spend 3.5 hours tomorrow in a astrophotography camp and then come home and spend the rest of the day reading, drawing, bugging her sister about her plans for college, and who knows what else....)

    Last edited by LaurieBeth; 08/19/16 09:38 AM.
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    bluemagic, you understand what I'm saying. When I say "relaxed", I mean watching Netflix and playing video games. Theater, writing, astrophotography camp. swim lessons, etc. are activities. Perhaps not all are highly structured activities, but they all have value - and they involve something other than sitting on the couch and eating junk food.

    We haven't forced our kids to continue activities they don't like. Middle kid hated soccer, so when she was young and still playing rec sports, she played fall ball instead (need to do some sort of physical activity). When they were young, they tried a bunch of different things, and they continued with a few they really enjoyed.

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    Each of my children is allowed one extra curricular at a time outside of piano lessons.
    It's because I am too much of a homebody to want to leave again after I get home from work each day. smile I think it serves my children well. They prioritize their interests, they know how to be self-entertaining, and we have extra money for family fun.

    It works for us. I think if your son is asking for more home time, you should provide it. smile

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    I agree with everyone who replied that each child is different, and a child can be different at each stage. For us, parents can always suggest activities, but the kids have the final say.

    My DS didn't have much activities before 3rd grade, just piano, chess, and a leisurely sports activity once a week (no traveling team). Starting from 3rd grade, he wanted to get involved in various things, and we always gave him permission. My DD had lots and lots activities going on since K, she loved it. When they want to quit for legit reasons (not enough time, wanting to focus on other activities, totally losing interest, etc) we always let them. They can't quit just because something gets harder.

    I did see signs of burnout for DS starting in high school because of the huge academic workload. We let him pick what he wanted to keep, but gave him our recommendations as well. I would say that any sign of burnout should be taken very seriously.

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    our kids are too young for discussion on burnout, although I have seen burnout in college kids - and in kids who were burned out on their dominant activity in HS such that they wanted nothing to do with that activity in college - with the most common denominator I seen with burnout is when there is no break in the year where they just do not do that activity for a few months at all.

    For our kids, we do have them signed up for a few activities, especially after school, but we usually leave a lot of the weekend open, with the only set activity is swimming (and that will remain until they are proficient - then it will be up to them if they want to continue swimming as a formal activity or pick something else to do). However, even if they are not in any organized sports, we are very focused on doing a lot of physical activity, whether it is biking, hiking, swimming, kayaking or outdoor play time. So although we are not very scheduled, we are not really carefree parents either - we try to build in activities we can do all together on weekends that is active. Whether that will hold as they get older, we will see (although when I was a kid, I remember when traveling with my parents, walking was very, very big - with my dad parking over a mile from our destination and we would walk in to whatever sight we were headed to see, and I know I want to continue with those activities as a family to some extent like family hikes/paddles).

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