The first thing my spouse and I do when something like this comes up is determine together (parents only) what *our* limits are - how often are we willing to let our child be in practice vs having free time vs homework needs vs missing out on spending time with siblings and friends etc. We also take into consideration what we can afford in terms of expense as well as time - driving a child to practice back and forth plus to meets etc doesn't just impact the child, it impacts parents in a big way, as well as the siblings who aren't participating because the parent who's driving isn't doing something else with another child.
Once we have a good agreement on what we, as parents, can offer - then we get input from our child, although to be honest, none of our children, at 7, wanted that large of a sports commitment and a 5-day per week activity schedule.
Out of our three children, one is not into competitive athletics at all, one is very athletically talented (not just in one sport) and loves to compete, and the third is in between - not extremely athletic, certainly not talented, but she has a few sports that she really enjoys and she is driven to compete with herself.
Soooo..... my dd who is athletically talented and has a really competitive nature, also didn't self-choose one sport over another until she was around 8 years old. Prior to that she wanted to try anything and everything. In the meantime we knew other parents who's kids were starting team gymnastics at 3, living at the gym etc. Those same parents would tell us that to be truly competitive at gymnastics you had to start young - waiting would just put you so far behind the eight-ball you'd never catch up. Weeeelllll.... after a childhood of only taking one or two rec classes and totally goofing off with her bff during class, when she was 8 dd suddenly decided she wanted to try gymnastics, and guess what? She's doing great, competing at the same level as most of her friends who started back at 3. And it's a decision she made, not a decision that was made for her. The hard part for dd is that she is now at a place where she has to practice with her team a certain number of days per week, which means this year she had to give up another sport which she really enjoys - but it was easier (I think) for her to make that decision at 10 than it would have been at 7. And she made the decision - not her coach, and not her parents.
What is it like having your child practice a sport after school so much of the week? There are a lot of trade-offs. I do believe my child would be doing better academically at school if she didn't spend so much time at the gym. Is it an issue? Probably not at the moment because she's able to coast to a certain extent thanks to being smart. Am I going to be willing to put up with this for another 2-3 years or longer? I don't know. If she doesn't find a way to apply herself a bit more at school I may want to pull her back to less gym time. The other impact on our family is that it splits up what were once nightly family dinners. I think in some ways, for us, that's been ok - we have a bit of a split dinner, the kids and parent at home before dd gets home eat together, and the parent who does pick up eats with the gymnast when they get home. So each parent is having a bit of small-group family dinner and good quality time with part of our kids each night... but we're not getting that everyone-together-to-eat dinner in except on weekends, and I miss that. I also feel like dd's nights are very crammed-full-busy - she doesn't mind, but it would drive me nuts if it was me maintaining her schedule
polarbear
