Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Overscheduling

I had this grand plan of letting each child have one activity to avoid overscheduling them.

My daughter chose dance, and my son chose gym.I think that is where my plan went all wrong
It was nothing when they were 1 hour per week...but now my daughter is in 3 dance classes each week (which will increase as she hopes to join the company in the future).

Sure, I could make them cut down...but they love what they do, and they have such an emotional need for their activities.

My daughter is the epitome of emotional OE, and dance has been a wonderful way for her to express herself. My son (her psychomotor OE equivalent) has such an intense need for movement that I sometimes wonder if he'd be able to focus at school if he didn't spend so much time in the gym. (he can train for 2 hours and then run 2 miles without blinking an eye)

So, here we are, completely overscheduled with only one activity each...but I figure as long as the kids are happy, content with their amount of "down time," and consistently doing great at school we will keep it up.

Lol, supercrunch. I considered putting in my earlier posts that the most all-consuming activity a kid could pick, as far as I could see from my kids (and kids in my scout troops' experiences) is dance! The kids in it love it, but it is a huge time commitment, and the time ramps up earlier than most other activities. By late middle school, most of the girls I know in it had dropped pretty much everything else. I consider myself lucky that both my kids tried it and had no talent, so quite early

It is huge...but gymnastics just might top it. The Elite level gymnasts (girls) at my son's gym train 30 hours a week (and most of them still attend public school). Luckily the boys max out closer to 20 in their high school years. I guess that's one way to instill time management skills in a kid!

Can be, but doesn't need to be. We're at a really laid-back studio - they don't split off ballet from the combo classes until 4th grade or so, and don't require 2 days a week for another couple of years. And there's no competitive team. Some of the studios here go to twice-weekly lessons for ballet at age 7, and have competitive teams starting at 3s-4s.

It does creep up on you, though. DD7 is adding hip-hop this fall, and if she liked ballet (she tolerates the ballet portions of the ballet / jazz combo class she's in), we'd probably be looking for a studio with more of a ballet focus.

We've done the Nutcracker (through the local non-profit children's ballet) the last couple years, and that eats most of your weekends for 3 months.

We struggle with this a lot. My older DD loves loves loves outside activities. But she also really needs her downtime and she typically has more than an hour of homework a night during the school year. Our school also goes late, to almost 4 PM, so that does not leave a lot of time after school for activities and also downtime.

This last year she did Girl Scouts (2 nights a month plus a Saturday field trip every other month), Girls on the Run two afternoons a week, swim lessons on Sundays and she had weekly therapy for her anxiety.

This year she will keep Girl Scouts, have a weekly social skills group, and she wants to do dance and non-competitive swim team! And maybe drama! We can't do all that, so she is going to have to make some hard choices. When she does too much, it also exacerbates her anxiety and that is not good for any of us!

You can send your dancers to the school I work at! We are 6th through 12th grade arts charter. Our dancers have classes in the school day for 2 hours a day plus most are on the performance team which practices another 2 hours a day. We'll wear them out for you :-)

I actually need to work on overscheduling DS a little bit more. He has school and gymnastics 1x a week and that's it. He so far has shown no interest in anything else but at home complains that all the other kids are doing things outside of school and he doesn't get to. We may add another gym session next school year and I'll also be working to convince his school that he should be allowed to participate in Odyssey of the Mind this year. They only allow 4th and 5th graders for some reason... but that's not our state's rule just a school rule.

My son is busy 5 days a week (half-days) rehearsing for Seussical. He invites the theater kids over to our house when they are not rehearsing. He is still doing once a week piano lessons and still finds time to do a lot of reading. He wants to take guitar lessons and possibly violin. I think he has less anxiety when he is busy.

Here is a tip on Odyssey of the Mind. Your odds of getting a "yes" from the school would go up if you offered to supervise a team. That was one of the problems at our school, not enough leaders, so they reduced the number of teams.

supercrunch, i had that great idea too. and yeah, even with one activity, we are gone all the time!

Actually my odds would go up if the snotty moms involved would let someone else help ;-) Three moms and their 5 kids made up the team this year.