I can identify with the extracurricular time drain for the parent! Thankfully most of my kid�s activities are included with the tuition, so we only pay out a couple additional thousands in gas and fees. My primary occupation, in addition to getting them to and from school, has become to coordinate and drive them between their separate schools to various locations around the city.
Our life is crazy right now with my daughter�s activities which include practices and competitions for mock trial, swimming, music (both solo and ensemble). She also leads a photography club that she started. She has one or two after school activities every day during the winter. Additionally, I just signed her up for an evening driver�s education class. Oh, she is also plugging along with an online programming class in addition to her eight high school courses (no PE this semester).
Currently, my son has practice and competitions for swimming and water polo, attends an afterschool math program one day per week and math circle sporadically. He is also preparing for his Confirmation at church and will have completed over 60 hours between volunteer service hours and school work study by end of year.
For example, today�s schedule; dd has mock trial practice and a swim meet. She will go to mock trial for approx 45 minutes (the team teacher allows her to be among the first for questioning), then I will drive her to the swim meet (she had asked her coach to put her in the last half events so she can warm up after the diving). I won�t be able to watch her swim today. I will just drop her off so I can drive out to pick up her brother (after his swim practice) and then drive back to the meet site hopefully before it ends. Then we face the hour long commute home through the tail end of rush hour traffic.
Next year ds will be in high school, so it will be saner at least in terms of school athletics. Ds will swim in the fall, dd will swim in the winter and ds will play water polo in the spring. DS will probably be adding school clubs too then.
