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Kids who are in multiple activities never get the family dinner time, never get the extra reading time and don't have any socialization outside of a structured environment...unless they are willing to sacrifice getting an adequate amount of sleep. It's just not healthy, especially for young kids and yes, I think it's a parents responsibility to balance this for them even if they really want to do all those things.
I agree, especially for very young kids. My kids do activities all year but when they were young we limited them to one sport at a time. For the first time our youngest has asked to participate in the wrestling club at our school after school in the spring when he already has lacrosse. We are letting him try it for April. So far he doesn't seem stressed but if he starts to be stressed we will curtail wrestling until lacrosse is over.
I do agree that parents should be responsible for making sure kids have free time. My son really likes to write and he does benefit from having unstructured time for his writing.
Shoot, Uncle Goat, next time give her a quick lecture on American troop strength during the allied invasion of Sicily. Then ask her for her opinion on Patton. She'll avoid you like you're carrying rabies.
That brings up an interesting question though and was sort of the core of the disagreement. Is being that busy, even if the kid wants to do it, a good thing? Is always being busy and being in multiple activities a "better" situation then ensuring your kids have some balance and some downtime to just "be a kid"?
I don't personally think so. I think kids need to have a decent amount of free and unstructured time to just play or hang out with their friends, especially at the younger ages. People constantly lament the lack of kids playing outside together in unstructured activities and the obsession with social media, but maybe, just maybe those are a by-product of our focus on keeping our kids "busy and involved".
I'm not sure what the correct balance is, but I don't think either extreme is good.
We heavily sport playing kids still had a lot of unstructured time to socialize, though. We got out of school around 2:30 and didn't start sports until around five usually. Of course, we had barely any homework to worry about back in the 90's.
Plus, many families still wouldn't have family dinners if their kids weren't in sports, dance, etc. They aren't that common anymore.
We heavily sport playing kids still had a lot of unstructured time to socialize, though. We got out of school around 2:30 and didn't start sports until around five usually. Of course, we had barely any homework to worry about back in the 90's.
I posted up what my sons schedule is like earlier and this kids is pretty much the same as far as school goes. You are right, it was a lot more relaxed then. We are similar ages and I remember getting out of school at 3pm, having at least a couple of hours until any practice started and then most practices were over in under 2 hours. We also didn't practice everyday. Homework was also not as plentiful and omnipresent as it is now.
You also didn't have the mutliple leagues and sports all going on at the same time. Soccer or football was in the fall, wrestling in the winter, baseball in the spring. We didn't have soccer, indoor soccer, rec league baseball, travel/club baseball and lacrosse all going on at the same time like there is now with some kids like those of Super Mom doing all of them.
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Plus, many families still wouldn't have family dinners if their kids weren't in sports, dance, etc. They aren't that common anymore.
Maybe they should be? Call me old school, but I don't like to not have my family sitting at the table enjoying a meal together and talking to each other about our day. Can it happen everyday, no, but I would never purposefully schedule us to the point that it could never happen.
Maybe they should be? Call me old school, but I don't like to not have my family sitting at the table enjoying a meal together and talking to each other about our day. Can it happen everyday, no, but I would never purposefully schedule us to the point that it could never happen.
We try to have dinner together most nights. Sometimes it's not possible but we try to make it happen as often as possible. BTW-we play all sorts of sports. It takes some planning but family dinners can happen even if the kids are busy.
Of course tonight it will not happen. Oldest has lacrosse game and I am going to see that. Middle is at Disney on a band trip. Youngest is going to the hockey game (PLAYOFFS) with my husband. But we did have dinner together M, T, W and last night only the middle was away.
I've seen a couple of posts on here mention parents 'coaching' from the touchline.
This problem was getting really bad in England at one point and the English Football Association (soccer) released this film to highlight the issue. It's a really good watch and makes the point brilliantly.
I was a happy Papa, out of the 3 boys I have not one ever wanted to be on any team what so ever, yay !!
They played ball in the street with the neighborhood boys like I did when I was younger...and that worked for me, luckily we had a lot of parks around.
The last thing I ever wanted to do was sit at a children's ball game listening to their retarded parents cheering....a ball game is supposed to be fun for the boys, not a freaking competition.
Sorry, but I have better things to do with my time than sit at any sporting event.
ugh, I rather eat nails.
I know many parents around here that are like that too... though I don't know ONE that is involved with the PTA and coaching and volunteer work. Generally, the folks that are screaming at their kids, in my experience, are the ones who just show up at games and aren't involved in any other aspect of the 'process'.
I'm one of those involved moms. I have to limit my kids activities for my own sake - though many parents show up on game day (usually 5-10 minutes late, not even dropping off their kids on time beforehand), few show up to do the work - be it coaching, being 'team mom' (generally means just organizing the snacks and ordering trophies), helping out at practice, etc. Same thing with other, academic clubs... it's always the same moms who volunteer to lead the group, help out the teacher, set up, clean up, etc. My kids have never been involved in ANYTHING where I haven't had to step up and help out... because so few others do.
It's usually just the parents who do nothing except sign up their kids, then show up for games that do all the complaining/gossiping and yell at their children and get upset that their child isn't being paid proper 'homage' during the game.
So we had our first game this weekend. My sons team got blown out and lost by around 8 runs. I thought the coach did a great job keeping the kids focused on fundamentals, not caring about the score and making sure everyone had an equal chance to play. The parents, with the exception of Super Mom and her parents (apparently it's genetic) were all very well behaved.
As I said earlier, two kids each inning need to be benched as there are 12 on the team and only 10 players on the field. The coach firmly believes that when all 12 players are there, each kid WILL sit one inning. The teams two best players were benched for one inning each. One of the kids was my neighbors son and while their son was upset because he wanted to play, they told him, it was fair as everyone deserves an equal chance to play.
Super Mom's son on the other hand literally broke down in tears throwing his equipment and complaining that it wasn't fair because he was the 'best'. Super Mom, instead of explaining why it WAS fair, paced up and down the sidelines complaining to her parents that it is totally ridiculous that the coach would bench the best players on the team and then her and her parents proceeded to criticize the other kids amongst themselves. I only knew about it since my dad happened to be sitting next to them and they had no idea who he was. Thankfully my son had a good game and they didn't find anything to criticize about him as I doubt my dad would have been able to keep his mouth shut then, though my dad did toss in an un-solicited comment at one point about the fact that these are just kids learning a game, which earned him a stare from Super Mom.
So, the saga continues and I'm just glad that all the other kids are enjoying playing and the other parents are enjoying watching the kids have fun playing and learning.
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