Hours Per Day with High Schooler

[Anonymous]

How many hours per day do you get to see / spend time with your high school student? What are the limiting factors (parent work schedule, school hours, sports / extracurriculars, homework load, student job, etc.).

Trying to figure out what changes in family time to expect after being together during pandemic + transitioning to high/upper school. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

My high schooler is a 3 season athlete so gets home at between 6-6:30 most days. Some days he stays for an additional club meeting. His meets are mostly Saturdays, which helps. I try to see him when he eats dinner (I am consistently home from work by then though my husband mostly isn’t) and then he heads up to do homework until after I go to bed.

I think the pandemic helped (which feels strange to say) in that we all remembered the fun we have at family dinner so even 20/30 minutes together each night is appreciated.

I also make it a point to be up before he leave for school at 7:10 and we get another 1/2 hour to eat together in the mornings.

He doesn’t go out with friends both nights of the weekend (he won’t go out before a meet but also is a bit of a homebody). So we generally have dinner together two nights each weekend.

I try to be grateful for what we get.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. Do others find this schedule typical?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Do others find this schedule typical?

8th grade mom of a boy with two heavily scheduled sports. I imagine next year will look the same as this year for us. I think answer will art based on what sports, if any, your kid plays and at what level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Do others find this schedule typical?

This sounds like my sophomore, yes. I see her in the car and at dinner between practice and homework. Most nights, my 8th grader goes to practice when she gets home so I am really looking forward to more full family dinners and being on the same schedule next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Do others find this schedule typical?

True for my sophomore. I am fortunate to be able to schedule my work hours and spend a lot of time shuttling my child to/from school, sporting events and social activities. The time in the car is so valuable for us connecting. We also make it a priority to eat together at least once a day -- even if it is just a snack -- to catch up.

[Anonymous]

The primary obstacle to spending time with our HSer is his lack of desire to spend time with us. Half-joking, but he generally prefers to spend his downtime doing things with his friends, online or offline.

We do have dinner together virtually every night, but he rockets off to do his own thing pretty quickly.

[Anonymous]

Depending on the day, she gets home between 4:00 and 7:00. We always have dinner together, and she typically does her homework downstairs, so I hang out with her with my computer or a book. She's a homebody and COVID-cautious, so we also spend a lot of time together on weekends.

[Anonymous]

My son gets home from school at 3pm talks to us briefly before doing homework or working out. Some days he stays after school for another hour and a half for a team he’s on. We hang out together but he likes his down time and time talking to friends.

[Anonymous]

We have multiple kids who all play sports so I feel like our whole family are ships passing in the night

[Anonymous]

This thread makes me so grateful that senior DS has never played a sport of any kind.

I get that the benefits of team sports and actually don't disagree at all. But I'm not gonna lie, it would suck to see my teen for all 20 minutes a day.

(his extracurricular that he leveraged right into ED1 is independently scheduled by him)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me so grateful that senior DS has never played a sport of any kind.

I get that the benefits of team sports and actually don't disagree at all. But I'm not gonna lie, it would suck to see my teen for all 20 minutes a day.

(his extracurricular that he leveraged right into ED1 is independently scheduled by him)

Mind sharing what the extracurricular is?

[Anonymous]

I'm disconcerted by the homework estimates for high/upper school on so many threads. If there's that much homework, even students without a time-sucking extracurricular won't have that much family or free time for non-school-affiliated interests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me so grateful that senior DS has never played a sport of any kind.

I get that the benefits of team sports and actually don't disagree at all. But I'm not gonna lie, it would suck to see my teen for all 20 minutes a day.

(his extracurricular that he leveraged right into ED1 is independently scheduled by him)

What do you and your teen do together for more than 20 min and how long?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depending on the day, she gets home between 4:00 and 7:00. We always have dinner together, and she typically does her homework downstairs, so I hang out with her with my computer or a book. She's a homebody and COVID-cautious, so we also spend a lot of time together on weekends.

This is us too.