Is my DC taking on too many extra curriculum classes?

[Anonymous]

Your DS is pushing back the only way he knows, by shutting down. This will get worse unless he is freed up to be a kid. You may think you are in control but kids have veto power in the most damaging ways. They can just refuse to go. They can act out. They can get involved in substance abuse.

As your DS shuts down, he will feel like a failure. Look at all the things he's failing at! Music lessons, academics and even the one think he likes, tennis. No good can come of this.

The problem is your marriage. You are a parent too and it seems like your head is screwed on better when it comes to your son. Why does your DW get to shut you down? You need to change this dynamic for your DS' sake. I suggest professional intervention -- someone to evaluate and advise you and your wife about DS' needs, and/or marriage counseling.

You need to make this a priority for your DS' mental health.

[Anonymous]

That amount of activities is perfectly normal for some kids and way too much for others. Your DW may be trying to keep up with what others are doing. If some of the activities are a full year commitment, you may have to wait until the next sign-up period. From a cost and time perspective, activities are only worthwhile if the kid is getting alot out of it.

[Anonymous]

I try to keep my kids to three things, but it often creeps up to 4. I draw a hard line at 4 things. We need free time, too.

Kids (9 and 11) are currently taking guitar (1X per week), tae kwon do (2X per week), swim lessons (1 X per week) and a theater arts class (1 X per week)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - I would stick with piano if you want your kid to have some skills, trombone if you want your kid to have the social experience of band. Not both. My son took a few years of piano and by the end wasn't practicing much. We took a break for a year and started back with a different teacher. He now practices all the time and is progressing rapidly. I can tell you that as a middle schooler my son is good enough on the piano to have fun with it, and this is great.

The foreign language: unless this is religious training, or literacy training in a language you speak at home, I would drop it. Class without reinforcement is useless.

I say all this as the parent of a middle schooler doing three sports and piano (one sport ratcheting down, one ratcheting up and as long as grades are good I have no valid reason for saying "no"). For us, this works, but my son has complete buy-in. We both let out a huge sigh of relief when the intense years of religious training ended.

I would not cut tennis if he enjoys it, but personally I think one class and adding some practice in its place is plenty. My son played travel soccer by that age, and therefore spent a fair amount of time practicing. It was really good for him and he slept well every night.

I'm 21:03 with the 3rd grader and think this is a good analysis. Pick the instrument he prefers, musical training is excellent. Only one tennis lesson per week but amp up practice because that is when muscle memory and skill building kick in. If you can not offer immersion in the foreign language at home (ie one of you is fluent and speaks it with him), then it's a complete waste of time. I say this as a multi-cultural person who can only speak one of my two "native" languages. My kids will only speak one out of three, because it's the one DH and I speak. Too bad.

Ask your wife why she pushes so much. I suspect it is a social thing - her friends do it, and she probably meets them there and chats, etc.

[Anonymous]

The total amount of activity does not seem too bad (if your kid was a tournament tennis player, he could easily be practicing 10 hours a week). But I would be concerned that your kid does not seem to get that much out of the lessons/activities. In five years, you are going to have a kid who has no musical skills, no language skills, and no tennis skills, and you will wonder whether the $20K in lesson fees should have been saved for college tuition.

I have a rule with my kids that if they don't practice. they don't go to lessons, and if they start skipping lessons, than we cancel the activity. I remind the kids to practice, but I am not going to force them.

[Anonymous]

OP, maybe I missed it but I did not hear you confirm DC is keeping on top of the school work. My DS was involved in a lot of extracurriculars: team basketball, competitive swimming, piano, boy scouts. He is in 5th grade and I scaled back quite a bit so he could keep up with the increased homework load and needed the extra time for down time and not to fit in another extracurricular. He does one sport (basketball) and one instrument (violin) through school and even with that I am concerned that he stay on track with the school work. We dropped winter swimming because the days during the school week are long enough. Neither he nor DH and I wanted to get up early for Saturday swim meets or weekends devoted to swim meets. I would think the school work would motivate DW to dial back on all the extracurriculars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That amount of activities is perfectly normal for some kids and way too much for others. Your DW may be trying to keep up with what others are doing. If some of the activities are a full year commitment, you may have to wait until the next sign-up period. From a cost and time perspective, activities are only worthwhile if the kid is getting alot out of it.

You think 12hrs a week of extra activities can be perfectly normal for a 10yr old? Do kids ever have time to do their own things or do Mommies have to structure their entire lives?? I feel bad for kids these days with their pushy parents trying to rationalize 4-7 activities and countless hours of things they aren't even that interested in. I look around our ghost town of a neighborhood and am so happy I am not a kid these days. I have a lot more memories of the games we played and created, than any sport or music lesson I took.

[Anonymous]

To 11:31, you may be nostalgic of free leisure time, but you should keep your judgments to yourself since this is sadly it is not the reality in which our children live. As you mentioned in your post, most neighborhoods are ghost towns, and if I booted out my kids out of the house and told them to entertain themselves, they would find no one else in the neighborhood. So if I don't want may kids sitting around and begging to watch TV, I pretty much have to schedule activities for them. I do force them to entertain themselves for an hour or two a day (reading, playing instruments, doing art, etc.) but it is not really fair to them, (especially when they were younger) to kill 5-6 hours daily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 11:31, you may be nostalgic of free leisure time, but you should keep your judgments to yourself since this is sadly it is not the reality in which our children live. As you mentioned in your post, most neighborhoods are ghost towns, and if I booted out my kids out of the house and told them to entertain themselves, they would find no one else in the neighborhood. So if I don't want may kids sitting around and begging to watch TV, I pretty much have to schedule activities for them. I do force them to entertain themselves for an hour or two a day (reading, playing instruments, doing art, etc.) but it is not really fair to them, (especially when they were younger) to kill 5-6 hours daily.

Not PP but this backwards rationale is all the reason kids are over-scheduled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 11:31, you may be nostalgic of free leisure time, but you should keep your judgments to yourself since this is sadly it is not the reality in which our children live. As you mentioned in your post, most neighborhoods are ghost towns, and if I booted out my kids out of the house and told them to entertain themselves, they would find no one else in the neighborhood. So if I don't want may kids sitting around and begging to watch TV, I pretty much have to schedule activities for them. I do force them to entertain themselves for an hour or two a day (reading, playing instruments, doing art, etc.) but it is not really fair to them, (especially when they were younger) to kill 5-6 hours daily.

How will they ever learn to entertain themselves if you "have to" schedule activities for them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That amount of activities is perfectly normal for some kids and way too much for others. Your DW may be trying to keep up with what others are doing. If some of the activities are a full year commitment, you may have to wait until the next sign-up period. From a cost and time perspective, activities are only worthwhile if the kid is getting alot out of it.

You think 12hrs a week of extra activities can be perfectly normal for a 10yr old? Do kids ever have time to do their own things or do Mommies have to structure their entire lives?? I feel bad for kids these days with their pushy parents trying to rationalize 4-7 activities and countless hours of things they aren't even that interested in. I look around our ghost town of a neighborhood and am so happy I am not a kid these days. I have a lot more memories of the games we played and created, than any sport or music lesson I took.

Don't be so critical. My kid did that at 10, and he was the impetus behind it (ok, not hebrew, but too bad on that one). Perhaps a little less judgment is appropriate? He was happy. And if he hadn't been, I would have made changes. I was not particularly scheduled, and I feel the loss that I don't even have passable skills in any sport, and I wish I could play piano enough to amuse myself. I do remember a lot of time watching the brady bunch, and that was definitely time wasted.

[Anonymous]

Watching the Brady Bunch was time wasted? How else could you learn what would prove to be much more than a hunch?

[Anonymous]

You say he has 2 sessions of tennis for 6 hours total. He has 3 hours of tennis classes a day? Is this normal?

[Anonymous]

Wait til HS private school admissions. Every kid does at least one thing well plus a bunch of other stuff too. I feel like a failure because I let DC bag so many activities over the years. Fingers crossed that her B+ grades and nice personality gets her in somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - I would stick with piano if you want your kid to have some skills, trombone if you want your kid to have the social experience of band. Not both. My son took a few years of piano and by the end wasn't practicing much. We took a break for a year and started back with a different teacher. He now practices all the time and is progressing rapidly. I can tell you that as a middle schooler my son is good enough on the piano to have fun with it, and this is great.

The foreign language: unless this is religious training, or literacy training in a language you speak at home, I would drop it. Class without reinforcement is useless.

I say all this as the parent of a middle schooler doing three sports and piano (one sport ratcheting down, one ratcheting up and as long as grades are good I have no valid reason for saying "no"). For us, this works, but my son has complete buy-in. We both let out a huge sigh of relief when the intense years of religious training ended.

I would not cut tennis if he enjoys it, but personally I think one class and adding some practice in its place is plenty. My son played travel soccer by that age, and therefore spent a fair amount of time practicing. It was really good for him and he slept well every night.

I'm 21:03 with the 3rd grader and think this is a good analysis. Pick the instrument he prefers, musical training is excellent. Only one tennis lesson per week but amp up practice because that is when muscle memory and skill building kick in. If you can not offer immersion in the foreign language at home (ie one of you is fluent and speaks it with him), then it's a complete waste of time. I say this as a multi-cultural person who can only speak one of my two "native" languages. My kids will only speak one out of three, because it's the one DH and I speak. Too bad.

Ask your wife why she pushes so much. I suspect it is a social thing - her friends do it, and she probably meets them there and chats, etc.

I am the quoted PP. Thanks for the kind words. OP - you really do need to talk to your wife. I think she's drifted from her initial purpose for signing him up for these classes. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have a kid with an extracurricular activity that they love. THAT's the goal. I don't fight about going to practice. If anything I have to tell him NOT to practice piano (when he should be studying).