Can working parents make summer swim happen?

[Anonymous]

At our pool we practice when it works for the coach. There are evening practices 3x a week but they use 2 lanes and the pool is still open to the public. Morning practices are much better.
We both work and we make it happen. You do a carpool or hire a summer sitter for those week. DD misses one week of practice to do a camp but does her other camps in August.

[Anonymous]

Like others I do a summer sitter for swim season. But our pool also has kids who do the camp at the adjacent public school day camp and HS swim team members walk them back and forth.
My kids aren’t that into it so we don’t have to worry about A meets and don’t do every single B meet but most. We alternate getting off early on Fridays to take them to pep ralleys which they love.

[Anonymous]

I am in the office almost everyday. I have a senior role I don’t want to give up. My youngest kiddo will start swim team next year. Splitting a nanny sounds like a great idea. But honestly don’t know how you can work from the pools effectively. I did it with my oldest two a few years ago and it affected my productivity.

[Anonymous]

I don’t really understand the complaint. Full-time working parent family here and we send the kids to early morning practice. Meets are in the evening or on weekends and yes it’s a lot, but so are all the other sports throughout the year. There’s no perfect set up for extracurricular activities and we are all making choices. Summer is hard, so is the school year. There is not a month or activity at any point during the year that we are not trying to flex schedules or piece childcare together. And we are not in travel sports and try to do one or two things at a time. There only so many hours in the day to make adjustments for everyone’s unique situation.

[Anonymous]

Ours has afternoon practices 5pm onward, which is a huge help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have found that the vast majority of parents at our pool work—the laptop is a common accessory during swim practice and/or during B Meets. Most parents either have flexible enough schedules to work from the pool during practice, hire a local college kid to schlep (that’s us), and/or live close enough for the kids to bike to the pool on their own (for ages 10+). Our pool offers an early morning (7:30) practice every day and evening practices 3x/week in addition to the normal practice schedule. My younger one goes early before camp. Our pool also runs a summer camp so kids get dropped at 8am and then get taken to practice by the camp counselors.

Yes. The pool is an office for most of us during the summer, but I recognize the privilege of being able to work from a splintered picnic table in 102 degree heat.

This is indeed a massive privilege. This entire thread makes me realize that there are so many people in this area that have jobs with this kind of flexibility, and it’s really eye-opening.

Our team is filled with families where at least one parent is a teacher (including ours). We also have a lot of kids who bike to practice starting at 8 (with an older sibling) or 10. Parents also partner up to carpool, like they would for sports during the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our pool, the kids who can’t come to morning practice are pretty much locked into a situation where it’s impossible to improve.

There are three lanes for evening practice, 7-8 kids/lane of mixed age groups, and often an indifferent assistant coach who doesn’t want to coach a second practice a day, and little to no instruction.

It’s a real shame but summer swim seems to be really difficult unless you have one stay at home (or remote working) parent or a full time nanny.

Interesting. This must be why swim team parents come up with so many stupid volunteer activities like countless events and concessions stands - the SAHMS are looking for ways to make themselves feel useful while shaming the working parents for not volunteering enough. I say this as a non swim team parent at a pool - I observe this dynamic. There is so much useless volunteer work that seems like make-work. And the moms do jobs the teen swimmers should be doing, like setting out chairs the night before.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swim clubs in general are for the UMC. They’re the non-wealthy family’s country club, and were created to keep out people of color and other underprivileged. While membership rules and housing laws have changed, team practice times and volunteer requirements do not favor those with working parents. If swim teams become too small, they probably become more flexible. Ours has 200+ swimmers so they are not changing anything too soon.

While I get that practices time are challenging I disagree that the volunteer requirements don’t favor working parents. Most parents, working or not, make it to all the meets to cheer for their kids so no reason they can’t volunteer. FWIW we both work outside of the home with 30 min commutes and still volunteer a ton. Our last few team reps, including myself, all worked time.

I do think teams having evening practice helps. When my kids were younger we had a sitter just to take kid to practice a few mornings a week. Then once both kids were out of daycare and on the team we hired a full time sitter during swim season.

Like anything, if it’s important to you, you find a way to make it work.

[Anonymous]

I started an evening swim program at our pool 8 years ago. It’s going well - but this is the time of thing that parents who want need to start and do the work to run the program.

[Anonymous]

Time = type

[Anonymous]

You don’t just get to decide that something should change because it doesn’t work for your family. The entitlement in this area is unbelievable.

[Anonymous]

It is what it is. It's one of those things for us parents. We make it work.

There are other sports to join. Your complaints will fall on deaf ears.

[Anonymous]

We have an au pair who takes the kids to morning practices. (We also swapped to a pool where practices are early and over by 9:30 AM so are less likely to conflict with camps in case of care gaps.).

Kids often go to a half day camp (e.g, 1-4 PM or 10-2 PM) to help stretch the au pair hours and keep them from being bored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I started an evening swim program at our pool 8 years ago. It’s going well - but this is the time of thing that parents who want need to start and do the work to run the program.

This is a good idea. We are thinking of creative ways to become more inclusive.

[Anonymous]

Our pool has started offering summer tennis camp through Pros To You. The kids love the camp and it allows them to participate in summer swim. Does your pool offer this camp? If not, the evening practice is the way to go.