Weekly activity schedule

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is 6/First grade:

Monday - piano
Tuesday - playground with friends
Wednesday - swimming
Thursday and Friday - playground with friends
Weekends - free

As the one who is carting them to every activity, I have a personal limit of two things.[u] Plus, they desperately need outside unstructured playtime.

Yes, I found my driven extroverted kid was happy as a clam going to all the things, but introverted lower-energy me became very crabby and irritable if we loaded up the schedule. And this is with one child. I don't know how people are doing this for years and years with multiple children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That seems wild to me. I also have kids (aged 7-14) who like keeping busy, but even my oldest is not so structured. They like to ride bikes, go hiking, go fishing, play outside, read, have friends over, play board games, etc. They all do one low key sport (between 1-3 days a week) and the older ones also do 1-2 after-school clubs. I do keep them busy with camps in summer because we work FT and they prefer camps over a nanny and hanging out by the pool.

I make them all take piano for 2 years and learn how to swim (they just need to learn front crawl) and even those requirements are like pulling teeth. The kids resist so much!

Not every kid resists. We have one (10) and she asks to do everything and we have to set boundaries on her.

[Anonymous]

no one size fits all here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That seems wild to me. I also have kids (aged 7-14) who like keeping busy, but even my oldest is not so structured. They like to ride bikes, go hiking, go fishing, play outside, read, have friends over, play board games, etc. They all do one low key sport (between 1-3 days a week) and the older ones also do 1-2 after-school clubs. I do keep them busy with camps in summer because we work FT and they prefer camps over a nanny and hanging out by the pool.

I make them all take piano for 2 years and learn how to swim (they just need to learn front crawl) and even those requirements are like pulling teeth. The kids resist so much!

Not every kid resists. We have one (10) and she asks to do everything and we have to set boundaries on her.

I think it's one thing if a kid has lots of hobbies (and 10 is a great age to have capacity to try and do a lot of things - you don't have as many school demands yet, are old enough to really develop skills, and you don't need the same amount of free play and early bedtimes any longer) - but a lot of the activities listed on here are almost certainly parent-directed (such as the violin, piano, tennis, Kumon combos).

[Anonymous]

many Asian tigers on this board obv with the violin, piano, tennis, math enrichment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That seems wild to me. I also have kids (aged 7-14) who like keeping busy, but even my oldest is not so structured. They like to ride bikes, go hiking, go fishing, play outside, read, have friends over, play board games, etc. They all do one low key sport (between 1-3 days a week) and the older ones also do 1-2 after-school clubs. I do keep them busy with camps in summer because we work FT and they prefer camps over a nanny and hanging out by the pool.

I make them all take piano for 2 years and learn how to swim (they just need to learn front crawl) and even those requirements are like pulling teeth. The kids resist so much!

Not every kid resists. We have one (10) and she asks to do everything and we have to set boundaries on her.

I think it's one thing if a kid has lots of hobbies (and 10 is a great age to have capacity to try and do a lot of things - you don't have as many school demands yet, are old enough to really develop skills, and you don't need the same amount of free play and early bedtimes any longer) - but a lot of the activities listed on here are almost certainly parent-directed (such as the violin, piano, tennis, Kumon combos).

NP. I have an 11 year old pianist who doesn't play piano at a super intense level (not, for example, practicing an hour a day), but she would HATE if I told her she had to stop for whatever reason. At least half the playing she does do is when she's walking by the piano while theoretically on the way to do something else and she plunks down and starts playing a current piece. She genuinely enjoys it.

Sure we got her started on it, and bought the piano in the first place. But from a pretty early age she was the one directing her playing. I can't remember the last time I reminded her to practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That seems wild to me. I also have kids (aged 7-14) who like keeping busy, but even my oldest is not so structured. They like to ride bikes, go hiking, go fishing, play outside, read, have friends over, play board games, etc. They all do one low key sport (between 1-3 days a week) and the older ones also do 1-2 after-school clubs. I do keep them busy with camps in summer because we work FT and they prefer camps over a nanny and hanging out by the pool.

I make them all take piano for 2 years and learn how to swim (they just need to learn front crawl) and even those requirements are like pulling teeth. The kids resist so much!

Not every kid resists. We have one (10) and she asks to do everything and we have to set boundaries on her.

I think it's one thing if a kid has lots of hobbies (and 10 is a great age to have capacity to try and do a lot of things - you don't have as many school demands yet, are old enough to really develop skills, and you don't need the same amount of free play and early bedtimes any longer) - but a lot of the activities listed on here are almost certainly parent-directed (such as the violin, piano, tennis, Kumon combos).

NP. I have an 11 year old pianist who doesn't play piano at a super intense level (not, for example, practicing an hour a day), but she would HATE if I told her she had to stop for whatever reason. At least half the playing she does do is when she's walking by the piano while theoretically on the way to do something else and she plunks down and starts playing a current piece. She genuinely enjoys it.

Sure we got her started on it, and bought the piano in the first place. But from a pretty early age she was the one directing her playing. I can't remember the last time I reminded her to practice.

I also have one who loves her instrument and practices all the time - her bff also enjoys playing piano at a high level - but I think it's the uniform combination of activities, not just piano in and of itself, that seems unlikely to be child driven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That seems wild to me. I also have kids (aged 7-14) who like keeping busy, but even my oldest is not so structured. They like to ride bikes, go hiking, go fishing, play outside, read, have friends over, play board games, etc. They all do one low key sport (between 1-3 days a week) and the older ones also do 1-2 after-school clubs. I do keep them busy with camps in summer because we work FT and they prefer camps over a nanny and hanging out by the pool.

I make them all take piano for 2 years and learn how to swim (they just need to learn front crawl) and even those requirements are like pulling teeth. The kids resist so much!

Not every kid resists. We have one (10) and she asks to do everything and we have to set boundaries on her.

I think it's one thing if a kid has lots of hobbies (and 10 is a great age to have capacity to try and do a lot of things - you don't have as many school demands yet, are old enough to really develop skills, and you don't need the same amount of free play and early bedtimes any longer) - but a lot of the activities listed on here are almost certainly parent-directed (such as the violin, piano, tennis, Kumon combos).

Can only speak for my 10 yo, but violin and piano are kid-driven in this house. Math was loved until about 3rd grade, then 9yo said they didn't want to do extra math outside of school anymore and would rather do sports. Is tennis not fun for kids that you say it is parent-directed? I don't know any tennis players, but it seems fun. I will say golf seems to be parent driven from what I can tell. Once they get good at it, I see kids saying they want to sign up for more golf.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:many Asian tigers on this board obv with the violin, piano, tennis, math enrichment

I mean if we are going to speak that generally, Russians also love music and math for their children. What I have not been able to figure out in driving kids to activities - where are the Indian musicians? I see American, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, etc. 2nd generation kids at music lessons and orchestra but maybe 1% Indian kids in a fairly Indian-heavy community. We did chess for awhile and it was 80% Indian. I'm just curious, since Russians/Chinese/Indian culture are geographically and in some ways culturally similar, except that Russian and Chinese really excel in music while I don't see any Indian musical talent. Is it discouraged?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:many Asian tigers on this board obv with the violin, piano, tennis, math enrichment

I mean if we are going to speak that generally, Russians also love music and math for their children. What I have not been able to figure out in driving kids to activities - where are the Indian musicians? I see American, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, etc. 2nd generation kids at music lessons and orchestra but maybe 1% Indian kids in a fairly Indian-heavy community. We did chess for awhile and it was 80% Indian. I'm just curious, since Russians/Chinese/Indian culture are geographically and in some ways culturally similar, except that Russian and Chinese really excel in music while I don't see any Indian musical talent. Is it discouraged?

I forgot to say that I see chess, music, and math as being very closely linked and Indians absolutely dominate at chess (and historically chinese and russians too), but only Chinese and Russians dominate in classical music.

[Anonymous]

How are working parents executing all of this? We have some friends who have their kids in activities every night, sometimes two sports in a night but they have active younger grandparents driving them around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is 6/First grade:

Monday - piano
Tuesday - playground with friends
Wednesday - swimming
Thursday and Friday - playground with friends
Weekends - free

As the one who is carting them to every activity, I have a personal limit of two things.[u] Plus, they desperately need outside unstructured playtime.

Yes, I found my driven extroverted kid was happy as a clam going to all the things, but introverted lower-energy me became very crabby and irritable if we loaded up the schedule. And this is with one child. I don't know how people are doing this for years and years with multiple children.

Plus the expense!

(I know, this is DCUM and we all like to pretend that funds are infinite, so maybe I shouldn't mention being concerned about an activity budget)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine is one who is very very happy being scheduled and having a sport or activity (or two!) every day. But I don't fully pack his schedule because 1) I think he needs downtime to veg, even if he might not think so, and 2) To do things well, he needs time for that. Right now his "thing to do well" is string instrument ensemble. So he spends 2-3 hours per week on that (private lesson and ensemble), but to get through all his rep he needs to practice at least 25 minutes a day. To do it reasonably well, he needs to be doing more. The kids have similar needs with sports. If he took football, he'd have to have 2x/week practice with the team, plus I'm sure they'd encourage throwing the ball around once or twice a week. Swimming, soccer, golf, chess, math competition, or tennis - same story. I think it's great to let kids try a variety of things, but I'm also happy to encourage that one of those things be done well.

I have a kid who does extremely well with instruments without outside training or much practice needed. He plays on his own for fun sometimes but has no set practice day beyond what he gets in class. He does well enough in rec sports to not need anything additional. He did drop travel soccer because it required more outside training than he wanted to keep up. But the majority of things most kids do as extracurriculars are for fun and dont need to require more work beyond the scheduled times. If they do, then that time should be built in to your weekly so one day at home is actually a self training day. But I think the majority of posters here are not doing extra. The scheduled activity is the extra.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are working parents executing all of this? We have some friends who have their kids in activities every night, sometimes two sports in a night but they have active younger grandparents driving them around.

Sometimes with difficulty. Single parent here with one child so not as hard as others, but he is in two evening activities during the week and one weekend activity, sometimes two depending on the season. I spend a lot of time working from my car or a Starbucks with my laptop. One is a private class and others are not with kids from the school or neighborhood so no option to carpool. Other parent and grandparents live out of state so all falls to one parent. Factor in birthday parties and play dates and it is a lot to manage (I sometimes declare a no playdate month to get some respite!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are working parents executing all of this? We have some friends who have their kids in activities every night, sometimes two sports in a night but they have active younger grandparents driving them around.

Three ways for us:
Flexing work schedules so one parent arrives home at 430pm. Very doable a few days per week with two parents. Yes that day feels rushed but its only one day a week if you have two early days and two parents.

Signing up for activities that dont start until after 630pm.

Car pooling