3 kids and activities

[Anonymous]

Do you feel like you allow your 3 (or more) kids to participate in less activities than you would if you had 1 or 2 kids? I've got 3 little kids and I just feel that activities are SO expensive and worse, time-consuming, that when they are older, we'll have to limit each to one activity a season or something. If you've done this, do your kids get angry about it? Feel like they are missing out? Do you feel guilty about it?

[Anonymous]

I have ONLY 2 children and each is allowed to participate in ONE activity per season. If they want to try something else, they can swing at the end of the season.
I do this to preserve some normalcy in our family life (we have normal laid-back weekends where we can do things together or they can just hang out with their friend) and also our sanity.
They know that some of their friends/peers do more than one activity (usually multiple sports), and while they originally complained a little bit (nowhere near "angry"), they are fine with it now (they really like they can sleep in on weekends, etc.) This also allows us to do something else during the weekend (museums, out of town trips, etc.) than driving from one game to another. I feel ZERO guilt.

[Anonymous]

I had 3 in 3 years. They can do 1 after school activity and 1 sport. That means each kid has practice 1-2 nights a week plus games. For spring sports, we have 2 of their schedules so far which cover 4 different days. Waiting on the 3rd schedule which we know will be 3 days a week.

Sometimes they want to do more, but logistically we can't. If I had only 1, still be the same because I want my kids (and me) to have down time.

[Anonymous]

Have three and have more activities than we can attend. We share driving with others on the team. Works for us.

[Anonymous]

^same

[Anonymous]

Three here.

They can do after school activities. The elementary kids do one at a time because their school activities cost money. The middle schooler can do as many as fits in the schedule, because his day gets out early (perfect timing for elementary pick up if he stays for an activity) and middle school activities are free.

Each of them gets one activity/sport per season. There is always an overlap between seasons though, so there are a couple of weeks of craziness at that point. We solved this by taking winter off from sports. No winter season does wonders for down time and takes care of overlapping seasons.

My kids split between sports and theater. Sports are rec level only; theater is a mix of youth and community theater.

All do religious education and scouts.

You have to figure out what is maneagble for your family and then stick go it, guilt free.

[Anonymous]

We have 4 kids. Each kid does one sport and scouts. The kids are not over scheduled at all but as parents we are constantly driving and juggling. We carpool with other families whenever possible. The spring schedule is just coming together and most days are ok but Fridays are insane since both cub scouts, Girl Scouts and 2 sports practices are that day.

We also have a family rule about no travel sports. We all value doing things as a family and so we sit down and figure out which events are possible and which events might need to be skipped. We also stress that when you play a team sport you make a commitment to the team.

Given all of that we still manage to eat dinner as a family at least 6 nights a week (Friday isn't going to happen) That means dinner time shifts some nights. Today we will eat dinner at 4:30pm so the kids can make 5:15 and 6pm practices. Luckily DH and I both have flexible work schedules and tend to work early so both parents are typically home by 4pm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Three here.

They can do after school activities. The elementary kids do one at a time because their school activities cost money. The middle schooler can do as many as fits in the schedule, because his day gets out early (perfect timing for elementary pick up if he stays for an activity) and middle school activities are free.

Each of them gets one activity/sport per season. There is always an overlap between seasons though, so there are a couple of weeks of craziness at that point. We solved this by taking winter off from sports. No winter season does wonders for down time and takes care of overlapping seasons.

My kids split between sports and theater. Sports are rec level only; theater is a mix of youth and community theater.

All do religious education and scouts.

You have to figure out what is maneagble for your family and then stick go it, guilt free.

Also, you need to decide what is a non negotiable event schedule wise. For our family, regular church attendance is a must, so that rules out travel teams. We are Catholic so we have many different Mass time options, so if an activity is likely to overlap with all of the many available times over several or most weekends, then we won't do that activity.

[Anonymous]

We have three and they can each do one organized sport per child per season. This would not change if we only had one or two kids as its about balance for both us and them. It's also about them playing a non-organized sport (golf) which we all do as a family spring/summer and fall, and is a big part of our lives. We devote hours to that every weekend, and there is only so much time in life.

Like PP we also do a family dinner, which often means eating early or late to make it happen. Don't know how we would swing this without one SAH parent and one WOH parent, juggling three sports schedules is a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have three and have more activities than we can attend. We share driving with others on the team. Works for us.

Pretty much this. We carpool and DH and I tag out. It's not always like that. Sometimes one kid has more activities than another, we just go by what each child's interests at the time.

[Anonymous]

I meant one SAH and one WAH parent. oops.

[Anonymous]

I have never limited. I have four kids. That's my "problem." They shouldn't be forbidden from pursuing their interests because I chose to have a lot of them.

So everyone's always gotten to sign up for whatever they want, as long as it didn't conflict with other things they also wanted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have never limited. I have four kids. That's my "problem." They shouldn't be forbidden from pursuing their interests because I chose to have a lot of them.

So everyone's always gotten to sign up for whatever they want, as long as it didn't conflict with other things they also wanted.

Thats crazy talk right there.

[Anonymous]

We need a lot of downtime in this house, so this has restricted the number of extras the children have chosen. Right now we have Monday, Friday and Sunday without anything scheduled, which feels great!
One kid has sport 3 times a week plus choir practice and a language class, the other kid has sport once a week plus an instrument practice twice a week and a language class.
This is the first year they have not had the time to enroll in any of the after-school activities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have never limited. I have four kids. That's my "problem." They shouldn't be forbidden from pursuing their interests because I chose to have a lot of them.

So everyone's always gotten to sign up for whatever they want, as long as it didn't conflict with other things they also wanted.

Thats crazy talk right there.

Not necessarily, as long as there's someone available to drive and pay...