What does after school look like for your middle school kid?

[Anonymous]

My kid isn't the type who can easily go from thing to thing. She does want to do a couple of after school activities that will go until 5 p.m. What is reasonable to expect when we get home? She will have a greater homework load this year, probably at least an hour to 1.5 hours per night. And daily violin practice. It feels like something has to give on those couple of days.

[Anonymous]

I think that activities that are done by 5pm every day are not a big deal. It's the ones that go later into the evening and on weekends that you have to watch.

[Anonymous]

2 days a week he has tutoring and 2 days a week sports practice. He does aftercare right after school. He's pretty busy.

[Anonymous]

Mine has soccer 3 x a week for 1.5 hours (2+ hours with travel time) and also plays for the middle school some days. Weekends often involve travel to games. Manages to do homework after dinner, sometimes at 10 pm. Seems able to handle it so far. Gave up music, not interested and never practiced.

[Anonymous]

At school activities haven't really gotten going at my kids' MS. So they are generally coming right home from school. Each has a sports practice one evening a week plus either once practice (DD) or one game (DS) per weekend. Both are also at church youth group Sun. night. DD plans to add 2-3 after school (at school) activities/classes while DS will likely only do 1. Regardless, those are usually done by 4 so they'll be home by 4:30 to start on homework.

[Anonymous]

He takes the bus home, gets a snack and does homework. He has sports practice on Mon & Fri nights from 5-7, and sometimes does a voluntary fitness practice for the same sport. One game/weekend, sometimes a tournament.

[Anonymous]

If she's got a team practice or meet she goes to that (it's run through school). Otherwise she goes to Japantown with friends (we're in SF) and gets home around 5:30. Then does homework around dinner if she hasn't finished it in school.

[Anonymous]

I have a similar personality child who also just started middle school. I told him he can only sign up for two after school activities this fall, which I think is plenty, but also I have learned with him it is better for him to be under-scheduled than over-scheduled because he is a kid who needs down time. So he comes home from school, has a snack, then either rides his bike, shoots baskets with a friend, or just reads/chills - on the days he has an after school activity, he won't have as much time for the bike riding/chilling but I figure he'll still need to have a snack/burn off steam for 1/2 hr or so before starting HW. He starts HW around 5 (so probably more like 5:30 on activity days) and hopefully is done before dinner (around 7). After dinner, he practices his instrument (which is a change for him - in elementary school he used to be able to finish HW and practice instrument before dinner but his HW load is greater now), then we spend a few minutes going over his HW (mainly I am just confirming he did it), and I guess if he has any more HW to do he will do it then. The rest of the night is his to play with his sibs, or play a video game, or whatever until bed. His bedtime has shifted to about 9:30pm, which is later than last year but he seems to be handling it fine so far.

[Anonymous]

Mine had a 2 hour sports practice after school 4 days per week, rode the bus home, ate dinner and did homework. Not very exciting. When her sport was over, she had a couple of club meetings after school here and there. Her school is pretty focused on making homework make sense so we really didn't have to worry about crazy unmanageable homework loads.

[Anonymous]

My 6th grader has a 2 hr sports practice 3 days per week but with travel time, he is gone from 3:30-7:00. He does a little bit of homework for 30 mins before sports and then we eat dinner at 7pm. Then homework sometimes until 9pm. Another day is a 30 min sports practice.

[Anonymous]

one-hour music lesson, 2x a week.

otherwise, comes home from school, watches an hour of TV. then:
practices music
draws with charcoal
exercises on the elliptical
futzes around with his long-time hobby
plays with dogs
maybe walks to commercial area nearby on an errand.

eats dinner around 6:30

after dinner i insist on solo exercise a few times a week. 30 mins of homework done between dinner and bedtime

[Anonymous]

Two days a week, my son comes home, grabs a sandwich and then leaves for gymnastics. He gets home at 9 pm at which point he cleans the cat box, eats and goes to bed. He does homework during lunch and while driving to practice. Two other days he gets home and has about two hours to hang with friends before another sports practice. Gets home around 9 those days too. In order to make this work, he has to use time wisely to get homework and chores done. His main chore during the week is the cat box.

I am a real believer in filling time with healthy activities so they care about their bodies and don't have time to get in trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two days a week, my son comes home, grabs a sandwich and then leaves for gymnastics. He gets home at 9 pm at which point he cleans the cat box, eats and goes to bed. He does homework during lunch and while driving to practice. Two other days he gets home and has about two hours to hang with friends before another sports practice. Gets home around 9 those days too. In order to make this work, he has to use time wisely to get homework and chores done. His main chore during the week is the cat box.

I am a real believer in filling time with healthy activities so they care about their bodies and don't have time to get in trouble.

Do you live in a community where unhealthy activities and trouble lurk around every corner, just waiting to get you unless you are armored with 6 hours a day of extracurricular activities?

[Anonymous]

My girls come home and eat, because they won't eat the food at school. If they have homework, they do it. They usually don't have any. Sometimes they walk to the park. My 13 yr old usually plays her flute off and on ( she practices about 3 hours each night total). Most of our evenings are usually downtime and chilling on the porch with my husband (and my two older sons Who live nearby, if they happen to stop for a visit.) I homeschool my youngest, so when we go to the schoolroom to study, my 13 yr old comes in to entertain us with Bohemian Rhapsody and other musical selections. After we are finished studying, he does his typing practice on the laptop, for which he doesn't require our assistance, so we leave. While we are doing all of this, my 14 yr old dreamer is busy doing her thing, which usually includes some watching some kind of anime and making lots of profound statements about life.

[Anonymous]

11 year old. Comes home by herself, leaving at 4, taking public bus and walking--gets home by 5. So far, a few times this year she has voluntarily stayed after school for extra help/teacher's hours etc. When she gets home, walks dog, takes a shower, grabs a snack and does homework. Twice a week athletic practice that runs 7-8pm (not crazy about the later time, but she doesn't seem to mind it). On Friday afternoons, she does a different athletic thing from after school until 6ish. One game per weekend--usually Saturday. Will be starting Religious education once a week. Honestly? Just typing this makes me exhausted. At a school with lots of homework and high testing expectations. The activities I've described are the max I let her do--she's constantly pushing to be able to do more evening activities.