jsmith123 wrote:DS is in 1st grade and does 1 extracurricular. He's never been particularly interested in organized activities. I think it's just his personality. He's very independent and creative and can entertain himself for hours. He has 1 activity he likes to do and it's once a week.

I suspect DS2 will want to do *all the things* when he's older, but until he starts requesting it, we're just doing 1 activity for him as well.

My friends with older kids who are good at sports spend most of their weekends at sporting events. No reason to rush into that schedule when they're still young, IMO.

Anonymous wrote:We live in the DMV area and the other day our neighbor whose kids are similar in age to ours shared all the activities they participated in. Six activities to include a reading/math enhancement class. He said "everyone" has their kid in this extra enrichment class. DD did a sport this fall and does music (previously tried Girls scouts and didn't like it). DS is in K and will try a sport this spring. We want to let our kids be kids but is "everyone" really doing all these activities? Also logistically a challenge for DH and I since we both work full time with no family help. Thanks for your thoughts!

Anonymous wrote:Do you all have a stay at home parent? How are you able to swing extracurriculars during the week?

Anonymous wrote:Do you all have a stay at home parent? How are you able to swing extracurriculars during the week?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the age and the kid.

In lower elementary, my kid would do an after school program at school and one sport per season. At some point, we added scouts.

My middle kid wanted to anything and everything starting at age 6. He did art club at school, asked to play piano, wanted to play baseball with our neighbor, join chess club, etc.

In upper elementary, my kids started doing an academic extracurricular- odyssey of the mind or science Olympiad.

While it may sound like a lot, one activity per day isn’t that much. We are a low screen family.

When my kids are home, they are begging for screens. We have them in lots of fun activities to keep them in shape and learning fun skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you all have a stay at home parent? How are you able to swing extracurriculars during the week?

The only way I am able to swing it is that I work from home and am able to drive them after school. I work while they play tennis or sit in the math class. My work doesn't care as we are all working from home. Language classes are in the neighborhood so they walk.