Reply to What are the bad parts about having three kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wait until you have at least 1 kid in public school with at least one sport or activity to decide on a 3rd.

Even if you are lucky enough to have 2 parents with the flexibility to drive kids around between 4-8pm, you need to be sociable and well liked enough that you can car pool. [/quote]

Or you can learn to set boundaries around the number and type of activities your kids do.  [/quote]

Every parent has to do this, of course. But as a person from a large family (4 kids) it absolutely harder to balance this with 3 or 4 kids. There’s often a built in bias toward the activities of older siblings, because they started them first. You wind up in situations where you have to limit an older sibling’s existing activity that they’ve invested years in to provide opportunities to a younger sibling, trying to push a younger sibling into the same activities because it’s convenient, or other negotiations that can feel deeply unfair to kids and cause resentment among siblings.

Also, parents need to think hard about the costs of things like sports and other activities, and really gut check their capacity to pay for more kids. I’ve seen this happen many times in families: with one or two kids, spending something like $60/mo on a beloved activity feels totally worth it. With 3/4 kids, you’re talking about $200-300 a month just on ordinary expenses. Add in the special costs for gear, tournaments, recitals, summer camps, and it can get really expensive very fast. People who have a 3rd or 4th when their oldest is in early early elementary often do not think this through and then it’s hard on everyone when you have to say “no, you can’t do gymnastics like your brother because we really need to be putting more money away for college.”

Do the math and always estimate up, even if you think “oh well put boundaries around activities.” If you have 3/4 kids, and each of those kids are in just one activity at any given time, it can be financially and logistically difficult.[/quote]

FFS - I *have* three kids, I *know* it’s harder to balance (and afford).  My point was that your kids can still do activities, in response to the PP who was implying that it’s either “meaningful activities” or stop at 1 or 2 kids.  I agree with everything you said.  Yes, it’s a con.  How much of a con it is depends on how much your family values these kinds of things.  There are ways to do them less expensively and intensively, though I know DCUM sneers at anything that’s not super expensive OMG travel all the thiiiings.[/quote]

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