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.

Be the real time suck would be driving kids from one activity to another right before dinner.

8 year old- kids engineering club, morning running club, chess club, diving club, piano, golf, and swim team. He also wants to join choir at school and do some sort of Saturday math school that Asian kids go to but there are literally not enough hours in the day. It seems exhausting to me. He has adhd and absolutely thrives on being busy. He does very poorly with unstructured time, like my husband who can sleep 5 hours and wake up feeling ready to tackle a 16 hour workday.

6 year old- swim lessons and golf. Has zero interest in doing anything else. He is introverted and just prefers to putter around the house like me.

Do what works best for your kid.

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.

I thought unstructured time was good for creativity?

My kids did a lot more before COVID — soccer, dance, gymnastics, swimming, art, music, languages… now we are sticking to outdoor or online stuff. They swam in the summer and now they ride. Language class and music online. We will do some soccer soon. If they don’t pick it up young at some point they feel less confident compared to their peers.

We're trying to not do a lot. We think it's good for kids to get bored. I think the number of activities depends on so many things - but should depend on the kid.

DS8 had never done more than one activity before 3rd grade. We asked him what he wants, and he's into swimming, art, and chess. The only thing we're requiring is one athletic activity - but he can pick. Swimming is on a weekend morning, so it's just two days after school. And chess is at school; and he walks home himself afterwards. So the only logistics are with the art class - he has a friend in the class, so we can carpool. He's a kid who is tired after school. I can't imagine that he'd manage through two hours of Russian Math after school like some of his friends.

DS3 is a different beast. He has a ton more energy and with winter and COVID, he needs activities to get his weekend zoomies out. He did Sunday morning swimming in the fall, thankfully at the same time as DS8. We'll continue in January. And I'll be taking him to a parent-child pottery Saturday class starting in January.

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

DH and I work from home and have some flexibility in what hours we work, plus we have a full time nanny.

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.

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

We have 3 children in elementary school…

DD (4th grade) - ballet 3x/week; piano 1x/week
DS (2nd grade) - tennis 1x/week; soccer 1x/week; violin 1x/week
DD (K) - ballet 1x/week; tennis 1x/week; she wants to start taking ice skating lessons so we’re starting that in January

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!

You have to look at your child and their interests. Some kids thrive on being busy and some need more downtime. My kids are quite scheduled but they like everything they do so far.

Monday - DS11 in AOPS for language arts
Tuesday - DS11 and DD6 both in tennis
Wednesday - DS11 in a language class and basketball
Thursday - DS11 and DD6 both in Russian School of Math
Friday - DD6 in a language class
Saturday - DS11 has a basketball game

It looks like a lot and it probably is...I would love to be able to add a music class and DD6 has been asking for ice skating and art but where is the time?

We are an activities family and it works for us, but it certainly isn’t mandatory. We have a weekly enrichment tutor (my oldest did a class). Our kids attend weekly Sunday school, have a weekly (now zoom) instrument lesson, and have at least one sport per season. For our elementary kid, it’s a rec level sport so the time commitment isn’t too much.

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.

Oooh, my 1st grader is like yours. I'm looking for an activity for him. Care to share what it is?

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.