I'm glad I saw this thread. I was just thinking today how there must be something wrong with our life, it just revolves around the kids appointments, birthday parties and activities, and both aren't even particularly social or popular. Ages 6 & 8.

Much less once they got to HS, but I have kids that don't do super-demanding extracurriculars, can walk to school and to friends houses and a lot of other places they want to go so they are pretty independent. Lots of my friends still seem to be driving kids all over the place for sports into HS.

I still drive my 13 year old places for activities - my kids are 13, 11, and 8 and it's still very kid-centric outside of when they're not at school.

I suppose I feel like when they're all off at college it will be less kid-centric. Or maybe when two are in college and I have the youngest still home

Anonymous wrote:We've avoided sports for our kids because it's so all-consuming. I know there are benefits to kids participating in sports, but for us, they're not worth giving up so much of our lives for games/practices.

How old are they?

Anonymous wrote:It will get worse. We have activities around the clock. They are 11 and 13. You will get sucked in... so brace yourself.

Yes! Every ever loving minute of my day. Cooking, cleaning, laundry (so much), meal prep early in the day, making snacks to take to them so they have something to eat at pick on the way to sports. Managing fairly close and staggered drop offs and pickups and what they need to take, Drs appts, orthodontist, who needs hair cuts, who needs new shoes, whose clothes don’t fit, grades, homework, meeting the emotional needs of tween/teens

It is a lot of mental and physical energy.

Anonymous wrote:We've avoided sports for our kids because it's so all-consuming. I know there are benefits to kids participating in sports, but for us, they're not worth giving up so much of our lives for games/practices.

How old are your kids? This will change.

Only child who is 11 and work full time - cramming work in this morning (and DCUM apparently) to get her to the ortho at 1 pm and her annual check up at 3:30 pm. Drover her and the carpool in this morning, one of us will drive her to orchestra tomorrow and both parents will be at a track meet all day Sunday.

OP does more in terms of away time - we don't have anyone who could watch her for a week or weekend away, but I don't mind. At 11 I can already see that we are more than halfway through the years she will live with us at home, and she is more independent by the day. I'll take the time with her while I have it!

We've avoided sports for our kids because it's so all-consuming. I know there are benefits to kids participating in sports, but for us, they're not worth giving up so much of our lives for games/practices.

I have 13, 10, and 7 - and other posters are correct, especially if you have kids involved in extracurriculars!

There's so much driving around, but also making sure they're on top of homework, have stuff they need, etc (and watching all the activities!)

That said, my 13 year old has all of a sudden become so much more responsible/mature, which has helped a ton.

BUt yep - just buckle up and try to enjoy this time! I already feel like things are slipping away from me.

It will get worse. We have activities around the clock. They are 11 and 13. You will get sucked in... so brace yourself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM, but pretty much all. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping during the day, and homework in the afternoons then we are often at games or practices until 9:30 at night.

BS. You are not spending SIX HOURS every day cooking cleaning and laundry while kids are in school.

You certainly have leisure time in there, maybe yoga class or gym time?

Depends on what you’re cooking and if you’re cooking from scratch. Same with cleaning—depends on what you’re cleaning and how thoroughly you’re doing it. Maybe not 6 hours each day M-F, but yeah, some days are very busy.

Sure if you are a Julia child wannabe, but we cook every meal from scratch and keep a tidy home and work full time.

Maybe PP has OCD and is like scrubbing floorboards with toothbrush all day, but most SAHM with school age kids have a LOT of autonomy and potential leisure time.

OP, are you the kind of person who tries to multitask a lot? (I'm not saying that negatively, by the way). I used to find myself always thinking about everything all at once and it felt overwhelming. Now I try to be fully present in whatever I am doing. So when my kids are at school and I'm working, I am fully working. When my kids are home and we're spending time together, I am fully with them. Etc.

It may be helpful if you can take time, whether on the weekends or at night, to plan things like pickups for the upcoming week, summer plans, etc. I find that if I can reserve time to tackle something it helps me let it go during the other hours of the day because I know I can deal with it later.

Just a thought.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM, but pretty much all. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping during the day, and homework in the afternoons then we are often at games or practices until 9:30 at night.

BS. You are not spending SIX HOURS every day cooking cleaning and laundry while kids are in school.

You certainly have leisure time in there, maybe yoga class or gym time?

Depends on what you’re cooking and if you’re cooking from scratch. Same with cleaning—depends on what you’re cleaning and how thoroughly you’re doing it. Maybe not 6 hours each day M-F, but yeah, some days are very busy.

We have days or even weeks where we are in a good rhythm and I can be at 50%, truly focused on work when at work and in the moment with kids when they are at home. Weekends are a great mix of catching up on my own business, ferrying kids to things they want and need to do, and fun family time. We have a sitter scheduled, miraculously no one is sick, DH and I go out. Or I have a work trip, DH manages fine, and vice versa. Lots of stretches like this where things feel balanced.

Then there are days and weeks when I'm on a teams call and the school number pops up on my phone, DH and I have to play rock paper scissors on who is going to pick up the sick kid, I'm shuffling around appointments and special needs therapies between meetings, researching some kid related thing in a browser while I'm on a call, distracted by some perseverative loop about a family issue, ordering next size up shoes because I know I won't have any other time. Then I come home and our youngest immediately goes chaos monkey and the whole evening is just survival. One of them gets up in the night and is a grump in the morning, we're late to the bus stop. Lather rinse repeat. Those are 100% days. It all seems to come in fits and spurts.

It will get better. I have two; 18 & 23 (full-time college student living at home). The only thing I really do is drive my 18yo 5 minutes to the metro on weekday mornings, and cook dinner. So maybe 10% of my day revolves around them?