Do your kids have extracirricular activities and if, how old and how many?

[JohnT]

@overlyverbose

My son is 7. He takes taekwondo two nights a week and piano in the morning on Saturdays. Anyway, after agonizing over whether I was somehow sending a bad message and overthinking the damn thing, we decided it would make sense to cut out taekwondo.

My husband and I both work, so we have to bend over backwards to fit our schedules around his classes, and sometimes they switch the times. It cuts into family time at night and they’re expecting us to buy a bunch of crap for the next cycle. And our son just isn’t all that interested anyway, so we’re thinking we’ll look for something more manageable.

So I got to thinking:

1. How do other people, especially with elementary school aged kids, do this? Do you have your kids participate in elective activities outside of school?
2. When did your kids start taking extracirriculars?
3. Do you work?
4. And does this affect your work hours?
5. Is it something you stress about ever?

1. We do a lot of volunteering - in the fourth grade, Sophia volunteered 112 hours, in the fifth grade, close to 160. We sort cans at the food bank, clean up the neighborhood, she altar serves and sings in the church choir, stuff like that.

She also does soccer, but this is her last season. She just doesn’t care about team sports and is in them more for the social aspect than anything else = unfortunately, she’s entering the age where more and more of the kids are doing it to win or to improve themselves… and Sophia’s not about improving herself. Not in soccer, anyway.

2. 2nd or third grade she was in chess club, we had her in karate when she was in kindergarten (she was so CUTE in her karate outfit!), bunch of other stuff to see if it would fit.

3. Me, yes, wife, no. But the calls on my time bother me less than the calls on Laura’s time.

4. No. Her education affects my work hours - we have teacher conferences all day on Thursday, which I will likely miss a good deal of the work day, but not extra-curricular activities. We work a LOT in regards to Sophia’s education (and it shows - she has three 100’s (grammar, lit, and study skills), and 91+ averages on all her other classes) - this last Thursday, we were up until 10pm working on her science fair project.

5. My wife, yes, me, sometimes. I wish Sophia would put more effort into practice and improving herself at the fundamentals, but she refuses to work by herself in any “self-improvement” way. My wife can’t stand the demands on our time (which is really quite minimal, but Laura hates losing her Saturdays.)