Having school-aged children is a whole new world from toddler-hood. Once your child begins school, the fliers begin coming in from every type of activity imaginable. My kids come home daily with some type of flier for anything from karate to football to dance. My kids get excited about each one because they find out a friend might be joining. When do you say when? If it were up to my daughter she would be in cheer leading, hip hop dance, soccer, girl scouts and who knows what else.
Being the team mom of my daughter’s cheerleading and dance team I see a large variety of families. Some of their girls in only the cheer/dance team, while others have their kids in a wide variety of activities including dance, cheer, girl scouts and gymnastics. Just having practice two days a week is too much for our family at times, I couldn’t imagine having meetings and practices every day of the week.
This is where I am some-what torn. The girls in the hip-hop dance and gymnastics classes along with our cheer/dance team do very well. They are able to catch on to dances quickly and look good while performing. My daughter who is just five, only does this one thing and struggles quite a bit when learning a new routine. So should be put her in these additional classes to help her? My husband says that he would put his foot down and say there is no way the kids can do more than one activity at a time. He feels strongly that the kids should be outside playing and having fun. Growing up I remember having so much time to play with my friends, ride my bike and draw on the sidewalks with chalk. As time goes on, I see less and less of this with the kids of our neighborhood. Kids are shuffled from one activity to another, leaving little to no time for free play. So my question is, should you keep your kids busy with activities they enjoy to keep them out of trouble, or should you limit their extracurricular activities to give them more time for free play?
In my opinion, one activity at a time is enough. It gives them a structured activity to do outside of school, they get to part of a team, but still have time to play with the neighbors. Although it seems that free play time can get the kids into trouble, it also teaches them a lot. You learn how to problem-solve and get along with others, or play by themselves. As a child, do you remember how much fun you could have with a tennis ball and a stick or playing in the hose? Without the trampoline, play houses and structured toys, many kids these days don’t know what to do. Should be ensuring they have more free time to explore and use their creativity?
