Even piano lessons.
The year before I had spent just about every afternoon driving little people to various lessons, games, practices and rehearsals. There were the accompanying happy experiences: pride and excitement as my son performed onstage for the first time; my sons becoming more flexible and strong through Karate & Gymnastics; the sense of accomplishment my oldest son felt after finishing well in a golf tournament.
But there was the ugliness of all the extra-curriculars too: the fact that I spent very little after-school time helping kids with homework and just being there; the nagging and fighting about practicing, the lack of decent dinners (I sometimes did something in the crock pot, but it just seldom seemed to happen).
So that year instead of becoming more accomplished we were going back to the basics: we worked on eating good meals together and getting to sleep early. That’s what our after-school curriculum entailed.
If you have school-aged children then you know the pressure to do everything; to try everything. What if you have a future world-class gymnast on your hands or a budding concert violinist? How will you know unless you expose them to everything, right? It has finally dawned on me that if I have a world-class anything, I’ll know. A prodigy’s talents do not hinge on a karate class taken in preschool.
I’d had to admit to myself that my children weren’t particularly gifted at any of the activities they had been involved in. And they didn’t really love them. I encourage them to be passionate about the things they choose to do. Otherwise, why do them? I want them to soar and enjoy the experience. But after a long hard look I realized that most of our activities were just taking up our time and money.
The constant busy-ness had been strangling me. I don’t have a go, go, go personality. I like things calm and unhurried.
There would be lots of tears and complaining, I imagined, when I announced our new plan to not do anything. But no. It seems that we were all pretty fed up with the crazy schedule.
We spent the next two weeks after school began hanging out with each other. I had the time to make a nice meal every night. We’d enjoyed leisurely dinners together full of laughter and conversation and then gotten to bed at a decent time. The simple life has ended up being pretty lovely.
We still continued to do Scouts and some church activities. I eventually phased things in slowly. But I planned on keeping the extra-curriculars in check. If a child loved something, that’s fine. But the days of signing kids up just to do something fun were over.
