Has anyone chosen to 'slow down' a (too) busy family life?

[BoogleMcGroogle]

I'm just wondering if anyone here has intentionally cut back on events/ activities/ expectations in family life, to become a less busy (in some ways less high achieving perhaps) family?

Our children are now well into middle childhood, and far from getting easier, it has become busier and busier, with their many interests, social events, school pressures, ageing parents and building (or in my case rebuilding) careers. Recently we have had no time to do the things we enjoy together, like making the Christmas cake, board games and welly trudges, and both of the children have complained that they don't have enough time at home to play and read. We didn't intentionally become super-busy, it has just spiralled over the past few years. I think that we are all on board with wanting to slow things down a little, and I'd really like to hear if anyone else has done the same, how it worked out and if they regret or are glad to have made that choice.

I never became busy in the first place .

My DC do one extra curricular activity a week each.

We don't really do anything on a Saturday unless we must, church takes up a lot of Sunday with a lunch after. Just swimming in the week too and it is all busy enough. It is very intentional

One extra curricular activity a week

Play dates once every few weeks so I'm not committed to reciprocating.

I work 4 days a week so having a 3 day weekend helps.

I don't accept every invitation to every party/event going.

I actively keep certain weekends free every so often; I’ll cross the weekend off on the calandar so we don’t make plans and can just relax and have time together.

What age is middle childhood? 8-12?
As pp we’ve kept it simple rather than reduced. We have one ‘family day’ at the weekend (normally Sunday) when we go for a walk, parents get a run (individually), kids hang out in their room (this time of year) or play in garden (spring/ summer). The dc do one activity each on Saturday and scouting one weekday evening. If an event happens on a Sunday (mostly scouts related sometimes others) we will usually cancel the Saturday activities or decline. It helps that we are out of the whole class party years and have no family locally so to see them it’s a whole weekend and we tend to use BHs /school holidays as much as possible.
I do feel sorry for the dc who are pulled out of their swimming lesson early so they can get to gymnastics.

cheminotte mine are 7 and 9, so still very reliant, but also interesting in being social. We are still very much in the whole class party phase, although DD wants to take one friend out somewhere special this year (yay!)

I'd love to take it down to one extra-curricular activity each a week. At present my daughter in particular does many more than this, as she is quite musical. However, she has chosen to give up two other activities which will free up one evening and a school lunchbreak. She goes to a very academic private school and the lives some of the kids lead are unbelievable. 11+ tutoring at 8am on Saturday etc. We've never reached that stage, but chatting to other more sensible (and happier) parents shows that being too busy has become too normal for us, and we've really felt the pressure of that.

I like the idea of keeping a day free at the weekend just to hang out together. The idea of waking up with no plans sounds amazing, I feel like we haven't done that for years.

This weekend one of the extra curricular wasn’t running and I deliberately didn’t book the other. Coincidentally ds1’s homework load was also really low and it worked out very relaxing.