Child’s hobby’s

[Skippii]

My friends 6 yr old has a couple of hobbies, standard club type activities. However they seem to consume the family totally, other than regular weekly stuff, there are week long activities every school holiday, various weekends, endless compulsory parent volunteering, lots of £££ for stuff. Is this normal when you have children?

Additionally, her employer has been very family friendly and flexible, but is moving to less so and she is talking about leaving because she won’t be able to take the child from school to club so would have to use after school club instead and would miss out.

I don’t have children, and growing up was nothing like this, so I’m bewildered. Should point out I offer no opinion to her, I’m just sympathetic when she complains about all the time/cost/hassle.

It's normal if you accept it and allow your child to join those sort of clubs. I know people who are the same...these people, I feel are often unhealthily consumed by their child's life.

I wonder what they will do when their child hits 18 and does their own thing.

It's exhausting just listening to it, and there's already talk of how it will increase over the years. If they don't end up an Olympic hopeful it won't be for lack of practice

Why are you bewildered

Ok. It can be a hassle that costs time and money, that doesn't exclude it from being an option though.

DD had a pony when she was younger. I bitches and moaned every winter morning I had to drive up to the farm, muck out, break the ice on top of the water troughs it goes on and on. DD got a lot out of it, despite my mains it was an absolutely worthwhile hobby.

Same goes for anything. Parents might have a gripe about the pita hobbies but that doesn't mean we should stop.

I think you should stop trying to make sense of someone else's life tbh.

Everyone's different.

Some families do no hobbies/ clubs, some like your friends do loads to a great depth. Most families lie somewhere in the middle.

@needthisthread I'm bewildered because she's looking for a new job at a point which makes no sense in her career, because she can't work from home on Mondays. She's a single parent and giving up all sorts of job security and a planned career track to start over with a new employer because of a child's hobby.

But yes, probably best that I don't expect other people's lives to make sense. I'm sure I do things that make no sense to her

There might be more to it than meets the eye. You might think "whar's the point, they'll never get to the Olympics", but for those that do get to a very high standard it will almost certainly be with a huge amount of parental support and sacrifice of time and money. I disagree about it all falling flat once the children are grown up too, I know lots of people that have carried on coaching or scout leading, whatever, long after their children grew up, it can lead to a lifelong interest for the parents too, supporting generations of young people.