Making children do extra curricular activities

[Daisyblossom13]

How do you feel about forcing/pushing school into doing extra curricular activities.

Ds is 9, soon to be 10.

He plays football in a team and does swimming lessons. All fine, that’s plenty.

He enjoys the football, but does sometimes complain about going to matches on weekends. He’s not brilliant but certainly not terrible. The football teams are getting much more competitive and selective as he’s getting older. He has the opportunity to join a second team which is very relaxed/just for fun and not too time consuming, and would give him a bit more practise, but he doesn’t want to. His only reason is that he can’t be bothered.

He moans like crazy about going to swimming lessons, he’s a very good swimmer, so could potentially stop, but it’s only 30 minutes a week and it’s not like he finds it difficult.

We tried tennis but he hated it, we started taking him to parkrun, he’s a really good, fast runner, but he always said he couldn’t be bothered to go.

I don’t want to over schedule him, but I do find it a little bit odd that he can’t be bothered to do anything lot of these things. He doesn’t like going out much at all. He doesn’t like school, no particular reason, he just wants to be at home. He only likes going out for a very short time and short distance and always wants to go home.

Do you think the other good reasons for him going swimming could be met elsewhere through an alternative sport/activity that he perhaps enjoys more (that you deem acceptable of course)? Wonder if it’s worth asking him if there’s anything he would like to try?

I would be completely with you on the swimming. He will thank you for it at the end of the day.

It sounds like he’s the kind of person who hates the idea of having to do something while enjoying it once they get there and get started.

If you know he enjoys it once there just make it clear it’s part of his week. If he seems to be hating it once there then it is probably time to look at other options.

This is my opinion as well. Homebody is one thing, and kids do need unstructured downtime to develop independence. However, if they want to stay home because they prefer sitting on a screen to doing anything else, that’s different.

We don’t allow screens in the week and we also don’t force extracurriculars. Our kids have settled into about 3-4 activities each. The only time we ‘force’ participation is if they have pushed to join something at the beginning of the year, and we have paid for them to do that thing, and then they decide they can’t be bothered with it anymore halfway through the year. We do make them see through the activities that have been prepaid. They know that is the deal and make their decisions accordingly.

My middle child loved extra curricular activities, especially sports. Eldest and youngest did not. They all did swimming as a non negotiable but didn’t force any. I was glad to have less running around to do as I worked too. It was hard enough fitting in swimming straight after school, then football and cubs etc for DS2.

What are all the other things I'm going on about? They are literally what you say yourself in your own post.

You want him to carry on with swimming so he can perfect his technique, learn to dive correctly, learn badges and do lifeguarding. You might want him to do those things, but does he?