Was anyone else not ferried around as a child to various clubs?

[Imgonnaleaveyou58]

I have one sibling and we were driven to a trampolining club one evening a week by our parents, which we appreciated. These days kids seem to have eye-wateringly expensive hobbies on 4 or 5 evenings a week which they're driven all over the place for? It's important to partake in hobbies and sporting activities but I think the kids are spoilt tbh.

No kid needs to be taken to clubs every single night of the week, they're allowed to be bored/at home/entertain themselves sometimes and parents are allowed to spend money on themselves and do things for them.
I just think it's all gone mad.

My parents worked a lot when I was younger, so no opportunity for clubs for me as no one to take me. I just remember sitting at home and watching a lot of TV. My DH also didn't have the opportunity for any clubs, just sitting on the side of his older sisters' activities. So I echo an earlier poster that I am very happy to pay for all the clubs my children want to do. I won't force anything but swimming, and once they commit to something (e.g., a term of ballet, etc. etc.), they have to finish it and then they're welcome to stop. I don't quite understand why there's any outrage about children having the opportunity to try lots of different activities. I wish I'd had the same opportunities mine have!

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Where I lived there weren’t a range of activities to be ferried to and we couldn’t have afforded to do them even if there were. Brownies and Sunday School was all I did (and I hated both).

They did do extra curriculars, tennis, art, several different instruments and a lot more over the years, so yes I did more for them, I had the time and the money.

The point is though that kids are fine without being constantly at clubs/extra curriculars and absolutely can do well if their parents are either too poor or time poor to do many extra curricular activities. And all kids are different too.

There's no real answer to any of it, it's just different individual circumstances. So long as you're doing your best, that's all anyone can expect.

Oh and not running around to clubs and extra curriculars constantly does not equal not giving your children time/resources and opportunities.

I did guides, drama club and choir etc. Parents had no car. It was two buses back from clubs at school out of hours. Guides was a thirty minute walk or a bus ride depending on the time of year and the weather.

I stopped doing buses at night when waiting for the second bus after drama club and some pervy bloke in the bus shelter kept quietly leaning and moving himself up against me till the bus got there, despite me moving away.

I then got thrown out of the choir for not attending a late night concert cos I didn't want to be getting buses home on my own at 11pm in winter after that. I was 15 and tiny, about 6 stone wet through. I can totally see why people ferry their kids about.

As with most things in life it's probably about finding the right balance. I was lucky to be given the opportunity to do several extra curricular activities as a kid - some needed my Dad to drive me due to the location and others I could walk to. I had to do chores around the house if I wanted to be dropped off so it wasn't something that I just took for granted.

I think that it's great to give kids the option of trying lots of different things (where time and money permits) Trying new things expands their skills and their social circle as well as being fun. That said, kids also need to understand that this is a privilege.

My daughter’s 15. She volunteers in Girl Guiding, does a drama class and goes to youth club. I drive her to Girl Guiding as there’s no public transport but the other two she walks to.

When I was her age I had a part time job in the pub opposite our house and I was driven to a youth club once a week because there was no public transport.

Mine are in their 20s 2 went to brownies 1 went to football that's it.
Did anyone see the
Anyone else's kids got extremely expensive hobbies? This morning.
Reading through it made me realise I live in a different world. Things like polo.

So? I could have paid off my mortgage now with the amount I've spent on my horse and horse activities in the past 10 years, but he brings me souch joy he's worth every penny! He's my best friend, gets me through the stress of life, basks in the summer sun with me, keeps me fit and healthy and is now teaching my daughter to ride. Fuck the mortgage! It will be paid by the time I retire. Life is for living.

We all had a go at recorder at junior school. I struggled to coordinate my hands to cover the holes and blow at the same time. Mum said I knew how to play the notes, but couldn't play them in the right order. In the school concert I did get a role though, page turner for the pianist.

@SerenaCat93Not on MN! Being frugal and paying off your mortgage early trumps everything else! I agree though - we’ve had race horses and the expense is insane but I’ll always treasure our successes!

I grew up in the north of Scotland (regularly described as 'remote' by the BBC) in the 70s and 80s and did dance as a small child, swimming lessons, brownies/guides and violin as a child so I think that's a reasonable lower benchmark for a middle class kid. My three siblings all did similar. DH grew up in an upper middle class area of a capitol city and did fuck all because he kept dropping out of things after one evening and his parents didn't push him to participate. But his brother did far more, including expensive hobbies like sailing. I had cousins who lived near Glasgow who did loads of things. So I don't think it's a new thing for kids from families with means to have their kids doing lots of activities.

Our 3DC all did swimming, football, choir and brownies/cubs/scouts. DS also does badminton, DD2 also does drama, singing and piano lessons (and used to do violin), DD1 did 101 different after-school clubs but is the sporty one so when a young teen did sport every day. Some kids love activities, some (DS, I'm looking at you) are reluctant to start things but enjoy them when they go and it's far better to be at an activity than stuck at home playing computer games every night.

The only thing I did outside of school was judo (which I was forced to do and I hated), and it was another parent that would take us there as our family did not have a car.

As a child I did athletics and then as a teen added hockey to that. I did athletics training twice a week, hockey once and then matches/ comps at weekends. I loved it. I also did loads of activities in school which often required driving to stuff (schools sports meets, trials, music grading etc).

I have one child who does football and trains once a week and then plays another day. My other child does another sport that is very time consuming and takes we drive her all over the country.

We don’t force it, my football child has had times where he’s done nothing but won’t discourage stuff they want to do.

The 60s and 70s were 50-60 years ago! You can’t call something “a recent thing” just because it didn’t happen over half a century ago 😂 I was at school 30 years ago and they were completely normal so they’re not that recent!

We were ferried to various hostels and shelters.

My own dc did a few clubs each because I wanted to give them what I hadn’t had.

I did a lot for free/ low cost at school that had little impact on DM.

My only extra-curricular out of school was dancing. She liked the idea of twirling around being dainty in leotards and ballet tights, and signed me up at 7. I liked it and by the teen years she got fed up with the onerous duty of taking me 2 miles by car twice a week as I went up the stages. 30+ years later she still frequently moans about this gallant sacrifice of a weekly evening and weekend morning.

She didn't sign me up for Brownies as she found it dull when she did it. No swimming lessons, why would anyone want to swim in a cold swimming pool, so she was content to leave me be a non-swimmer until I rectified that making my own arrangements that didn't inconvenience her when I was 16.

With hindsight she was a great parent as long as your interest very neatly aligned with her interests and convenience. Casual playing out wasn't an option with the location of where I lived, and she had double standards on female and male expectations.

My DCs have done a lot, but we're lucky that many things were low budget and walking distance, swimming being the outlier. Nothing has been high intensity, expensive, or heavily committed. DS1 is dyspraxic, so the years of karate and swimming have been good for him and his co-ordination. DS2 is more into football which has been facilitated. There was also scouting. If they miss a week occasionally with tiredness, it's not like they're letting a squad down. With autism in the equation, they're not motivated by casual socialising, so having some beneficial activities through the week is good at getting them out of their teen-pits for some movement and semi-structured social contact beyond school.

I look at some people where the commitment and travel is far greater and don't envy that, but I can understand the benefits if the child loves it and finds talents.

How many clubs do your kids go to OP? Do they play out in the street?

Yeah it’s good to be able to talk about other things. And yes there is more to life!

Im so pleased you have learnt an instrument now though! Good on you.

I was born in ‘85 and taken to loads of clubs - whatever I wanted to do. Gymnastics, brownies/guides, horse riding, piano lesson, swimming. Anything I wanted to do. My brothers were more sporty than I was and did lots of sports clubs. My mum didn’t work so she had the time to take us to everything. If anything, I feel like there were more SAHMs back then so presumably that made things easier.

I am in my 60s from a large family. We did, sports with lots of matches and track events..all of us..choir, school plays where we had to go back in the evening for practice, youth club and all it's activities and trips. My parents were not rich but they never complained about driving us. My Mum was a SAHM so was around but in the evenings our Dad drove us. We were the kind of kids that were stuck into everything and they just went along with it. We couldn't walk as we were right out the country.
When it came to our own l adopted the same attitude. If they wanted to do it, within reason, they did it. My dh often thought l was mad but l wanted to repeat my own childhood as l loved that.

I never intended to be that parent due to the expense, the time, the juggling! But when your child becomes really good at something it's really hard to say no, what do you do? Just stop getting better at something and stay where you are? Just give up? My daughter has played netball since she was 7, I started her off just to get to know other girls outside of school, be part of a team, fitness,etc. She's now 14 and competing at all sorts of levels, her fitness and strength is fantastic, its helped massively with her confidence. Sometimes you've just got to go with it, find the time and money and give them these opportunities.

My parents never had the money for me to go to loads of activities. I went to Brownies and then Guides but they were held in the Village Hall almost next door. When I got my first little after school job at 14 and I earned a bit of money I was allowed to go on the bus to the weekly dance in the next town with my friend and dad and her dad used to take it in turns to come and collect us. Apart from that dad used to say that he had been at work all day and wasn't going to be a taxi service by night, so if I couldn't get there and back by bike or the bus I didn't go. 😁Mum didn't drive. Didn't feel hard done by because all my friends were the same.

I'm in my 60s. I grew up in a family with no car and parents who worked. I went along with friends to a couple of clubs because their families had cars and could drive us there, then when I was 14 I started working weekends at a riding school but I had to walk the three miles there and back because we still didn't have a car. (I sometimes used to get a bus half way there, but always walked all the way back because I didn't have enough bus fare).

I’m 60+ and went to Brownies
DB had piano lessons
My DC who were born in the 90s did brownies and cubs, briefly had swimming lessons
We lived fairly rurally so had to drop them off to visit friends if not on a bus route and too far to walk or cycle

We were allowed one hobby and brownies/guides. My hobby was horse riding and I did get driven to that as the riding school was a fair distance. All my kit except for my helmet was 2nd hand and I got a new pair of boots at Christmas. Brownies/guides was considered to be character building and good life prep. The rest of the time we had to make our own entertainment after we had done our chores and school work.

I guess it worked as I am quite self contained and am happy to while away my time still. I'm never really bored, I can always find something to keep me occupied.