Summer Schools - when to say no!!!!!!!!!

[balletgirlmum]

Anyone else feel like a bad mum because they are coblatantly having to say no, enough is enough to their children?

Ds wants to fill every week of her holidays with summer schools & private lessons!

At Easter we are allowing her to do a 4 day residential ballet course (her brother is on a scho sports trip & dh & I want to visit london that week.

Then the following week she's doing two Jazz/ballet morning workshops followed by a private lesson.

In the summer she wants to do three or four Residential summer

schools (moorland, Opes, Elmhurst & a musical theatre one) plus the back to school two day thing again.

We've said no, she can do two plus the two day non residential. - she needs rest as well.

Last year we agreed that ds could return to her old dance school for their little summer school & show. Big mistake. She got very tired & to be honest didn't get much out of it. They & she had moved on & she felt she no longer fitted in (one of her favourite teachers had retired but she does feel loyalty towards her old ballet teacher & dance school owner)

Bless her she wants to do everything!

Don't feel like a bad mother, you're doing the right thing. Children who love dancing never want to stop, we know this, but as you rightly say, they NEED the rest time. It is so important to keep the body at peak performance. With out students we usually advise the parents to pick one summer school each year and make sure it's a good one. :D

There are so many options out there!

Elmhurst junior is good timing, just before school goes back & she loved it last year.

She also loved Moorland last year but really wants to try OPES as she adores one of their teachers. You can do 1 week or 3 weeks & she's doing 1.

DS would fill every week with sports camps. At Easter he is doing 1 day football in week one & three days of tennis in week two. In the summer last year he did two weeks tennis & a third week as a 'helper'.

Dd does get longer holidays than most. She breaks up on 10th July after the dance show & goes back in sept.

Ds is trying to persuade me to book him into a football course straight after his school sports trip this easter!!

The biggest struggle is when parents have more than one to cater for. I know it causes a lot of hassle for one of our mums that the daughter does exams, competitions and then has private lessons and summer schools etc on top, whereas the older brother gets virtually nothing spent on his hobbies by comparison. It's so easy when they start and they pop in for an hour on a Saturday morning... the parents never know what they're letting themselves in for when they grow up and before they know it, it's 3/4 nights a week devoted to dancing! :D

Ha ha!!!!

We never did comps but dd was into musical theatre, only really taking dance seriously from the end of year 5/ year 6

It's easier now she's away at school in that respect, but the travelling is hard.

We did go through a stage where she wanted to spend every exeat visiting her old ballet school/MT group

NO!