Too many activities

[Xantheticus]

Trying to work out a balance of after school extracurricular activities. Interested in people's thoughts on whether this is too much for an energetic not very academic 9 year old boy:

Wednesday 1 hour karate

Thursday 30 min guitar then 1 hour karate
Friday 2 hrs athletics club (summer only)
Saturday 30 mins swimming lesson

Also wanting to add 30 min drum lesson. He is happy with everything now but I'm wondering if adding in the drum lesson will be too much.

Wondering how other people spread your activities through the week. If your DC do two instruments, how do you balance practice time?

I'm wondering if it's fair if one DC does two instruments when the other only does one. (Same activities but gymnastics instead of karate and keyboard instead of guitar).

At that age dd was doing gym (one hour), football (Sunday, one hour), and piano (half an hour).

By age 10, she'd dropped them all and now does one extra-curricular thing which she loves (13 now).

Fwiw I think those activities are too much.

Sorry meant to add that I think instrument practice should be little and often (ie a bit every day (15 mins say)? every day.

I don't think it's too much, no. He is only doing 4 days, so has 3 days off. In winter only 3 days. I'm a believer in letting them try a variety of things at this age.

The only thing I would do is see if he can access music lessons through school. Done in school time, so one less place for you.

I think it is fine too. DD has had times when she has done loads of things - things she wanted to do, not all of them have stood the test of time.

She now has a music lesson one evening, swimming and football another and nothing else apart from music school on Saturdays for 4 hours.

All down to her, she loves what she does right now (9).

Thanks very much for the replies. Great to see a range of possibilities. I think I'll hold off on the drum lessons for now maybe through school when he's older.

Micah, good point about school music lessons.

Whose idea is the drumming?

Two instruments is manageable at 9 but may be much harder to keep up later, when longer practice times are necessary, and when homework becomes more time consuming. My 14 year old daughter is going to have to drop an instrument next term I think, it's impossible to do enough practice for it to be worthwhile.

I tend to think that one instrument is enough unless the child is especially serious about it (or obviously unusually able). It's a lot more useful and more rewarding to have a decent standard on one instrument than to be mediocre on two.

Mine did more activities than that at that age and were fine. DS2 was a chorister at 9, so Cathedral two nights after school until 7, plus 2 Sundays out of three. Piano and singing lessons outside of school, Brass lesson in school and occasional clarinet. He also did lots of school music groups, A Music service group, taekwondo and Cubs. But he loves music.

I would let him do two instruments and choose which one he prefers if he needs to.

My daughter does two instruments and we've settled into a pattern where she works hard at one and just coasts along at the other. Thankfully she has different teachers so the one for whom she does little practice doesn't know what she could achieve if she really worked [evil grin]. She's still enjoying the second instrument and is learning enough to get by.

Does not sound to me as too many activities. And sport is very good for a boy anyway.
Totally agree with Mistigri about second instrument.
My 7yo does 4 hours of after school activities, and my 4yo 1hr45mins.
I am not happy with my 7yo activities but unfortunately cannot reduce this time as it is already kept to the absolute minimum.

I knew you'd get replies from the people whose kids do tons of after school activities as I've posted a similar question in the past.

We were doing a similar amount to you in and irl friends thought it was too much. But we are in an area where people tend to do 1 or 2 activities on principle of not doing too much!

We've cut back and currently do 2 evenings and a sat morning swim which suits us quite well now. They can do the odd straight-after-school club when offered without feeling exhausted. As it was gymnastics she was doing that soon escalates to 10 hours a week if you stay in the competitive stream (we cut back to recreational).

WorriedandLost, 4 hours of Afterschool activities looks too much, what all your DC does BTW ?

And sport is very good for a boy

Is sport not good for girls then? IME it's equally good for children, whatever gender. In fact it's probably more important for girls to get into sport as later on they hit teen peer pressure and give up, because sport and physical activity is a boy thing...

We were doing a similar amount to you in and irl friends thought it was too much. But we are in an area where people tend to do 1 or 2 activities on principle of not doing too much! We've cut back and currently do 2 evenings and a sat morning swim

Do you make all your decisions based on what your friends think? Surely if your previous level of activity suited you and your children who cares if the norm where you live is twice a week.

FWIW my 10 year old does 20 hours a week. My 8 year old does something similar, because she's there too and might as well join in. Neither find it too much, and have said they'd rather be out doing stuff than stuck at home. I was like that as a child too.

When is he doing his reading?
When is he socialising?
When is he doing chores?
When is he in a playground interacting with kids he doesn't know?
When is he lying around on the floor being bored?

Boys need to learn to read too ya know. Even sporty ones.

It depends where you live too. We live in the middle of nowhere, no kids nearby, not on a bus route. My DD does a lot,14+ hours a week (not including instrument practice time), but it means she sees her friends, keeps fit and enjoys her days off (when she has friends over/goes to their house). Some kids like to be busy and my DD enjoys everything (but I also enjoy her days off)!

What a strange remark Micah. The question was "Interested in people's thoughts on whether this is too much for an energetic not very academic 9 year old boy" and not "let us share thoughts on what is good and bad for children in general".

And yes, as a parent of a boy and a girl, I would say that a sport for boys has a totally different meaning than a sport for girls. A huge part of it is steaming off and having energy level under control (in addition to usual benefits). I am not talking about chess in case you want to comment again :)

VenusRising you made me laugh
Dd has a young promising sport boy in her year, on a national level. He is top groups academically too. But parents make sure he has balance in his life and does other things too, including school work

Micah - not at all based decisions on what friends think! Just pointing out that we are all culturally influenced as to what is "too much". These threads tend to attract people that do a lot of hours and again can influence in that direction.

We made the decision not to do competitive gymnastics (and so cut down the clubs to 2 evenings and swimming one morning. As well as an after school club for the winter term thinking about it. It still feels a lot even though its a lot less than she was doing. Sport is good for them but having time to just "be" as a family has been so good for us too. It obviously varies from family to familiiy.

10 hours a week gym was going to be too much for us!

Not a strange remark, but picking up on the casual sexism endemic in society.

Your own point that "sport for boys has a totally different meaning than a sport for girls. A huge part of it is steaming off and having energy level under control" is inherently sexist. It doesn't. There are plenty of girls who have lots of energy. The reason I took mine to every extra-curricular activity I could find was she had so much energy I couldn't cope with her at home. If she misses a day she's back to climbing the walls (literally).

Some children have higher energy levels than others. There are boys that like to play computer games and read, there are girls that like to be active. You cannot make the sweeping statement that boys need sport to get their energy level under control, and girls don't.

And yes I agree with that - when my daughter was doing lots of hours people assumed she would be "so tired" but she is very active and loved the physical side of it all!

I disagree on doing more than one instrument, if you can access the lesson easily. At that age DC are much more likely to do 10 minutes per instrument daily than 20 minutes on one instrument. There is a lot of cross fertilisation between instruments - reading music, manual dexterity, timing and learning to hear pitch. If he does guitar and drums now and then drops one later he will still have the background skills.

My dds play 3 instruments each and even at grade 6 standard only spend 30 minutes a day in total on in-house practice (they don't have aspirations to become professional musicians). Now they are older their early efforts have given them access to loads of bands and orchestras and they also sing in the school musical. I agree the more you can dovetail activities through the school the better in terms of timing and cost.

My dd also did martial arts training when younger but the club commitment became very restrictive and they prefer to have the option to dip in and out of other sports now - they have benefited massively in terms of understanding fitness and self defence and in self confidence from their training though.

I don't think your son's schedule looks too much, but our school has a karate club running straight after school, and we live 5 minutes walk from the swimming pool and the music school.

DD has ADHD (both the hyper and the attention deficit parts!!), and is also very sporty. At age 9, she is doing:

Mon - hockey 1 hr
Tues - football (gaelic) 1hr
Wed - catholic instruction 45 mins
Thurs - guitar 30 mins
Fri - soccer 1 hr, then gaelic football/hurling 1 hr in the evening
Saturday - cub scouts 90mins, sailing club 3 hrs
Sun - Coder DoJo 2hrs, hockey 1 hr

Most of those are actually in school, and Saturday activities are 50 yards apart so we have a picnic lunch together in the break.

She practices instruments (she also has to do tin whistle in school) for 10 mins nightly.

We have done lots of other activities over the years, some in school or afterschool club, others outside in other places. Some of those were other sports while she has also done things like chess club etc in school ECAs.

We think it is a heavy load, but she enjoys them all. We pull back on a couple of things get too hectic, and concentrate on playtime or resting at home. If she didn't have an activity every afternoon after school, she would spend all afternoon in the afterschool club which she finds more boring, and school (well, PTA and the ECA coordinators) are great in having a great range of sporty, academic, and plain fun activities to choose from.

I think we are most likely to drop the local Gaelic club next, as she can't make matches anymore (they changed so clash with sailing - which she adores and will not hear of giving up). And I'd like her to do either book club or lego club in school to replace 1 sport next term. But we manage and it is great that she is so interested in sports and outdoor activities as many of the girls locally really aren't.

Thanks again for all your comments. Really interesting to read different views.

Mistigri, he wants to do drumming. He's done a little messing about on drums and it made him really relaxed and happy. He can be a bit negative and anxious at times - I've heard that drumming can be quite therapeutic so thought it might be good to encourage.

Venusrising, there still seems to be a lot of time to lounge around. Most of the activities are social but also build up skills in things he is really good at. Academically, his reading is above average, spelling is ok but numeracy and writing are poor.

I guess the other question is whether the money/time should go towards tutoring rather than music/sport. At the moment I'm helping him with schoolwork but progress is slow. I do feel resistant to paying loads for maths tutoring though when it's clear it will never be his strong point. He seems to have real talent and passion for music however so I feel more inclined to invest money in that.

My 9 year old has

Mon - gymnastics X3 hours
Tues - ballet 1 hr
Weds - ballet, modern, etc 3 hrs
Thurs - gymnastics 2 hrs
Fri - gymnastics - 3 hrs
Sat - ballet 1 hr
Sun - gymnastics - 3hrs

But she's in the squad for gym and has competitions as extra on weekends and half term, for dance and gym. She's over scheduled, but loves it. Your schedule looks fine to me, with days off.