Feeling swamped by DCs Activities

[FarAwayHills]

Anyone else feel that their DCs activities are dominating family life? The time...the money....I'm starting to feel it's out of control. How do you make sure stay involved while remaining a sensible level of time and financial commitment?

Ah yes who knew that a little bit of skipping around could lead to all this

I guess my issue is that have 2 DDs doing dance. We are just at the point where DD2 is starting to do more so we now have double the cost and double the number of lessons and extras.

The obvious solution is to cut back. However, this is tricky as the dance school expect them to attend lessons and take exams in order to perform in shows and competitions and this is the part they love most. So there are lots strings attached making it difficult to do one thing without the other.

My DDs love dance and I agree with Teacher about the many benefits it brings. I just don't like the pressure of having to say yes to everything and constantly rearranging plans when they decide extra lessons are needed at short notice.

FarAwayHills have you asked your dc's dance school whether there is a sibling discount, or if you could pay a flat fee each term for unlimited classes? A lot of dance schools do this sort of scheme.

Crikey glad we avoided the whole dance thing then mine are more sporty so cricket/rugby/karate but can be several times a week - now that rugby season has finished i'm looking forward to Sunday's again!! We do say no to stuff but mine are at school till 5 most nights ( private prep) doing more sport so we do have to prioritise family time too

Dodo, that's a good idea. We're on a flat fee scheme which includes everything. It's still dear but it's predictable, and if an extra rehearsal is called or jazz classes start, it doesn't make any difference.

There is already a small sibling discount for regular lessons but not for exam practice or competitions and rehearsals. A flat fee sounds like a good idea - does this include all exams and extra tuition for exams also?

Well my dd's dance school didn't usually have much in the way of extra classes for exams - sometimes one or two but that's all, and the teacher never used to bother to charge unless it was at a different venue and had to cover the cost of hall hire, which is reasonable really. Show rehearsals were usually during normal class time, and it wasn't a competition school.

The cost of the exams goes up depending on the grade anyway, and that was always separate.

She's now at vocational school full time and that's a whole different ball game.

That sounds good Dodo if our dance school did the same it would be more manageable. We have 6-8 mandatory extra lessons for each exam prep plus the fees and some students take extra one to one lessons.

that is a lot of extra lessons for exams - we don't have that at all. occasionally if someone isn't keeping up with the class so won't be ready then it would be suggested they had some extra lessons but not as standard, mind our school probably takes longer to get through exams as a result.