Too many clubs!

[Lollipop30]

Totally my own fault for saying yes but my daughter just does too many clubs!
It didn’t matter whilst she was an only and we only needed to run around after her but she now has two very young siblings age1&2 and it’s just not fair on them to spend their whole lives in the car.
I’m not sure how many is an adequate amount to keep/quit. She’s fairly insistent she wants to carry on doing everything but she does 4 dance classes, swimming, piano, clarinet, hockey and football.
What do I do? We get one night off a week and our weekends are taken over by matches too.

Don’t ask me - last half term my two did 15 activities between them!

We are now down to an almost manageable 12 as the other three were short term things.

I’m bloody knackered!

I'd cull anything that she only does once a week as she's not realistically going to make progress in those.

Keep dance, one instrument but up the practice etc, and choose between swimming, hockey or football but up the number of sessions for the chosen one.

You may not end up doing much less, but at least it will be getting somewhere rather than aimless ferrying about.

Can you lift share with other families to reduce the car time for your littlies?

I’d keep swimming as it’s more than just a sport, plus one other sport or dance. One instrument and either the other instrument or a type of dance.

It’s not just about time in the car for the younger children- what you offer one, you’ll need to offer the others!

I agree with QueenofLouisiana - if you offer her all those things then when the younger ones are older you have to be prepared to offer them the same, fit them in and pay for them!

I don't know how old she is but I think you should sit down and make her look through what she does.

You want her to rank her favourites, for example which would she keep if she was only allowed to do 4 activities or something OR like we do with ours and say to them there is x amount of budget and you can choose what activities you do. So if you want to do drama then you have to stop music or whatever. We have done this with ours since they were 7 and they are very aware of helping fund stuff they really want to do themselves using birthday money from family. It has taught them a lot.

I think you also want to look at the family commitment to reduce how many evenings it takes up. So if dropping hockey makes no difference because it is mostly in school time then she needs to agree to drop something which is out of school time regularly to gain an evening for everyone else.

Mine are year 5 and 6 and each do quite a bit I think. two evenings and saturday they are going to the same place as each other and then they have 1 evening a week which is just one of them. So we only get 1 evening off a week. It will be easier when they are older and don't need to be dragged around to each others things.

How old is your DD OP?

If she's old enough and can swim well now, then you could drop that. I think mine stopped when she was about 9 or 10, can't really remember now.

How keen is she on dancing, because if it is 'very' then she might start to find that sustaining injuries during her other sports might possibly cause issues and be a reason to give one of those up.

I agree, you should only keep what you're also prepared to fund and run around for her siblings.

I think if it were me, dropping down to either one dance lesson plus the sports, or only one sport plus all the dance, would be a good starting point. Essentially choosing between dance and sport, without completely slamming the door shut. Instruments are different as it depend how much practice she does and whether they're at school or an after school activity. Think about whether clarinet is likely to grow into an orchestra at some point (how? Would she have time? if not is piano a better choice?)

Thanks for the responses it’s def got me thinking.
Instruments she does within one lesson but realistically she only practices piano properly.
Swimming I feel is more of a life skill and she needs to be able to swim well before stopping that.
Ideally I’d like to cut down on a bit of dance but she says this is her absolute favourite so I’ve more luck of getting rid of others 😬

I used to have the same prioblem with dd.

In the end we started to say no to anything sporty as she had decided by the age of about 9/10 that she wanted to take performing seriously (she's now 17 and training to be a professional dancer)

So she did the multiple dance classes and also singing and drama as complemetary to these but we told her she couldn't take up any other sports.

Oh I feel for you, Lollipop30 as I've been there, though I have only one child so didn't have the sibling issue. But really, it was hard work, for me! I was wondering why I was always running around when I had only one child. It was simply because DS was involved in too many and too demanding activities ALWAYS. Dinner time was a real challenge. Had to be super organised if I cared to cater healthy and pleasurable meals to my family. DS was all round so did well in may areas and also he liked achieving and challenging that was nice but only made the situation even worse.

We started discussing narrowing down his activities when he was at around 9, then at around 10, he finally dropped other things which he kept for pure fun and started focusing on his chosen area.

He's incredibly busy still as the number of the activities reduced but the number of the hours he spends on the chosen area has increased and is still increasing...

DS cut back activities at the start of secondary school.
Whatever choices she/you make I would keep one of the team sports, for fitness, friends & less focus on appearance than dance.

Ha ha ha I assure you that during a dance class the dancers are so hot and sweaty there is no focus on appearance.

I wasn't implying dance isn't great exercise. The focus on hair, make-up, build & conformance is greater than in hockey or football.