Last year, my 9 year old did
Football (training and matches)
Aerial
Acro
Ballet
Modern
Swimming
Piano
Parkrun
She also did football and tennis at school, but these replaced some of her wraparound care.
This year, things have gone ballet-mad and she is now dancing 5/7 days for quite some hours. She is currently having to take a backseat for football (her second love), which is very tough.
I am also going to stop aerial for the second half of the winter term to give her some recovery time. I am also planting seeds that she could stop swimming lessons now, because she has finished the Learn to Swim scheme and can hold her own swimming distance in open water, and she goes swimming with us at the weekend anyway. If she would do that, she would have 2 days a week with no extra activities, which I feel is a healthier balance. She doesn’t want to.
She’s a very active child. I never expected her to do so much extra-curricular stuff (particularly as we both work), but I wanted to give her opportunities to try different things, with the intention that she drops things she doesn’t like. She never dropped anything, so the amount she does is limited by what she can get to.
My rules are
- if school suffers, she needs to cut back
- if she starts complaining about having to go to an activity or wants to start skipping sessions, it stops
- if I have to start nagging her to do the practice, whatever sessions require the practice (e.g. piano, ballet solo) stop.
and most importantly
4) she is doing these things for her. Not for me, not for her dad, not for her teacher. I don’t care what she does, as long as she is getting something out of it and not disrupting other people’s enjoyment. So if she finds that her interests move on and she loses her love for an activity, she must tell me, and we can stop, rather than worrying about the time and effort she’s invested so far. She’ll need to finish the half-term, just to make sure that she does really feel that way, but then she stops.
So far, she’s never been anything but eager go and she’s very organised and self-directed with practice.
The biggest issue we have had is the big clash between her extra ballet and football. With a positive hat on, I guess it is a ‘soft’ run through for when she gets older, and she may need to cut down due to schoolwork.
EDIT - I think the ideal would be for them to do something sporty plus something creative. I sometimes worry she does too much, but she seems to be managing fine. If she shows signs that she isn’t coping, I will step in and make her cut back on something.
And I would advise that you watch out that some activities can become all consuming!