Laissez-faire parenting - am I alone?

[Bugbug1968]

My children are 8, 6 and nearly 3, and my husband is away from home during the week. My elder two children are the only ones at school that don't do multiple clubs after school or at weekends (no swimming, football, music, languages etc). Is this normal? A few years ago I tried enrolling my eldest son in a club or two that he seemed interested in, but basically he was too tired to do them after school and I was too tired dragging a three year old and baby along, so I thought 'he's only 5, why I am I bothering?'. He's recently signed up for cricket one afternoon a week after school - he's loving it, but my 6 year old doesn't want to do any clubs. I think that's fine, he's so young, but all his peers are doing loads of different activities. At the weekend, we go to the park as a family and play lots of different sports, but still I'm going against the grain of what every other parent I know is doing. When I was a child I did lots of out-of-school activities but I was quite a lot older than my children are now, so Im quite happy for my children to do very little now. Is this ok?

yes it's okay :)

Hmm, yes and no. I can completely understand where you are coming from. I think the number of after school clubs some children are doing is way too much. However, some team activities which have a built up skill base, such as sports, I suspect some children, if they don't start early, simply won't enjoy starting later as they will be behind the other children.

Other activities, such as music, are one on one with a teacher so starting later is fine.

Mine never did any either . I wouldn't worry about it

DS had a brief spell doing Karate, but soon got bored with it

My Ds also taught himself to play guitar

The only "activity" I feel (a little) strongly about is swimming, because school swimming lessons (here, anyway) are not very good. And I find DC regress in their swimming skills without regular lessons with the good instructors. But even swim lessons we only did as an on-off thing.

Very similar here - my three are 7, 5, and 3, so similar ages too. None of mine have ever expressed an interest in any after school clubs that their friends do (until v recently, DD1 doing tennis this term), and the thought of trying to manage them is too much for me. I am constantly shocked by the unbelievable amount of things everyone else seems to do (drama / ballet / football / rugby / brownies etc etc) all out of school. I can just about cope with the in school clubs e.g. the tennis DD1 now doing is at school and DD2 can stay in after school care until I pick them both up half hour later so that kind of thing works, but the ones I find daunting are the out of school ones - everyone seems to be running round like headless chickens to manage pick up and drop offs and some of my friends' weekends are completely encroached upon so no time at all to relax. I didn't do any after school activities ever. I did IN school activities (e.g. music lessons at break time) and we had plenty of sport and drama at school (as do my children), so I don't really get the need for extra activities, but I suppose I will see in due course if the children want to do stuff.