Overscheduling kids

[PrincessFiona]

The schedule for baseball practices was just emailed to me and I'm having a mommy WTF moment. Practices are MWF from 7am-7:35am and 3:30-5:30 and T/R from 6:15-7:35am and 3:30-5:30pm. This is added to the 3+ hours of homework Andrew has in his AP courses. Ummm...am I crazy for thinking this is crazy? No wonder our kids are freaking out and need meds. I'm going to need them too. :/ I just feel like this is an unrealistic and unfair load to put on our kids. I feel like it is just constant go, go, go and there is no time to relax anymore as a family.

Kris

[HouseofWool]

Holy carp Kris - that is just stupid. 6:15AM? Are they freakin' nuts? So you have to haul your butt out of bed before the crack of dawn, run him over to practice, come back home, get eveyone else up and going? Is practice at least at school so he can shower there? What about breakfast?

[Meenah]

It is a good thing my two were not super athletic!!! I would arrange a really good carpool.

[SoonerTexan]

It really is stupid. I had a major breakdown every semester of high school due to the unrealistic expectations the school has. I had one AP teacher tell us we should be spending 20+ hours/week on his class, and it is normal to stay up all night on homework. I also swam at 6:45 am every morning for 2 years for swim team--quit my senior year and took senior out instead. Best decision I ever made.

[SuzySunshine]

I can understand strange practice times when there are facilities that have to be shared, like gyms, but what in the world do high school (?) baseball players need THAT much practice for? Twice a day - really? In all of the sports I played in high school we practiced ONCE a day and did just fine - the emphasis on sports these days is ridiculous IMO. Let them play, its good for them to learn competition but don't practice them to death in the mean time.

[Vanquisher]

It's crazy. When I was in high school I was scheduled every day from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. between Ballroom team and practice, plus the musical we were required to be in and dinner theater. On top of that I had my AP classes.

It really is too much.

[Rapunzel]

I was horribly overscheduled as a high school student. I'd literally fall asleep during my afternoon classes (head on the desk) because I would be out at various competitions and meets every single weekend from 6am to midnight sometimes PLUS practices after school. It got so bad that my junior year I just quit everything (except Academic Decathlon). I stopped doing homework. I just quit!!! My counselor called me in and asked me if I was on drugs. I even declined accepting any awards at that point. My principal was extremely upset with me when I told him I didn't want to go to the school board meeting to accept another award. I told him, "I know those people control your job, but I'm not doing this anymore." I ended up focusing on Academic Decathlon and working on getting that National Merit Scholarship. I was MUCH happier with just a few goals rather than these things that sucked my time away from me.

Don't get me wrong - My theory is "A busy teenager is a teenager that can't get into trouble." However, there is such a thing as too much. We ALL need "down time". We ALL need a good night's rest. And, in the end, the most important reason a teen is in school is to...learn. The extracurricular stuff is just that - extra.

[PrincessFiona]

This email with the schedule comes on the heels of two other moms complaining to me about their exhaustion. One of them told me she feels like she has lost years of her life to these activities and the other was in a puddle of tears in my entryway yesterday because she just can't do yet another weekend of dance competitions.

It really has become too much to manage effectively...at least for me. Sunday night, Andrew warned me that he was down to his last reed for his sax. I told him I'd get a new box on Monday...which I didn't do after my accident. I had the surgery Wed and then Thursday, his final reed cracked and broke. Darnit. He was supposed to be tested today as section leader. I had an ortho surg appt. at 8:30 and the earliest the stores opened where I could buy reeds was 9:30 (and clear on the other side of St Cloud and a 40 min drive from his school). I called the band instructor and explained our extraordinary circumstances this week and why I hadn't gotten to the store sooner. He said "It's Andrews' responsibility to get his reeds, not yours". LOL Really? How would he get to the store? He warned me he was getting low, we've always kept ourselves well-stocked...I think this might be the first time in 3 years that I didn't have a reed handy.

I just feel exhausted. I can't really add anymore to my to-do list. I'm only getting 5 hours of sleep/night during the school week as it is.

I think this is causing me to feel irritable and depressed and be less effective as a mom and is affecting the kids too. June can not come soon enough for me.

Kris

[Phoebe]

I hear ya on all of it! I called my mom today saying how tired I was and that I need a vacation. I told her I wanted to send the kids to a camp. Not that I was sick of them, just that I need some rest. Now that it has been nice out, my kids want to be outside all the time. I have to be out there with them. I am getting nothing done unless it is after they are in bed. It is very overwhelming with everything piling up.

[Pollyanna]

No advice, just hugs. I've said before that since dd started high school she keeps time with dh's schedule, then she comes home and still has homework/studying. It's never enough, they never have enough AP classes, or extra-curriculars, or clubs, or... truly things have become crazy. I wish I had a solution, on the plus side they will soon be driving themselves to those crazy morning practices.

[Sheherezade]

I know what you mean. We've resisted this to some extent, but I always feel like my son will suffer the consequences with his college applications. :\ He starts high school next year. He has only done soccer - and took a year off from that because of his knee injury. He doesn't play in the band. He doesn't do a sport each season. Most kids here do. I'm torn between making him do more (so he has the same resume as the other kids in town) and leaving things alone so he can keep his grade average up through the AP swirl of high school. Either way, you feel like you've done something wrong as a parent. I can't believe that it's supposed to be this way.

As for the reeds, That's one of my pet peeves. We get the whole "it is there responsibility, they will suffer the consequences" thing around here all the time....but honestly. How is it a ten year old's fault if his mom drops him off for practice ten minutes late? Doesn't making it "his responsibility" just lead to him ordering mom around and feeling that he has some extra authority in the family schedule? He's TEN! I think it is foolishness to pretend the kids can control things they can't. We've got a girl here that's about to get kicked off the cheer team because she can't make the single try-out time. Her parents have scheduled a once in a lifetime vacation for the famiy then and she won't be in town. She wants to skip it to be a cheerleader; her parents say the family time is more important. Major rift. All this could be avoided if the damn athletics departments were a little more flexible and an little less competitive. It's nuts.

I feel your pain. We need to change this crazy world. I'm almost certain it wasn't like this 25 years back - and certainly not 60 years back in the heyday of "Father Knows Best".

[HouseofWool]

We need to change this crazy world. I'm almost certain it wasn't like this 25 years back - and certainly not 60 years back in the heyday of "Father Knows Best".

We were talking about this kind of thing last night, particularly regarding prime-time television. I hate the fact that my kids basically aren't allowed to watch network tv unless it is a sporting event and even then the commericals are over the top. We've started pulling up episodes of old shows for them to watch on the computer (WKRP in Cinn was last night, Mork and Mindy before that).

[DCJenn]

That is patently ridiculous. Perhaps some one needs to provide them with the various studies that demonstrate that teenagers NEED more sleep. Overscheduling them will most definitely not help their performance if they're all sleep deprived. (and we wonder why they're all slamming red bull at the bus stop)

So far we only have piano lessons one day a week, but he's already said he wants to join the cub scouts next year and wants to swim. I remember even when I swam year round we only had morning practices before school.

What a mess.

Jenn

[SoonerTexan]

I remember even when I swam year round we only had morning practices before school

Haha, I never made it off JV because I couldn't afford/didn't have the time to do the private club in addition to the varsity team. EVERY SINGLE varsity swimmer swam club from 5:30-7:30 in the morning and then had ANOTHER 2 hour practice in the evening. And this was considered normal. And its the same for every dang sport. I kind of hope my kids are nerds so I don't have to deal with it later on

[scrub-jay]

Haha, I never made it off JV because I couldn't afford/didn't have the time to do the private club in addition to the varsity team. EVERY SINGLE varsity swimmer swam club from 5:30-7:30 in the morning and then had ANOTHER 2 hour practice in the evening. And this was considered normal. And its the same for every dang sport. I kind of hope my kids are nerds so I don't have to deal with it later on

This is how swimming was for me too. During summers/school breaks, they'd add 2 hours of dry-land/weight training to the mix (daily), leaving about 6 hours of training a day. Anyone surprised that many of us ended up with injuries?!