- Jun 7, 2013
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C/N: Daughter is in too many activities. How do we decide between them?
What do you expect? This is a softball forum! Drop the ballet but soccer is OK for now. Enough said...
C/N: Daughter is in too many activities. How do we decide between them?
As noted earlier in the thread, BStine's DW was a dancer. You would know that if you didn't have a short attention s Squirrel!!!!!
DD was in Softball, Soccer and Figure Skating and doing well in all. But it was too much for my wallet and watch, even with my mom helping with getting DD to skating lessons. Her mom, my ex, was too busy doing her own things.
I just told her she need to decide which sport to drop, which to do for fun and which to do serious. Figure Skating was dropped (YAY! they might as well have hooked a vacuum tube to my wallet), Soccer for fun and serious softball.
It worked out great. Time and money was freed up, she got to play with her soccer buddies a few more seasons and gradually progressed up the ranks of softball teams. She's now in her Junior year playing D1 ball.
My DD was a figure skater, too. When she started softball, we were doing both for a while (a few months). At one point, I realized that we'd eaten in the car or out more than we'd eaten home and that was that.
We don't have the luxury of doing both (I hear you on the vacuum thing) and we just flat out said so. The crazy thing about kids this age is that EVERYTHING tends to be SUPER IMPORTANT . . . until next week. Just make her pick, and throw yourself into it 100% without looking back. I sorta miss skating, but she's better at softball and I have discovered that I love being warm.
We also have a family rule (I have an older son): If I have to bug you, push you, or threaten you to get you to go to whatever practice or game or rehearsal or performance you're supposed to be going to, then we need to reconsider it as a "passion." Kids should, by age 11-12, be able to start finding inner motivation and passion on their own. Otherwise, I would seriously question why they're doing it - and whether it's worth the time and money.
Question for you unrelated to softball: My son is 10 and not an athlete (I said this in an earlier post). Given his 'druthers, he's be on his ipad or DS 24/7. Obviously, I know that's not healthy and don't condone it. I want him to have some sort of physical activity; I don't really care what. He's in karate and doesn't like it. Our contract is up in December. I'm leaning toward renewing the contract just for the sake of having him do SOMETHING unless he can come up with an alternative. I've asked him 75,000 times what else he might like to do. He has started archery lessons, which is cool, but it's still not a lot of activity. If I didn't have to literally push him out the door to play outside, I'd be OK with him not doing an organized activity, but that's just not how he rolls. Any advice???? Help!