Activities Anyone?

Our township has a wonderful Recreation Center that is adjacent to the swimming pool, the skating rink and everything else extracurricular hereabouts. When you come in to buy your first pool pass you see that there are hundreds of classes and activities to indulge in. The Rec Center offers everything from yoga to piano to gambling junkets, but the real smorgasbord of fun is aimed at the children. Your intentions start out so pure and benevolent. What could be wrong with fun activities for the kids? Before you know it you can find yourself living out of your car, a slave to the Rec Center.

The Boy was three when Mommy and I decided to enroll him in swimming classes. Mommy was dreadfully afraid of the water because her father's idea of water safety lessons was to throw her into a hotel pool by herself. We endeavored to do a little better, which was a pretty low threshold. For three years I took my son to lessons every Saturday and afterwards we would go out for a milkshake. He didn't really catch to swimming until four years later, (ironically in a hotel swimming pool) but he loved every lesson and he loved every milkshake.

The Girl was almost four when we sent her to her first activity. It was not dance but rather Creative Movement. Creative Movement mostly seemed to be controlled rolling but it shows parents how cute their little girls look dressed up like ballerinas. This first impression insures years of dance classes followed by years of hoping that she won't really want to be a Dancer. If she decides to pursue such an exclusive career path I would prefer it had the upside of Astronaut or Senator. When she graduated to ballet it required Daddy and Mommy to learn her first recital dance so that we could coach her at home. “...step to the left, slide and look at the pretty ring...” I still find myself doing a little interpretive ballet in the morning when no one is watching.

Swimming begets baseball begets karate and so on and so on. Soon Daddy found himself trading sunday school classes for Karate classes as if they were baseball cards. Worn out kids learn by elementary school how to whine and moan and a father has go steel himself against this inevitable assault. Exhausted Dads will cut evil deals to quiet an exhausted child. If you find yourself at a ball field on time for Juniors game but you do not remember how you got there you have probably pushed the envelope to far.

The family calendar can get so cluttered that you have to schedule inactivity. No matter how hard you try you will find yourself over-scheduled at some point. Batteries need to be recharged by dads and lads alike. Do not forget about your littlest ones who patiently go along for the ride to their older siblings events. It becomes claustrophobic and you will find yourself with a family that lives in the car between classes and games. Being strapped into a carseat is no way to grow up.

There are so many choices out there that you can never keep up with the all the demands on your child's time so don't even try.

Try to limit activities to one class or sport at a time. Remember that there will always be other after school obligations to consider. The rat race of overlapping schedules will come up no matter how much you effort the schedule. A week of running from school to karate to sunday school to ballgames will quickly sizzle the ambition out of the eagerest beaver. Stay on the lookout for signs that your prodigy is ready to drop out and become a beta tester for Gamecube.

Activities are supposed to be fun diversion from a child's main vocation, which is school. Especially when homework kicks in, your little ones will be putting in the equivalent of a forty hour work week. While it is very hard to get fired from this job it is very easy to loose inspiration and go through the motions. Wise parents make sure that their kids have time to just be kids whenever possible. Do not let extracarricular fun deteriorate into a never ending series of part time jobs. Having actually worked a never ending series of part time jobs in my youth I can tell you it is not inspiring.

A good rule of thumb is to let your child do any activity they want to try for one complete season or course. Make it clear that they will finish what they start whether they love it or loathe it. This is a golden opportunity to teach a lesson that will stick long after they have bored of the French horn. Any person who makes it a point to finish what they start with pride will be successful in life. Eleven weeks of paper-folding classes may seem a high price to pay for an occasional party trick but that isn't the real payoff. The real payoff comes when your little adult can muscle through a college courseload that is boring enough to sedate a hummingbird and stessful enough to make a rock sweat without ever considering failure as an option.