Sep

11

Run Forrest Run




I overheard another mom the other day, talking about how busy her family is. She said that these days, life is like an Olympic event. That really hit home for me. My life does seem like an Olympic event, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

I don’t think we over schedule our kids. They each have 1 sport, they each take piano lessons, and they both do Scouts. I know families with many  more activities than that, and in some sports they have 3 hour long practices a couple of nights a week. We have a great coach and he limits practice to one night a week for 2 hours. So why am I constantly running?

The problem is that my older son is moving up in Scouts, he’s now a Boy Scout and my younger son is still in Cub Scouts. So, different meetings on different days. And their practices are at different times. So really, our few activities double when they each have different schedules. It’s a full time job just getting them where they need to be.

This isn’t a new problem, we’ve gone over and over it. We’ve thought about eliminating something, but they enjoy what they’re in and it’s a nice variety of activities. They can’t pick 1 thing to give up, and neither can I. So we keep running, and every few months we discuss it again.

I don’t know the answer. I want them to be active, and to have hobbies they enjoy, but there are times – like this week – when I’m ready to run away from it all. I get tired of the chauffeuring, they get tired of running out the door, and we all get tired of being tired. 

So I don’t sound like a complete whiner, it’s not always like this. Some weeks seem busier because they have more homework, or more projects due, so it’s hard getting the other stuff squeezed in. I love watching my kids sporting events, love their music concerts and my husband loves going on their Scout camp outs. It’s just that once in awhile I feel like I don’t have time to take a breath before we have to get going again.

How do you find balance? How do you choose what your kids do after school, when they love several different things?

If  you have found that elusive balance,  please send some of it my way!

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    Filed Under Family, Me, My boys | 3 Comments 

    3 Responses to “Run Forrest Run”

      1
        Katherine owlfan on September 11th, 2008 6:56 pm

        I too don’t know how people do it. I know one single mom with 5 kids all in various activities. She does a lot of carpooling to manage all their activities.

        I have one in Boy Scouts and one still in Cub Scouts too. They have meetings the same nights at the same church, but it still is a mess. The Cubs meet from 7-8, and the Boy Scouts meet 7:30-9, so DH and I both end up there most weeks. DH and the older boy don’t end up getting home until 9:30 most times which is far too late for a 9 yo who has to get up at 6 am.

      2
        RobynsOnlineWorld on September 11th, 2008 8:51 pm

        I have the opposite problem – I have a non-joiner type son. Ack! I did all sorts of things as a kids – girl scouts, dance, gymnastics, softball, bowling, and a variety of other things. I loved doing all of it and I thought it would be great when I had a child to be able to do those things again from a different perspective. That didn’t happen. It’s hard to accept that he so much does not enjoy group things at all, but I do my best and just make sure he knows the offers are all there if he changes his mind.

        So just yell, I’ve got time and can help running everyone else’s kids around :-)

      3
        Sheri on September 11th, 2008 10:20 pm

        Katherine, our Scout meetings used to overlap like that, but now they’re on completely different nights, different churches. Which means with everything else we don’t have any free night, there’s something going on every day. Which adds to my frustration, I’d love just one night with absolutely nothing.

        Robyn, don’t joke, I just may yell! I know if my kids didn’t want to do anything then I’d probably complain about that, but there has to be a happy medium here somewhere between too much stuff to do and not enough. As long as there happy, I’m happy, I’ll just have to resign myself to a lot of running around for a few more years.