There is a lot of chit chat going on out there about the number of extracurricular activities a child should be enrolled in. With all the talk of free-range children and the importance of unstructured play, parents are re-thinking whether Johnny should be in soccer AND piano, and if ballet AND violin are too much for little Janey.

Getting the kids settled into school over the last few weeks has been one thing, but now I'm trying to settle myself into their new activity schedules and it is proving to be quite an undertaking. You see, I am a self-confessed over-programmer. But I do need to qualify that - my defence is that I don't have a real choice in the matter. Many parents have to deal with kids who are chronic activity drop-outs. They struggle and fight just to get their kids to finish out the session or term of the chosen activity. I have the opposite problem. When I try telling my kids that it's figure skating OR hockey, they beg to do both. The rule in our house is each child is allowed one organized sport per season. You should have seen the carry on around here last spring when each child was not allowed to do soccer AND baseball. It was like I was engaging in some type of cruel torture directed at the small people in the house.

The number of activities we're in is enough to leave our pocket books (and gas tanks) empty. But we made the conscious decision that we wouldn't necessarily pay for the kids to have things, but to do things. When I reflect on my own youth, it was jam packed with activities. My mom would attest to the fact that I functioned best when my plate was full. That still rings true. During high school, my mom permitted me to take a fair and reasonable number of dance classes. When I didn't feel that was enough, I cleaned the dance studio and helped in the junior classes to cover my additional class costs. In my final year of high school, I was occupied from the moment school let out until 9:30pm every day. I honestly can't remember when I did my homework and I'm baffled that I got into university, especially considering I managed to have a fairly fulfilling social life as well. I can hypothesize though, that if I did have more time on my hands, my grades would have suffered and I would not have been as happy a teenager.
I'm guessing my kids are the same so I don't think we can apply one standard of the acceptable number activities across the board. We mamas know our kids and how much they can handle. We make decisions based on what we are the experts of: our kiddos. No amount of research can convince me that my kids would be happier if I pulled them off the soccer field or ice rink.
But when you have five kids and each are in a few activities, there is the practical issue of getting them to where they need to be. Sure, car pooling is a saviour and I'm all over that, but even still there is a lot of shuttling around that goes on. I'm really quite deserving of an uber-cheezy "Mom's Taxi" bumper sticker, but sporting that would mean the final good-bye to my very last scraps of cool.

I think before I accept defeat on that one, I'd look into hiring a driver!

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