Good week article 3964

Around here, there are virtually NO sports available at school until high school. (There's a little in Jr. Hi, but not much.) And with school funding cut as badly as it has been, if you want your child to learn music or art, you have to have them in non-school related activities.

In our case, most of the time the "only" activity my kids were involved in was a children's musical theater program, but it was between a half hour and a one hour round trip to the place, depending on time of day and where we were living, and my kids seldom got parts in the same part of the cast, so I might have 6 days a week when one or the other had to be at rehearsal. They were also involved in church activities. Add doctor's appointments, dentist's appointments, and (in our case) therapy appointments, kids who were going to schools that were NOT walking distance and for which there was no transportation, and occbuttional different activities, and things could get brutal. There was one stretch where there were 4 teens living here, attending 3 different schools. Unfortunately, the two at the same school were not on the same schedule -- every other school day, one of them got out about 2 hours later than the other. Only one could use public transportation -- the rest had to be driven to and from school. (No, biking and busing were not good options.) Only one could drive, but we didn't have a seperate car for her. One was involved in after school activities. One saw a therapist once a week, and a chiropractor every other week. One saw a DIFFERENT therapist (one who was a long way away ...) twice a week, a chiropractor every other week, and, having just gotten clean and sobor, attended 12-step meetings sometimes daily. (And I didn't think it was a good idea to say "no" when she asked me to drive her to a 12-step meeting . . .) One had a job, for which I sometimes had to provide transportation. Two were involved in the theater program, both with pretty big parts so rehearsals pretty regular. Add to that my part time job, about half an hour away (I work at home a lot, but do have to drive in for meetings and such). In the end, there were days (not many, but still...) where I would spend as much as 8 hours in the car or waiting for an appointment to end. None of the kids individually were "overprogrammed". Only Mom was!

Fortunately, that time of my life is now in the past. -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care