The earth has tilted on its axis; I agree with a Lori post!

[HoneyBunny]

There's a first time for everything, I guess. Lori's post this morning about kids and sports/activities...what say we send it to Stevie?

[lilwriter85]

I have partially agree with one of Lori's posts before. But with this one, she did it well. She has talked about her daughter's involvement with ballet before and the son playing college sports in college. The only negative part I didn't like about the post was this.

The one thing we would not have done if we did it over was competitive soccer for the boys. All their friends were doing it so we thought they should. It was very expensive, they traveled a lot, and there were games on Sundays which I did not like at all.

I'm guessing she is referring to specific soccer leagues and some of them can be expensive to be involved with. The part about Lori not wanting to do things on Sunday makes her come off as a bit selfish.

[Mela99]

Recap? I refuse to visit her site.

[lilwriter85]

Recap? I refuse to visit her site.

She posted about having children involved in extracurricular activities like sports, dance, and other activities. She pointed out how being involved in activities help kids learn different skills and become balanced.

[BlondeAgent007]

Meh, that just sounds like a religious thing, not to do activities on Sundays. My sister had a Mormon friend who had to be home on Sundays. No TV, no driving in the car (except to church), just family time. Older members of my family are the same way. It's not an overly Lori or selfish thing to say, in my book.

[curlytoes79]

Holy moley, I agree with her too! I especially like the part about not "running all over the place neglecting family dinners and time at home." Kids need unstructured time, too. I don't have children myself, and I'm mystified about things like play dates and such. When I was a kid, a "play date" wasn't something my mom or dad had to schedule in advance...I finished my homework and then went outside and found kids to play with in the neighborhood!

[Koala]

We have a limit of two things per season (only one of which can be a sport). The other can be something like a musical instrument or something like that. This fall my kids are doing art and soccer. They've done soccer every year since they were 4. The art class is something they have always wanted to do, so I was thrilled to find one for a reasonable price in our area!

[GeoBQn]

Good to see that her kids were allowed activities, but she has said in other posts that wives and mothers shouldn't have activities that take them from the house on a regular basis--even a weekly Bible study.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This post was one of those times.

I'm a bit selfish with my kids' activities. His current leagues do practices and games together, once a week. My husband takes him, and we can handle that. I'm willing for the girls to do some activity, preferably at the same time, once a week, and I'll take them. I'm willing to do swimming in spring and fall on top of that. Middle girl wants music and practices on her own, fine. Youngest wants karate and his friend's mom carpools - also fine. More intense stuff like competitive dance or hockey leagues that make me run around at 5 am? Not fine. I have 3 kids, we work, they go to demanding schools and school work comes first, and we can't have activities that make the rest of our lives too stressful.

[Mela99]

Dance!?!? Gasp.

[AnywhereButHere]

I have one kid, and the couple of seasons that he did two sports almost drove me mad. Dinner at any reasonable hour was a miracle, let alone eating it at the kitchen table. I do not want to imagine the stress of multiple kids in multiple activities. I have friends in that position, and I really feel for them. This year he's doing just one, but in the fall anyway, it will be one sport/two locations. School and club. He's been warned. If his grades fall off one will be dropped.

[rward]

I work with a woman whose son is in high school football and during the season they eat PB&J sandwiches in the car, they don't get home until after 11, and he goes back to practice at 6am. She takes him at 6am, goes home, takes a shower, cleans a little bit, goes to work, then she's out until 11 again. Her house doesn't get cleaned for months, she shows up to work in dirty clothes because she had no time to do laundry. It's absolutely ridiculous. Call me selfish, but I'd never do that in a million years.

[GeoBQn]

Once, my mom and I were watching Olympic ice dancing on TV and she realized that she used to work with the mother of one of the top ice dancing champions. The last time my mom saw her was several decades ago, when she was in the break room saying, "My son's coach said that he has the potential to be a champion, but we have to move to Detroit for better training . . ." I can't imagine the kind of discussion that goes into making so many sacrifices for a child's talent, especially for things like Olympic level sports where there are so few opportunities to attain that high level that makes the sacrifice worth it.

[Hisey]

Holy moley, I agree with her too! I especially like the part about not "running all over the place neglecting family dinners and time at home." Kids need unstructured time, too. I don't have children myself, and I'm mystified about things like play dates and such. When I was a kid, a "play date" wasn't something my mom or dad had to schedule in advance...I finished my homework and then went outside and found kids to play with in the neighborhood!

Curlytoes,

It's not so mystifying. Parents don't schedule "playdates" to control their kids, or to make their own lives miserable. Most parents would love to have their kids run outdoors and play. But this is often impossible.

When we lived in a rural neighborhood, houses were too far away. My kids couldn't wander into the street (it was a state highway, anyway) and find kids to play with. I had to drive them to their friends houses. Which meant schedluling things with the mom--ie, a playdate.

The same was true when we lived just outside a city. My kids' friends lived all over the city. I had to drive them there. Naturally, I wouldn't just drive over to someone's house after dinner and drop the kids off without warning. No, you schedule it ahead of time--a playdate.

Now we live in a closely packed suburban neighborhood. At last, there are kids next door, and sometimes my kids do go outside, and can find kids to play with. But the neighborhood is so tightly packed, and the lot sizes are so small, that there aren't a lot of places for kids to play. So we set up playdates so that one mom can drive the kids to a park.

There are other obstacles to spontaneous play outdoors. We've found that most kids are very busy with soccer or dance. Or both moms and dads are at work, so kids are in aftercare programs (and not at home). Plus, many many times, there are no kids playing outside because video games and the computer are so good at keeping kids indoors.

So a lot of times it is just plain easier, and ends more happily, if I call ahead and schedule a playdate.

[AnywhereButHere]

I work with a woman whose son is in high school football and during the season they eat PB&J sandwiches in the car, they don't get home until after 11, and he goes back to practice at 6am. She takes him at 6am, goes home, takes a shower, cleans a little bit, goes to work, then she's out until 11 again. Her house doesn't get cleaned for months, she shows up to work in dirty clothes because she had no time to do laundry. It's absolutely ridiculous. Call me selfish, but I'd never do that in a million years.

Holy hell, I'm exhausted reading that! The only way I could see being okay with that would be if my kid really needed a scholarship to go to college and was good enough to get that scholorship. Otherwise, no way. I love my son, and I want him to be able to investigate things that he's interested in, but not at the expense of the financial and emotional health of the whole family. And you can call me selfish too, but I like bathing, clean clothes, a decent dinner most nights of the week, and damnit, downtime of my own. Much as I enjoy cheering from the sidelines at my son's games, there are tv shows to be watched and internet posting to be done! :D

[Maggie Mae]

I agree with Lori. I think it's important for kids to be involved, but I disagree (if she is saying this) that it's okay to opt out. No. It's your job as a parent to provide and nurture your child's future. Having limits is fine - telling your child at a certain point to pick one sport per season or one sport to focus on - that makes sense. Telling your kid that he can't participate in any extra curricular activities because he/she needs to be home with the family is stupid. I was allowed to participate in whatever I felt like, as long as it wasn't too expensive. I went to practice 3 times a week 5-8 grade, then in high school every day after school. I rarely needed rides after jr high because I was able to find older students to ride with or I took the bus. My school encouraged us to participate in as many activities as possible and encourage our parents to let us. My school had a graduation rate of 95% with 88% of students in my class attending college. Extra curricular activities show colleges that you are well rounded, have interests, and can manage your time.

Some of my friends families were a lot more interested in making sure that their kids chose activities that complimented each other, and I wish my parents had spent more time discussing my future because I really could have used some sort of guidance. But hindsight is 20/20 and I can't change their personalities any more than I can change the bad decisions I made. By far, my friends who had parents who were involved - at the tennis match making notes about how to improve and videoing our competitions so we could watch ourselves - went to better schools.

[lilwriter85]

Interesting Lori hasn't only gotten 1 comment. My guess is that she is away and isn't approving comments. Or maybe some of her fangirls are against sports and activities. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more hardcore fundies disagree with her. I give Lori and Ken credit for being ok with shelling out money for their kids to do stuff like sports and activities. It beats what happened when the Duggars stopped doing bromball when the ice arena started charging. I get Boob likes being frugal, but he could have paid for the boys to play bromball at least twice a month.

[Mudball]

In my experience, playdates usually are for younger kids. Since I was not about to send my 4 year old outside to play with her friends we would set up get togethers at each other's houses to allow the kids to play while we visited. If you are lucky enough to fall into right playdate crowd it can involve wine and a nice lunch while the kids tear the house apart - my house this week, yours next etc.

Anyway, Lori was right about something? Great, she should shut up now before she goes back to being ignorant.

[Minerva]

Whoa. Lori is being reasonable. Sometimes it seems like she only blogs for the sake of being paranoid and offensive. I guess she has good days, after all.

[YPestis]

Haha, Steve Maxwell makes Lori appear sane! Alright, maybe it's not so much funny as sad....