Parenting Catch-all

Did a few months of "Kid Karate" (Taekwondo) for the 6 year old. Two hour sessions a week. Then we signed up their younger sibling and that worked for a month or two until the Holidays broke us and we put our memberships on hold until we can regroup in the Spring. Trying to schedule the proper age-bracket, school stuff, work stuff, and social stuff was causing more stress than we were able to put up with and fighting the kids to actually do any of the at-home practice was an exercise in frustration.
Doesn't help that their parents are indoor kids that never really did any organized anythings so it's a toss-up if we'll rejoin rather than follow the path of least resistance.

Looking at their interests and that they spent most of the dojo time trying to socialize we might refactor into some kind of scout group if we can locate something that leans secular enough that I don't feel like I'm sending them to Sunday school.

Jonman wrote:

Took a few years of trying out activities to find which ones stick.

So gymnastics twice a week/ 2.5 hours plus an hour of commuting each way twice (which is the big one - she identifies as gymnast) and Girl Scouts a couple times a month (which may or may not stick).

She's only 9 tho - feels like the crazy extracurricular years are still ahead of us.

Lol, 9 is late for some. See hockey families and dance families.

Jonman wrote:

Took a few years of trying out activities to find which ones stick.

So gymnastics twice a week/ 2.5 hours plus an hour of commuting each way twice (which is the big one - she identifies as gymnast) and Girl Scouts a couple times a month (which may or may not stick).

She's only 9 tho - feels like the crazy extracurricular years are still ahead of us.

An hour each way? Wow. Dedication.

Our kids are still going to bed at 730 and 815 (K and 4th) and mom and dad still work to 5, so big long practices are hard for me to think about yet. I'll probably change my mindset when swim team becomes an option though. Sigh.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Took a few years of trying out activities to find which ones stick.

So gymnastics twice a week/ 2.5 hours plus an hour of commuting each way twice (which is the big one - she identifies as gymnast) and Girl Scouts a couple times a month (which may or may not stick).

She's only 9 tho - feels like the crazy extracurricular years are still ahead of us.

Lol, 9 is late for some. See hockey families and dance families.

Yeah every year I see athletics promos for Louisville Ladybirds dance team, like they will introduce new members each football season. And it will always be "dancing since I was 3, dancing since I was 4," etc. every single one. Of course that's a 19-time national championship team. So if they want to be the best of the best at some things, age 5 is almost too late.

My daughter is 6 and twice a week she has a 1 hour after school activity at her school until 4:30. And once a week she has ballet 4:00-5:00.

I don’t understand places that have activities for little kids at like 7:00pm. Too many kids are going around just constantly sleep deprived.

Top_Shelf wrote:

An hour each way? Wow. Dedication.

Oh god no, 15 minutes each way = one hour each week in total.

If it was an hour away, she'd be looking for a new sport immediately.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

Lol, 9 is late for some. See hockey families and dance families.

She's on year 4 of it, so yeeeeaaaaaah.

But I ain't worried about all of that national team BS - she's a wonderfully mediocre athlete, just like her dad!

My 7YO is doing girl scouts twice a month and she's starting taekwando tomorrow, once a week. So a pretty light schedule.
I dunno how some parents can keep up a massive schedule, i think i would fall apart trying to keep it straight. She's also an early riser (6am no matter she goes down at 7pm or midnight) so, like others, she just can't do a lot of things because she is winding down when they start.

Scouts for the older 2, probably for number 3 next year as he'll be old enough. Middle(7) does 1 sport a year. Oldest(11) does band at school, but it does add 2 hours to each of his school days.

Very minimal, I think, although we got sucked deep into the scouts as parents and I commit way too much time and energy into it.

8 yo, swim school, 45 minutes once a week and a kind of supplementary study course that you do at home.

8 YO plays Rugby twice a week, which I also coach for my sins, 6 YO has singing lesson for an hour a week, need to get them in swimming lessons but finding a space is hard!

This is in Greece...

Six y.o. does ballet twice a week (one hour each), and has also done art lessons on Saturdays for 2.5 hours. If speech therapy and occupational therapy also count, she just dropped from 2 hours of speech and 1 hour of OT, to 1 hour of speech and 1 hour of OT per week. She's as tall as many 9-10 y.o. Greek kids and started wearing the same shoe size as her aunt this week (euro size 36...US Women's size 6?), so she has some coordination issues...

Thirteen y.o. does 1 hour voice, 1 hour drum kit, 1.5 hours of Greek traditional dance (he's fairly awesome) per week.

Sixteen y.o. is doing the IBDP (feel free to look that one up...I teach in it), and is doing 1.5 hours of music ensemble, and that's pushing it.

Roo, hearing that you have a 16 year old makes me feel old.

13yo boy in 3 school band ensembles, classical music study plus his tutor's ensembles.

Edit: forgot the extra hour of Sunday drumming lessons (his classical tutor has advanced arthritis and his band positions usually force him into tuned or auxiliary percussion as he's the only dedicated tuned percussionist). That's a 25min drive each way but I use it as a father-son life counselling / bonding session so the time is not wasted.

Can be around 6-7 hours of music weekly. 45 minutes weekly swim lessons; somewhat regret not starting it earlier than last year. Homework in high school ramping up and he fell behind late last year (he needs to re-build his algebraic foundation knowledge so I'm relearning algebra together with him each day he has maths to review his work and understanding). We freed up Saturday for flexibility but now we're collaborating with him to see if he wants to try archery or kendo for some physical development.

10yo girl in one school band ensemble and in-school music tutoring only, no formal classical studies. Same 45 min weekly swimming lessons as her brother but she has far greater physical aptitude. No interest in anything except drawing manga and gaming. Well she did tryout for t-ball but didn't make the cut.

Other things I'm doing informally - asking each to use coding.org for infotainment, teaching economics/stock market trading.

The more they age the more I realise it's pointless to push too hard (not that we ever did this). You don't need top of class and nor does the world generally. We need mature responsible and reliable humans who have a strong friendship network, are financially literate, who hold a social conscience.

I'm grateful for everyone sharing their experiences. With parenting it's hard to work out a fair balance between authoritarian, mentor, most loyal supporter, wingman/bro.

I'm constantly trying to figure out if I should be stricter (heck with the boy we ask 30 min music practice on schooldays and 15min school revision, when in fact he gets home around 4pm and sleeps close to 10pm. So less than an hour of development out of 6 hours of free time.

When I think of having 5 hours of free time daily I have to remember to give them time to play and relax but it's hard seeing so much potentially productive time that could be harnessed towards practical housework or personal development time.

Bfgp wrote:

I'm grateful for everyone sharing their experiences. With parenting it's hard to work out a fair balance between authoritarian, mentor, most loyal supporter, wingman/bro.

I'm constantly trying to figure out if I should be stricter (heck with the boy we ask 30 min music practice on schooldays and 15min school revision, when in fact he gets home around 4pm and sleeps close to 10pm. So less than an hour of development out of 6 hours of free time.

When I think of having 5 hours of free time daily I have to remember to give them time to play and relax but it's hard seeing so much potentially productive time that could be harnessed towards practical housework or personal development time.

Brother. Are you in my head?

9yo was doing Tae Kwon Do 2x/week (2hrs), piano lessons (30min), orchestra (but never practices), and choir (30min). He's way ahead of grade level in reading but struggling with writing and math (few months behind where he should be).

So. We're taking him to a tutor for 4hrs/week starting next week. Going to cut two of the music things and down to 1x/week for TKD.

And I still need to get him into the Y to finish swim lessons to at least try swim team. That won't be until late spring. I won't feel comfortable having him on the water until I know he can do 400 yards to shore if he fell in. That's a me thing.

6yo does dance 1x/week but also needs to finish swim lessons and we're thinking about what music for her.

When I add in that both myself and my wife are in/starting new jobs it feels nuts.

So grateful for this positive, sharing community. It really helped me to see how others are juggling.

Top_Shelf wrote:

I won't feel comfortable having him on the water until I know he can do 400 yards to shore if he fell in. That's a me thing.

This should be an everyone thing. Drowning is one of the most common ways kids perish.

I'm struggling with it too - my kid doesn't deal well with sucking at things, and thinks she's a good swimmer (she ain't), and gets pissed off when i suggest she can be even better.

Jonman wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

I won't feel comfortable having him on the water until I know he can do 400 yards to shore if he fell in. That's a me thing.

This should be an everyone thing. Drowning is one of the most common ways kids perish.

I'm struggling with it too - my kid doesn't deal well with sucking at things, and thinks she's a good swimmer (she ain't), and gets pissed off when i suggest she can be even better.

100%.

My wife didn't truly learn how to swim until she was in her 30's and only then because her friends pushed her into an Ironman. I had to bite my tongue trying to teach her to float properly and kick. "I know how to swim!" she'd insist. And all I could do was just gently point out that being in 60 feet of water with nothing to grab on to means you need to be able to be confident in your ability to collect your thoughts and be able to stay above water for as much as 10-30 minutes waiting for help or getting yourself to shore.

Kids in particular have no idea how quickly they can get in trouble in the water.

Swim lessons are for everyone! You never know when you'll be on a boat or on a dock and need that skill.

One thing I needed to learn recently is I need to pull back from dictating activities. My middle schooler wants to be able to make more decisions and that's fair.
So while he has some rules, he will get to choose more especially when he can lay out a plan.

For the reference, the rules are more or less:
1. School comes first.
2. Band is second, which is technically school but also sort of extra.
3/4. Something athletic and something intellectual (science or arts is fine here). This is two things but of equal importance. So sports, robotics, scouts, painting, more music, etc.
5. Whatever you pick must be stuck with for one season/year (or whatever the base timeframe is).
6. Mom and I will support (time and/or money) any activity as long as you are committed to it for that season. So 110% for now, but you can decide it's not for you for next year.

For us, the academics is not overly emphasised (though not to be underplayed given how statistically education tends to offer an easier way of life). Reason being, both wife and I have seen time and again it's often who you know rather than just what you know, and in a work setting, cream will rise to the top...although some say oil slicks do the same...

I need to stress - the boy volunteered to take on 3 school band ensembles and his tutor's 2 ensembles; then my wife offered extra drumming to make up for his disappointment in not getting to play the kit at school, which the boy also agreed to. I think 6-7 hours a week of formal music events is a bit excessive but he put his hand up for it and part of my role as his father is to make sure he carries through on whatever he commits to. He dropped from 1st ranking maths class to 2nd class, whereas I know his capability is definitely in the 1st class; he just fell off the wagon with stuff like simplification and remembering how to use BODMAS with algebra. But it's such a fundamental plank to more complex algebra so it warrants serious attention to build understanding even if that requires bat-sht boring repetition to drill it into his head.

What I'm very happy about is that if they need help, I'm approachable enough for them to admit it and they're prepared to let me help them work on their development areas. I don't want these things being buried for feeling ashamed about; there's nothing to be ashamed about admitting we don't know everything or having weak points.

Bfgp wrote:

When I think of having 5 hours of free time daily I have to remember to give them time to play and relax but it's hard seeing so much potentially productive time that could be harnessed towards practical housework or personal development time.

Learning what makes yourself happy, figuring out how to be bored, figuring out how to be relaxed, learning how to make decisions for yourself, what to do with unstructured time, etc... all of these things are 'productive' for children. Kids and adults, everyone needs time to do whatever and not constantly have demands, hopefully each day.

Also, I bet once you add up the actual demands during that five hours of 'free time' like dinner, getting ready for bed, chores, etc - you might find it is not as much as you think it is.

Look, childhood should exist because once it's gone, unless you're handing over obscene wealth via inheritance, your kids will be on the capitalist hamster wheel soon enough and for far longer than childhood lasts.

The real challenge as a caring parent is giving your child enough space to develop accountability for their own acts and omissions.

Being childlike, they won't necessarily be able to distinguish between needs and wants, instant gratification vs long term payoff. Actually, lots of adults have this problem.

They don't realise that building the 10,000 hours of experience to master something is the accumulation of those tiny grains of incremental seconds in the hourglass. That a kid putting one hour a day extra over 10 years is a big chunk of that 10,000 hour milestone, let alone the person that puts several hours a day extra over their peers.

Giving them the space to fail, watching them fail, then picking them up? That's heartbreaking. But it's character building. Resilience is something that's taught through hardship, failure and grit.

It's why I'm more prepared to walk beside my kids than have them follow my footsteps. I won't always be there for them and it's in those times they need to step up and dig deep. However I can point things out and provide guidance (however flawed or antiquated my thinking) so long as they'll let me do that. I plan on being that rock of support for as long as I can.

In many ways, I feel parenting is like being the passenger on a endless train ride in slow motion. With your life experience and wisdom of the ancients, you can see what might await the train down the line. You hope to guide the driver to change lines and avert a crisis. It might take a detour but still ends up at the same destination. It might get a little beaten up by the vicissitudes of life but it keeps trucking along. Or it arrives at a completely different destination. Regardless, you're along for the ride and it's not your train.

... I'm just trying to keep the little sh*ts fed, clothed, and not killing each other.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Roo, hearing that you have a 16 year old makes me feel old.

The trippy thing is, I was only on GWJ for a bit more than two years while living in the US (Battlefield 2 forever!), and now...seventeen and a half years while living in Greece.

So yeah, my avatar at left has been there like 14 years, and they are now 16 total...

We are having a tough time with our boys, 6 and 8. They are constantly annoying each other and then ending up in a screaming match. When i say screaming match they are both hollering at the top of their lungs. We then have a further problem in the 8YO going totally off the deep end banging and crashing to the extent that light fittings shake and on one occasion barging into people. When he calms down he doesn't take responsibility for his emotions and actions but blames his brother for making him angry. We are trying the hard line and removing telly and video game privileges when they go to war but it is very draining on both of us as parents, and my wife is finding it particularly tough. It feels like their dissonance as brothers is bad and am very worried that the elder should be starting to have better control of his emotions. Do any of you have any experience of anything similar?

No we're tending that way with 4 and 2 year olds right now. The 4 is constantly pushing, hitting, scratching the younger. Anytime her emotions get too much she lashes out and targets sister even if she's mad at us or something else.

This may be a matter of having a hammer so everything is a nail, but my youngest was diagnosed with ADD at about 12. What we thought was her just being difficult and deliberately opposing us (oppositional disorder??) turned out to be her presentation of ADD. She would get wound up to the point of throwing things, screaming, slamming doors, etc.

Punishments and consequences had no impact.

bbk1980 wrote:

We are having a tough time with our boys, 6 and 8. They are constantly annoying each other and then ending up in a screaming match. When i say screaming match they are both hollering at the top of their lungs. We then have a further problem in the 8YO going totally off the deep end banging and crashing to the extent that light fittings shake and on one occasion barging into people. When he calms down he doesn't take responsibility for his emotions and actions but blames his brother for making him angry. We are trying the hard line and removing telly and video game privileges when they go to war but it is very draining on both of us as parents, and my wife is finding it particularly tough. It feels like their dissonance as brothers is bad and am very worried that the elder should be starting to have better control of his emotions. Do any of you have any experience of anything similar?

We are and have been going through this with two of our three kids - the oldest has had some emotional dysregulation struggles from early on, which really started raising flags around 6. With the middle, it was more like 8. Eventually they were both diagnosed with ADHD and went on meds. The change was apparent practically overnight for the oldest, and it clearly helped a lot for middlest but wasn't the same easy solution on the emotional regulation front. There were some pretty scary situations between middle and youngest, went through some therapy and med changes...middle is 12 now, and has learned to sort of turn down the volume a bit, but it's still an issue, especially the crashing around the house part when he's at his most frustrated.

I'll echo mudbunny that punishments and consequences have rarely if ever been an effective motivator. We do still use some consequences as a sort of reminder, like repeated physical fighting resulting in an enforced break from media with any kind of violence in it, etc.

To piggyback on "punishments and consequences don't work":

When my son was little (well... more little than he is now) and having a furious meltdown, it amazed us how effective it was to say, "Do you need a hug?" instead of being oppositional. The answer was usually "yes", and that was the first step in diffusing the situation.

Obviously, an 8 year old is too old for this precise approach, but I think a similar principal applies: he is angry and doesn't properly know how to express himself, so he is acting out physically. It might be more effective to try to emphathise with how he must be feeling and talk him down, because getting angry in response and imposing punishments is more likely to just feed his sense of impotence and helplessness, which just makes it worse.

All of this is, of course, far easier said than done...

Don't be afraid to use the carrot as well as the stick. Instead of (or as well as) negative consequences for misbehaving, make sure that there are positive consequences for the behavior you do want to see, and make sure that they're explicitly connected to that behavior.

And make sure that you're modeling the behavior you want to see, too. My littlest nephew is 8, and he's historically had some problems with emotional regulation. Nothing out of the ordinary for an 8-year-old, I don't think, just the normal tantrums when he's frustrated.

He knows that I speedrun Link to the Past and asked me to teach him the game, so I loaded up a ROM hack with a cheat menu so that I could start him off with all the best weapons and armor to make the difficulty age-appropriate for him and started walking him through the game, then started upping the difficulty little by little until he was playing the vanilla way.

Sometimes he'd run into a difficulty spike and start getting frustrated, and I'd guide him step-by-step through how to handle it. "Okay, buddy, close the laptop, put the controller down, we're going to go outside and get some sunshine and fresh air and come back to this when we're calmer." I wasn't framing it as a punishment-- you're feeling bad feelings therefore you're getting your toys taken away-- just "this is how we handle it when we get to feeling this way." I also made sure to tell him that no matter how good you get at the game, you'll always get frustrated sometimes, and you'll never get so good that you don't make mistakes.

After we'd been doing this for a couple months, he ran into run of bad luck, and I could see the tantrum beginning to well up. I got ready to run him through the routine-- "okay, buddy, close the laptop, put the controller down," etc.-- and then to my surprise, instead of waiting for me to regulate his emotions for him, he did it himself. He took a deep breath, and with an obvious effort, said, "Oh, well. That could happen to anyone." And then he carried on playing the game, perfectly calm.

I was amazed. I didn't set out with the intention of trying to teach him how to regulate his frustration, I just wanted to have a fun time with my nephew, and I figured out how to head off his tantrums for purely selfish reasons, because dealing with a tantruming 8-year-old isn't a fun time for me. But he didn't just learn how to play the game, he learned how to handle the frustration that comes with playing a challenging game.

Now, I don't know your kids, so maybe what they're going through really IS beyond the pale and they really DO need pharmacological assistance to handle it. But it's also possible that they just need to get their reps in when it comes to handling life's frustrations.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

To piggyback on "punishments and consequences don't work":

When my son was little (well... more little than he is now) and having a furious meltdown, it amazed us how effective it was to say, "Do you need a hug?" instead of being oppositional. The answer was usually "yes", and that was the first step in diffusing the situation.

Obviously, an 8 year old is too old for this precise approach, but I think a similar principal applies: he is angry and doesn't properly know how to express himself, so he is acting out physically. It might be more effective to try to emphathise with how he must be feeling and talk him down, because getting angry in response and imposing punishments is more likely to just feed his sense of impotence and helplessness, which just makes it worse.

All of this is, of course, far easier said than done...

The hell you can't.
Do you need a hug? works at 6 and 8 and 10 and 16 and 40 and.. I need a hug.