One Activity at a Time – Per Family

Do you know a family who is always running from activity to activity? Fast food on the go, Mom at the wheel between dance and clarinet practice while Dad is speeding from the early morning swim meet to the baseball tournament?  This is a travel ball family with the triple threat kids and a multi-colored family calendar that requires a logistics specialist.

We are determined to not be that family. As a general rule, we enroll in one activity at a time. Not each. I mean one activity at a time per family. If my daughter commits to color guard, my son can’t do Jiu Jitsu until she’s done. If he makes the volleyball team, she can’t audition for the community play. And – here’s a revolutionary twist – parents get a turn! I took 6 weeks of ice skating lessons. My husband marches in an adult marching band each winter. Moms and dads should grow, learn, and play, too! It’s important for the kids to witness a lifelong love of learning and self-development played out in their home.

Let’s tackle the obvious unpleasantries

You’re going to have to tell your children no. One of them will want to play soccer, and they just can’t this year.

One will have the itch to try piano, and you gotta turn them down.

You might want to join a book club, but it has to wait.

This is the nasty end of this prioritization business. This is the cost of defending your peace, your family time, and probably your bank account. 

So what’s the payoff?

You may wonder, when looking at brooding kids who are feeling “left out”, what’s the upside? It’s the most valuable resource of all: TIME – multiplied exponentially. While one kid is occupied in “the current big thing”, you can focus on the other kid(s). Sneak in a date at the ice cream shop, binge a Netflix show they want to see, or play in a park. All that time you’d spend driving from place to place can be spent enjoying meals together at home, getting to bed on time, or giving more careful attention to homework. The time spent on calendar management is repurposed for planning family getaways on your newfound weekends, with all that discretionary cash that wasn’t spent on equipment for yet another sport. Instead of splitting up in separate cars to cover multiple sports for multiple kids, we are all in the bleachers together, cheering for just one superstar.

Some may think I’m squashing my children’s potential by depriving them of available resources and opportunity. But my kids are honing their decision-making skills and building resilience to necessary sacrifice. My daughter recently found out the high school winter guard competition, the community play and the all-county orchestra she’d qualified for were all taking place on the same weekend. She simply couldn’t do all 3. Not because I said so; but because sometimes you really can’t have your cake and eat it too. For some kids, this would have been a gut-wrenching and miserable predicament. But my daughter was able to just pick one and keep on trucking. She was able to explain her decision to her peers and coaches of the other two activities, because she’s had plenty of exercise with her “opting out” muscles. While it’s never easy to turn down something you want, it sure is easier for a kid who’s had practice weighing priorities and making careful choices with their time.

Sometimes there’s exceptions, but not really.

For the sake of transparency, it’s important to disclose this isn’t a black/white, hard and fast rule in our house. We sometimes do have overlapping activities, particularly at the very end or beginning of a season or session. But when we’ve taken our eye off the ball and gotten ourselves into two or – Lord, have mercy – three activities at a time, the whole family suffers. Sure, we feel productive and accomplished when we’re flurrying about and hurrying from one thing to the next. But we end up miserable and disconnected and stressed and broke every time we try it. It just doesn’t work for us. 

Taking on life’s adventures one at a time as a family restores the balance and sanity in our house. Is it possible that it can do the same for you?