Your Kids’ Activities, Overscheduling, and Working Parents

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soccer field at night

A while back, some readers were discussing the difficulty of scheduling your kids’ extracurricular activities — and homework, and family time — without overscheduling your kids, all while navigating hours/timeslots that may or may not be favorable to working moms. As one woman noted:

Kat, could we do a discussion on overparenting/overscheduling when a working mom? My kids are getting to the age where I want them to experience soccer and piano and whatnot. But they’re in school all day, so my only hope is scheduling their weeknights and weekends. Then we’re running from activity to activity with no downtime for just play or boredom. I feel like I’m trapped as a working mom. If my spouse or I stayed at home, or if I could afford private nannies, I could maybe schedule this better. Or I could schedule some of those summer camps that run only from 9-2 on alternating Tuesdays and Fridays. Or heck I could let them run the neighborhood with the rest of the kids that are home all summer. But as it is, our limited time as a family is dominated by homework and/or extracurriculars. Is this only me? Is it this bad for SAH parents too? What is the solution? No extracurriculars, and telling teachers too bad but we’ll only spend an hour a night on homework until they’re in high school?

A close up of a lush green soccer field

This is such an amazing question — and I’m only starting to feel the pain, so I’m curious what other people have to say.

{related: here are Kat’s best activity scheduling tips}

First, as some other readers noted:

  • Avoid team activities with multiple practices a week, because they can really eat up your schedule. (For older kids, I always think of the Tiger Mom’s point that her daughters would never, ever be allowed to be a part of a school play: “…[N]o Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, ‘I got a part in the school play! I’m Villager Number Six. I’ll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I’ll also need a ride on weekends.’ God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.”)
  • Pick activities that take place at a gym (e.g., swim lessons), so you can get some exercise in at the same time.
  • If you have multiple children, see if you can find one place with multiple classes going at the same time, so all the kids can be occupied at once.
  • If budget allows — I know some readers here have noted hiring a housekeeper for those tricky years when the kids are too old for a proper nanny but still need someone to pick them up after school and shuttle them around.

As the mother to a fairly scheduled 4-year-old, let me also say how much I HATE trying to figure out what to sign up for — it feels like I spend hours every season figuring out what is available when (inevitably the activity he wants the most releases its schedule last), what we have room in the family budget for, what doesn’t conflict with a caregiver hand-off time, what doesn’t mean that he’s going to be way overscheduled on some days but bored on others… There has to be an easier way!

{related: how much do you spend on your kids’ activities?}

(I’ve even thought about starting a new business to address it, but I’m a bit tapped out at the moment — if anyone knows of any apps or services to navigate the different extracurricular offerings in your neighborhood, I’m all ears). (Update: The Wall Street Journal recently profiled a mom in NYC who created a website called Kidz Central Station to organize all this information in one place.)

Once the schedule is set, though, it’s definitely a juggling act between homework (which he has this year, aww), extracurriculars, bedtime, and not boring his younger brother.

Readers, some questions: First, as a working mom, how do you set your child’s schedule (or do you outsource the scheduling of it to someone else? keep it repetitive/minimal until they’re old enough to do it themselves?)? Second, once the schedule is set, how do you find the breathing space you need as a family for unscheduled time free of homework, extracurriculars, bedtime, and more? What activities do you avoid like the plague for your child — and which do you prioritize no matter what?

Originally pictured: Soccer Field, originally uploaded to Flickr by Sam Howzit. 2019 Update (darker soccer field) via Stencil.

Your Kids\' Activities, Overscheduling, and Working Parents
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Extremely curious how working parents handle school breaks. Fall break and spring break seem to fall right in the heart of busy seasons for me, and while day care is year round, I have no clue how to manage summer breaks once he starts school. I don’t have family nearby.

Oh man…I’m late to the discussion but this is a huge topic for me! My firstborn will start school next year and where I live in Europe school days are shorter, there are more vacations, and more homework! Add extracurricular to it and…Ugh. The. Stress.

I really feel like the kiddos may miss out on stuff – afternoon sports teams (they are private over here so you have to transport them there yourself), music…

I think the solution may have to be some sort of part-time nanny/helper – someone who can transport the kids but also see that they get homework done, etc.

7yo gets one weekend lesson (ballet, her request but tbh I’m delighted about it), 4yo gets nothing because he just started a new preschool and needs some downtime (or a hamster wheel). 7yo also takes an afterschool art class – nothing fancy, directly after school, not perhaps the highest quality activity but fun for her nonetheless. Swimming lessons have happened, but on a seasonal basis mostly due to parental laziness.

I grew up in a rural area with relatively limited extracurriculars, especially if your mom worked and wasn’t around to drive you to everything. 7yo is entirely happy with a few activities and lots of time to play, I would have loved to take robotics and flamenco and soccer and have a class every day after school.

If either of my kids was really into something (7yo has a friend who is a serious gymnast who spends about four days a week at the gym), I’d let them ramp up the activity level, but both seem like generalists. At least at this point.

My 3.5 year old goes to taekwondo class (30 min) once a week. My husband picks her up and takes her to class because he teaches at the studio that day. Then I pick her up after and we head home. I have resisted sending her more than once a week because I feel like a) she’s 3 and b) we don’t get enough unstructured time anyway. I know that the activity level will slowly increase, but I’m trying to resist as long as possible. I already feel guilty that she doesn’t have time to be a kid since I work. I hate to add even more structure to her day. My 1 year old’s main hobbies are spit bubbles and boobs so no worries there (yet).

I have such little patience or motivation for all of it. We do swim lessons a couple of times each year (sign the kids up for the same session time), and maybe one other activity each year. I put the ‘extra enrichment’ in summer camps.

This issue is one of the primary reasons that I think parental leave/part-time schedules make more sense in the middle years than when they’re babies. During elementary school, I’ve limited my kids’ extra-curriculars to programs that either happen at their school, or transport from the school – and fortunately we’ve got a pretty good menu of choices at our local public school. We also do instrument lessons, which happen at our house in the evenings, 1 day a week. When my older daughter started middle school, it got harder (sports teams, longer schedules), and so last year I hired a housekeeper for two days a week. She does the housecleaning, laundry, kid transport, and gets them started on homework and instrument practice before I get home. It’s $$$ but soooo worth it. I used a cleaning service anyway, so I just replaced them with an individual who could also perform the other functions. It’s been great.

We’re trying not to overschedule, but my kid is just so interested in signing up for activities (and he’s not even into sports) I feel like we are constantly saying no.

Right now we have for my 8 year old:
Tuesday night karate
Thursday afternoon piano (grandma picks him up from school and takes him)
Friday after school art class (in place of the school aftercare program
Saturday morning: Karate and then swimming lessons (at the same place, and I can drop him off)

And the almost 4 year old has only a casual, run around and blow off steam indoors gymnastics class at the same time as the oldest has karate, so that works for us.

My problem is the homework. In 3rd grade, my son has almost every night:
-at least 1 page of spelling
– 2-4 pages of a math worksheet
– minimum of 20 minutes of reading
– a reading log of 5-7 sentences on what he read

I’ve got him used to doing at least the spelling or math at the after school program he goes to, or to do the reading. The hardest/worst part is the stupid reading log – there are guided prompts, like “write a letter to the author” or “write a summary” or “write about the main characters and their traits”. It’s like writing a damn book report, every single night. In 3rd grade! He hates it (and so do I, but I try not to show it) so many nights we spend more time griping about the darn thing than he does just doing it.

If I was able to pick him up directly after school at 3:30, I might be able to hack it a little better. Or if he would just do the homework with minimal guidance or whining. But right now we have to fit cooking and eating dinner, doing homework, relaxing a little, and bathing/cleaning up, etc between when I pick him up from the after school program (5-6 pm) and when he goes to bed (should be around 8-3:30, usually closer to 9 by the time he’s done with homework). And that’s rough when we don’t have activities scheduled – nights with them are just hard. And that also doesn’t include the things I feel like he “should” be doing, like practicing piano more, having time to read or ride his bike for fun, or any chores beyond taking his dishes to the kitchen.

This week he brought home fliers about an after school choir, soccer, another after school art program and Cub Scouts. Cub scouts is the only one he’s interested in, thank goodness, but I don’t know if we can find a way to swing it. And I feel like we aren’t really all that scheduled at all, compared to so many of his friends that do soccer where they have practice and games multiple times a week. Luckily, our Sundays are completely free right now for family time, and I hope to keep it that way as long as possible.

My son is only 2.5 but I have been surprised that there are so many weekend opportunities that he could take advantage of even at this young age (soccer, dance/movement classes, toddler yoga…). The only thing we do is a 30 minute swim class on the weekends. Neither my husband nor I swim (well, barely) and we both really want our son to swim very well. Otherwise, he is at the playground or playing at home or we’re going somewhere as a family. I’m trying hard not to buy into this “multiple activities so that your child will be “well rounded’ model”).

I work at home, so I fully expect the burden of any and all after school activities to fall on me. I’ve already told my husband no hockey (insanely early scheduled practices due to limited rinks in our town), no travel teams, and anything that takes place on the weekend is on him. Honestly I think we’ll be limiting his activities to those done through school plus one weekend non-sport activity (music, language, etc.).

One child in kindergarten, playing one sport of his choice (one late weekday practice and Saturday morning games). His school also offers enrichment classes as part of after-school care so we take advantage of those. I don’t see our strategy changing much in the next few years.
We have nightly reading homework, but that doesn’t take long. He may also have a worksheet or something to finish. I anticipate that this will increase in the next year or two. The school prides itself on being academically advanced so there is always that battle for balance. For right now, our focus is on having him genuinely like school and getting enough sleep.

Wait, what homework does a 4 yr old have? I get the impression homework is taking over kids’ lives these days. I didn’t have any until 3rd grade and I think what I had then was probably 1 hr’s worth (less if I’d been more focused). It was almost entirely work I could do on my own. I feel like my friends with kids in kindergarten and 1st grade have this huge homework burden, not only do their kids have lots of homework, but it’s expected that the parents will be doing it with the kids. That’s insane.