Sport, music, Scouts … it’s time to end the relentless treadmill of kids’ extracurricular activities and re-embrace civilisation |
Every week during term time, Monday arrives like a slap to the face. One child needs to be at basketball training by 7am, another child has a before school music lesson, another, well the third, bless him, manages to tag along to everything like he’s done since the day he was born without complaint. Well, not that many complaints.
By Tuesday we’re deep into swimming lessons. By Wednesday there’s Scouts. By Thursday someone mentions a “make-up class” we’ve apparently known about for weeks but absolutely haven’t. By Friday, dinner is something that can be eaten in the car. Between our three kids, the extracurricular commitments form something close to a full-time job, which we do on top of our paid full-time jobs.
Sport, music, swimming, Scouts, these are all character-building, all allegedly necessary if you don’t want to raise screen addicts (which, in our country, seems to be the worst thing an under-16 can be). Our calendar looks like a game of Tetris. If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist. And even if it is written down, there’s still a decent chance someone........