I have 3 kids but one is off adulting and the busiest 2 are still at home. S23 is starting to look at colleges.
I look at some of these kids’ EC lists and think, how is this possible? I can’t even fathom some of the transportation issues! How do all these kids get to all these things?
We live in the suburbs. We don’t have taxis or public transit. My kids don’t even live in the school district so there is no busing. We are hoping my son gets his driver’s license this summer. His dad and I are divorced but both work full time jobs. I was working a second part time job until end of last year. Stepdad works full time. Stepmom has her responsibilities and a hobby farm to attend to.
My 2 are in activities year round which is hard enough. We have to limit them to no more than 2 out of the house commitments each season but try to get them to only pick 1. Most of what they do is school sponsored so that eases the need to get them to and from an activity as mostly they can just stay after school. We had to juggle the 3 kids and are fortunate that grandparents live nearby and are our on call back up taxi.
Am I the only one who is a bit jealous of some people’s opportunities that my kid’s wont ever have? So these people spent all their time in their car being kid taxi?
It’s definitely a relief when they get the driver’s license. It takes off some of the pressure but having two multi-sport athletes is still brutal. Was a lot of fun but the constant booking of hotels, flights, etc was a bit much, not to mention insanely expensive.
We just weren’t in a position to run a taxi service when our kids were growing up. We asked each to do one outside of school activity (in addition to instrument lessons). And we asked each to do one sport a year…not every season…one sport a year.
Yes our kids had to make some choices. Both had taken dance, but then auditioned for a very excellent children’s chorus. Couldn’t do chorus and dance…schedule conflict.
The key is to have an excellent carpool! We were very very very fortunate to have excellent carpools for our kids. The children’s chorus was particularly busy each week with two rehearsals and then additional ones during performances…plus the performances which were seldom nearby. Those carpool parents are still amongst our best friends and their kids and ours are friends still. It’s been 18 years since our youngest did their last gig with the group.
We live in an area that is semirural. We celebrated when our first got his drivers license because it did free us up…and yes that meant he needed a car.
Our kids were plenty busy between their outside activity, music lessons and the one sport a year. Both also skied locally in the winter.
I think that is the other issue in that us not being in district greatly decreases carpool options as well. We were super fortunate to end up with 1 other family in the neighborhood who we tag teamed getting kids to/from school.
Mom of 5, had them all in under 7 years (twins were last), all had at least 1 activity a night, girls played all season varsity sports and danced 5 nights a week since the age of 8, varsity and club soccer fir the boys. We started carpooling when they were very young. My oldest son’s best friend in kindergarten was an only child, his parents had to buy an SUV that seated 7/8. It was a lot of work on a daily basis, my husband and I still both drive minivans, but only had a few legs a week. It was wonderful to get to know the other kids, and of course the kids loved it. Once they got on varsity sports, they’d get rides from the older players, the 7 girls who danced had an age range of a few years with siblings, so once the older girls got their licenses parents weren’t needed. I miss the daily group texts of who was doing drop off and pick up.
Some of the best times of parenthood for me was all the time we spent together driving to school and their activities. Great conversations often happen in an SUV whether with one or all of them filling it up.
A retired grandparent was my DD’s taxi. Then when she turned 16, she got her license and a car and could get herself to her ECs and job. The kids on my DD’s club teams usually had one parent (the moms typically) who did not work and were the parent taxi. I would have needed a nanny otherwise.
I agree that I enjoy car chats and that I know I will miss it someday. But I see how busy my kids already are and their EC list is no where near some of these top kids and I just scratch my head thinking how do they (the parents) do it all?
DH and I both have flexible schedules and he can work from home/anywhere with a wifi signal. One of us can usually get a kid to practice or a club meeting. We also arranged carpools with other club parents and purposely bought an 8-passenger SUV to make carpooling easier. It really does become a lot easier once the kids got their licenses. S23 is still several months from getting his license so I’m still on carpool duty. D19 also helps out when she is home on breaks. Robotics boys are different from lax girls but the conversations are just as amusing. Car chats are like a secret window into the lives of our teens—I will miss them.
My siblings and I were involved in a ton of activities. After my swimming carpool evaporated, my mom had to drive me at 4:30 am. She’d sleep in the lobby and go straight to work as a teacher. The day I turned 16, she handed me keys and a car. 16 years old on the capital beltway in rush hour traffic (after practice to school) in a death mobile. Who cares?! No more getting up at 4:30!!!
My kids were always slam packed with stuff too. But we are in a small city. Everything was close by and lower key. I also loved the time in the car with my kids. We would just talk and talk. I miss it terribly now. But I admit it was nice when they had their licenses, especially for a late night returns from HS stuff. No more getting up at midnight to retrieve them from the bus/school.
We own are own practice and made changes to accommodate the kids schedules. So sports for one and acting, dance, singing for the other. Both had school stuff also. Also in Chicago much easier for them when older to take busses and trains when needed…
It’s a lot of work. I was also a baseball /football dad coach.
Best times of parenting for me. I also got them up, dressed and drove to school when in elementary. We sang Cat Steven’s and the Beatles on the way.
Your kids don’t need to have a lengthy list of ECs. They really don’t. I know it seems like some kids are trying to do it all…but that is totally not necessary.
The kids need time to do homework, eat, and relax too.
DH was gone all week (travel job), and I worked full-time and was not willing to drive our son anywhere, so he was limited to what he could walk to which was Scouts which he did from kindergarten through high school. No sports until (boarding) high school. It all worked out fine for him. I totally agree with @thumper1 that kids don’t need a lengthy list of ECs, and we grossly underestimate the value of unscheduled free time in their lives.
We also are in the country and out of district. We didn’t run all over. In elementary they only did like one no-to-little-travel sport per year at most. In middle school one school sport + choir, high school one school sport + choir + speech & drama. Unfortunately couldn’t get them to do the same sport but both did spring so we had to split up for events.
DD’17 was older for her grade, so she had a school permit to drive by sophomore year. She and DD’19 did a lot of the same activities. The week after DD’17 left for college, DD’19 got her license.
They were stuck out on the farm together for a lot of their childhood and I think it was fantastic for them. Daycare commented that “they know how to play”. They learned to fill up time themselves.
I always felt like the kids with a parent, grandparent, etc. at home were advantaged when it came to activities. I was a long metro and then car ride away from my kids. They did try some ball sports, but I was really happy when they settled on tae kwon do and they could be in the same classes, and the classes were mostly reasonable times for parents that worked. I was a single parent for awhile, and it was really hard when kids had activities at the same time but 2 different places. My kids got cars on HS because there is no bus anywhere near our house and once you leave our neighborhood the area is not walkable.
The best three years of my life were the three years both of our kids were in that children’s chorus as their outside of school EC. In addition to the best carpool ever, we only had one place to take both of them. It was a very time consuming activity, but well worth it…and those years when they were doing it together at the same time were the best!
I have only one ds. I was a SAHM, and his charter high school was a bit of a drive as it was in a different town. His junior year we moved to that town to be closer to his school. It made a world of difference primarily from a social standpoint. He was a grade skip with a summer birthday so could only drive himself his senior year. As he got older and more social, many of the activities and friend gatherings he wanted to attend were in the town where the school was. He remained with his BSA troop in the first town, however. In high school, he had two primary ECs outside of school, and two or three in school. Church activities as well. He stopped doing organized sports a the end of the 6th grade. Most people I know that have multiple children limit the number of ECs each one can do. When you only have one kiddo, it’s easier for them to have more.
His sophomore year (before we moved to the school town) I attended a CLE class on time management. One initial exercise was to plot out how you spent your time each week. Of course, mine looked very different than most people attending as I was just taking the course to maintain my license. It was honestly kind of surprising to see how much time I spent in the car either driving or waiting when I put pen to paper to plot it out.
Bingo. This was mostly how we did our kids’ ECs; by the time that the oldest had a driver’s license, they could do more (and off-campus) activities such as swim practice and meets, since there was an extra driver in the family.
@thumper1 got it right: your kids don’t need lots of ECs, just ones that they are committed to and show passion about. For all those kids who have a hundred ECs on their resumes (or so it seems), I suspect that college admissions officers are not that impressed by the “mile wide and an inch deep” EC philosophy.
It is tough to even have in-school activities if the activities don’t coincide with bus schedules or if the school is a long walk from home after a full day of school and then activities. Being out of district must make that even harder.
Luckily for my kids, we lived within walking distance of the HS field and were able to carpool otherwise. That meant me going out of my way to pick up kids on my way home from work, stressful when unexpected traffic meant I was late. However, with my older two I also had a sitter that drove them around. It was costly, but necessary.
It certainly sounds like they have sufficient activities. Depth may often more important than breadth for the tippy top colleges. I actually know very few moms that did not work once their kids hit middle school. Some were home for taxi driving, but most were not. You are certainly not alone in that. We also had nothing like current services like Uber that could be used occasionally.
My parents drove my kids to their ECs and my then husband did a lot of driving. My kids were 5 years apart and had similar ECs, and it meant we had to make multiple trips for the same EC because they were in different age levels. I didn’t let my kids ride in their friend’s car. It was great when D1 got her license. She was able to drive herself and was able to driver her younger sister sometimes.
My older daughter just had a baby and they are living in NYC. I told her not to move out to a suburb because she could have more flexibility living in a city with great public transportation.
.