Read Elsewhere: More About Extra-Curricular Craziness

From Mitten Strings for God by Katrina Kenison (It's like she time-traveled, read my last blog post, and then returned to 2000 to write these words!):

Is this what we mean today by family life? Is it really the way any of us want to live? I think not. Why, then, do we try to do so much? Why, as one friend put it ruefully, are we "dervishing through life"? And why do we allow our children to fall victim to the same kind of over scheduling that keeps us from enjoying our own lives? I am convinced that one reason we try to do so much is because we are afraid.

What if my son falls behind his tennis-playing peers? How can I show the world I am a good bother if I don't volunteer at school? What will people think if I don't appear at that party? What will we be missing if we stay home? There is fear behind all this frenzy, fear that we, or our children, will somehow fail to measure up. But just whose expectations are we trying so hard to meet?

These days I find myself pondering another question: What do I lose when I try to do too much? The answer is simple: Balance. For me there is nothing worse than the feeling that a day has flown by without any moments of real connection between me and my husband, me and my children, me and my own inner self. Yet how easily that happens. We want so much to do for our children, to give them every opportunity to learn and grow and succeed. At the same time, we want to live our own lives fully, to be productive and creative and useful. Sometimes, though, we lose touch with our need to feed our inner lives and with our need for solitude, silence, and time together. 

Surely there is no one raising children today who has not paused at times to wonder: In our efforts to provide for our children, are we losing sight of what is really most important? Have our activities crowded out the kind of simple, spontaneous moments that truly make life worth living? Each and every child I know could use more of these. We adults need them, too . . .

 . . . Like all mothers, I harbor dreams for my children, and sometimes I fall under the spell of my own aspirations for them. We want our children to do well! But when I stop and think about what I truly want for them, I know that it is not material wealth or academic brilliance or athletic prowess. My deeper hope is that each of my sons will be able to see the sacred in the ordinary; that they, too, will grow up knowing how to "love the dailiness."

From Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner:

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women int he world - the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make 'informed decisions' that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers - from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we'll have no one but ourselves to blame . . . We are convinced that every decision we make, every detail we control, is incredibly important.

Entire towns turn themselves inside out for a spot in the right ballet class. Parents prostitute their souls for spots in private schools. We read about how our children can't get into good colleges unless they are superhuman. We know that our public school systems ca't provide an education in superhumanness (much less basic well-roundedness, in many places). Without a good education our children won't be able to get jobs, won't be able to buy a house or have the middle-class existence our parents seemed to find easy but that we can barely sustain. Ergo: soccer and violin and public service and weekends of baseball practice become vitally important because if we don't do everything right for our children, they may be consigned, down the line, to failure.

Under Pressure

It seems like half the conversations I've had lately center around children's schedules and extra-curricular activities, specifically the sports they'll be doing come fall. Now, it's only mid-July, so I don't yet want to think or talk about our fall schedule, but there are decisions to be made. Child X's parents gave me a card at the playground the week school got out for the club soccer team that involves tryouts, twice-weekly practice, and Saturday games that require travel. The dance studio sent me the girls' end-of-year "progress reports"and wants their registration, with $50 deposit, by August 1. Child Y's mom texts me to ask what I'm putting Jemma in this fall (a fall that will include full-day kindergarten, by the way, and probably the accompanying meltdowns and 5:30 p.m. weeping that I enjoyed when Annie began full-day school) and I tell her, guiltily, "probably nothing." This week's tennis instructor talks up the fall tennis clinic at the gym. Annie turns a billion cartwheels in the lawn and nags me every day to sign her up for gymnastics. Church wants Sunday School forms returned. Piano lessons continue unabated through the summer. And the Parks and Recreation fall brochure hasn't even come out, with its pages and pages of yoga! and swim lessons! and drawing!

And even as I participate in it, it drives me crazy. Here's why.

Last fall, Annie - who had been enrolled almost continuously in dance classes since the minute she turned three - decided she wanted to take a break from dance and try tennis instead. Fine. So I signed just Jemma up for dance on Thursday afternoons, and Annie and I used the forty-five minutes outside Jemma's class to work on homework projects, enjoy a snack together, and read aloud if there was time. It was a nice break, and at the end of it, Annie decided she wanted to take dance again beginning in January.

Because none of the classes offered for that semester at our parks and rec. department worked with our schedule and because I had decided that, if Annie was to continue dance, she should probably start going to a studio, we signed up at a new place. The instructor - a very nice person, obviously, with lots of talent and experience - had the girls come try out a class before letting us sign up. Jemma was immediately put into the age-appropriate class. After watching Annie (who, remember had taken several continuous semesters of dance but hadn't danced since the previous spring because of a summer off and not enrolling in the fall), the instructor recommended that Annie take a few private lessons before starting in the 7-year-old class. She was behind.

That's when I knew. And even though Annie took two private lessons, subsequently enrolled with her "cohort," and enjoyed the spring semester of dance with the talented instructor at her studio, I learned the lesson that every parent attempting to retain a semblance of a normal childhood learns. I learned that we must constantly keep up with an activity or else we risk being left behind completely. Worse, I realized that this is the case with every single activity that kids participate in, and it begins at least by age seven, when the pressure begins to change from participating in lots of things all the time, to the pressure to specialize in AND BE AWESOME at something.

Already, that dance instructor wants Annie to audition for the studio's ensemble, which would require her to dance two afternoons and one Saturday morning per week. Already, the local parks and rec. soccer is badmouthed by parents in the know, and we're encouraged to sign her up for something more organized and ambitious. Already, there are children in her tennis class who have clearly taken tennis every week of this summer and who are worlds better than her. Already, a parent talks about how frustrated her son is to be on a baseball team with kids who are "just trying baseball for the first time" and how kids like him (the good kids) get singled out for the All-Star team, where they can really play without the newbies dragging them down. (This same parent talks about how her "entire life is for the kids" these days; these two topics seem to me to be related.) Already, Annie has friends who are in year three of competitive swimming, so that each year that Annie does not swim on a team that practices three days a week and competes in meets is another year that the possibility of her EVER being able to swim on a team like that grows smaller. Already, there are not enough days in the week for Annie to keep up with the things she enjoys, not to mention to try new things that she hasn't yet dabbled in. Already, there is very much the feeling that she must PICK SOMETHING NOW and STICK WITH IT FOREVER and have it be HER THING, and that if she doesn't - if she keeps trying to dabble here, enjoy there, try this, take a break, take up something new - she will not be good enough at anything. (Also: "good enough" to . . . what? Make the middle school team? Play varsity tennis? Get a soccer scholarship to college? MAKE AN OLYMPIC TEAM?) WHAT IS THE GOAL HERE?

Are those kids going to be happier? More successful? The most in-shape adults? What? (Tangent: Most adults I know who took this path - crazy travel soccer, psycho swimmer, college athlete, etc. - don't even participate in the activity as an adult. At all. Ever. Huh.)

She is seven. SEVEN. She enjoys - and is fairly good at - lots of things. And I want her to be able to keep doing them: because she loves them, because she is good at them, because it is good for her to grow her skills, because I want her to be well-rounded, because they are fun. But it's clear that we're reaching a level where there aren't enough days in the week, where it's less possible to do things in a casual, low-committment way, where the cost and scale and intensity of each individual activity goes up, where she (and we) are going to have to choose. And I wish that I could put that off for a few more years. I wish, like a funny and wise friend said a few months ago, that we could all collectively just agree to not do this with our kids. I wish that I could remember that Jason, who is playing electric guitar on stage next week, didn't start taking guitar lessons until he was in college, and that I hated track in high school but went on to run a marathon at age 26 and my fastest 5K ever nine months after Annie was born. I wish I was surrounded by a few more sane voices shouting for moderation. Mostly, I wish I could figure out a way to let my girls pursue their passions with a little lot less pressure.

Time Warp

It was chilly and rainy on Saturday and half the town has headed to Florida for spring break, so we did the only logical thing, which was to spray the girls' hair bright pink with silver glitter and take them roller-skating at the very rink Jason grew up rolling around.

Things were (almost) the same as we remembered from our elementary school skating party days:  Def Leppard and Michael Jackson "Thriller" blaring under the disco balls (mixed in with a little Katy Perry); "slowing things down" with a couples' skate (only this time, Jason backed around the rink holding hands with Jemma and I teetered backwards while Annie pushed me); cold fizzy drinks shared from a waxy Pepsi cup; setting out orange cones for the races (Annie got right out there and skated her little heart out!); scanning the rink while we skated, looking for that special someone, only this time it was our little pink-blonde daughters skating non-stop.

Jemma fell down countless times, got right back up, and skated on - no tears, no tiredness, no holding her hand.  And Annie . . . well, after two Saturdays in a row at the skating rink, Annie is a pro on rollerblades. She jumps.

I don't want to talk about the rest of the weekend (Jason coming down with the stomach flu, the weather an ungodly mix of snow, hail, sleet, rain, and thunderstorms), but Jemma did declare, upon leaving the rink, that skating is "the most fun" and, also, that I am "better than chocolate cake" for bringing her there, so.

The Light Blue Team

I was busy entertaining Jemma on the sidelines, so I couldn't hear, but here's what Annie's soccer coach must have been saying to her throughout tonight's practice (her team's first):

"OK, Annie, now, just sit on the ground and pick at the grass."

"Annie, your ponytail doesn't look quite right. Fuss with it. Make sure your hands are up there, messing with the elastic. Nope, still not good. Play with it a little more. Now, take your hair, put it in your mouth and chew on it. Yes!"

"Still hungry? I think you should take the drawstring from your shorts and see if it will reach your mouth. Look! It does! Chew on that for a while."

"Whenever you're making your way across the field with your ball, stop every once in a while and, you know, bend down and pick it up. Touch it a lot with your hands. Put it exactly where you want it to be, and then start kicking it again."

"When you're running, make sure your mouth is wide open and your tongue is weirdly sticking out as far as possible. That's how we do it, at soccer."

"OK, now, mid-scrimmage? Randomly hug one of your teammates. Yes, that girl, the one whose name you weren't clear on when you got to practice."

"Good practice, Annie! Now, on the way home, complain about how HOT and SWEATY and TIRED you are. Talk a lot about how uncomfortable your shin guards are. Say you hate your cleats. Tell your mom that soccer is toooooooooo loooooooooooong and you definitely don't want to play in your first game on Saturday morning, even though YOU are the one who said that yes, you did want to try soccer this fall. Just say it. Repeatedly."