Outside Activities

I have a slight change of subject from kidvid, coercion, and violence, if you don't mind.

Actually, I've kind of been hoping that the conversation would come back to home education at some point. The kidvid discussion is irrelevant to my life and I got tired of coercion and violence a long time ago.

I am musing a lot about this issue and cannot seem to come up with any conclusions. How do you balance time spent with and for your children and time spent on yourself?

This is a constant juggling act. You've seen those T-shirts with the slogan that says "If Mama ain't happy, nobody's happy"? I think there's a lot of truth to that. If anyone in the family is unhappy, the whole family feels it.

Now, I'm way behind you in number of kids, but I do juggle a home-based business, occasional programming gigs, tai chi, volunteer work and other odds and ends.

I've come to a few conclusions. First, the basic things that I need to do to stay happy about my work as mother are high priority. For example, my tai chi practice really helps me stay balanced and centered. When I do tai chi regularly, my body feels better. I also have more patience and am more flexible. I also need some time _alone_ on a regular basis. Without these basics, I get irritable and feel crowded.

The other big conclusion is: less is more. For us as a homeschooling family, it's essential that we limit the amount of running around and scheduling. I will only drive kids to activities 2 days a week. So we miss some things, but we're more relaxed and I'm not constantly hassling kids to get ready to move.

Our fall was very busy. My children took part in a lot of very worthwhile activities, ie..a Y gym class, clarinet lessons, bat box building, music and art classses, a civil war co-op. All of them were well worth the time spent, but our family lost its rhythm, its flow. It seemed that we spent every morning, which was our school time, racing to get ready for the afternoon activity. My little ones, 3,2, and 1 then were lost in the shuffle. Even more debilitating to me was a major loss of any time for my own creative endeavors. Last spring, my children gladly made time in the afternoon for me to take and hour to write. This fall there just was no time.

My dilemma: am I being selfish to cut out most of the aforementioned activities? I am doing it mostly for myself, I think, because I need to have some time to call my own. Where do you draw a line between their needs to have a variety of experiences and your own need to have space to breathe? I feel guilty, (can you tell?) about cutting out most of the activities, but desperate to do so at the same time.

I think that this is really common. In our homeschooling program, the teachers say they can always tell the new homeschooling families because they over-schedule themselves.

One of the things that I like about our homeschooling program is that entire families can participate in the same activities. The homeschooling choir had the three Babisuthi sisters (15, 11 and 7). Morganne's drama class had several groups of siblings. Most other classes for children are age-segregated, so a 15-year-old would have to take a different class than her 7-year-old sister.

One thing that I'd suggest, Sarah, is that you let the children help you prioritize. What did they enjoy most? I think the idea of sequencing can really help. Last year, Morganne really concentrated on gymnastics and art as her two outside activities. This year, she continued her painting class, but she switched to drama as her second big activity.

Also, I want to know if this harried, hectic pace just comes with having such a large family, or if even with a large family, you can deliberately set the pace for your family? A slower pace.

Well, I'm interested in this too, because it looks like our family is going to get larger.

My 14-year-old stepson comes to spend the summers with us. When he does, we have to deliberately slow our pace more to accommodate him. I have to plan family activities that will appeal to a teenager as well as to a 2- and 6-year-old. We cut out some of the things we do for the younger children and spend more time playing baseball.

I'm a big believer that kids need scads of unscheduled time. Boredom is the well of creativity, the place from which all truly inspired projects emerge. Sure, you need the grist of experience and the new ideas that come from cross-pollination, but less is more here as well.