50PercentMum: To Club or not to Club?

September 25, 2016 by 50PercentMum

To club or not to club, that is the question…

Have a hankering to make your child into a ‘trumpet playing footballer, who appreciates art and loves cooking’? After school clubs could be just what you are looking for!

With the new school term comes a seemingly never ending offer of school clubs. If the day isn’t already long enough, there comes another legitimate excuse to leave your kids at school just a little bit longer each day. This works for the school - you give them money just so your child can stand in a room and do some singing, and works for you - another hour to procrastinate at home.

This term alone, I have signed the boys up to a heady combination of; Bricks 4 Kidz, West Leigh swimming, First Kick & Leigh Rockets football, trumpet, choir, ICT, Beavers and Outloud Productions drama club. All this mounts up to the price of a small family car but somehow I feel that I am giving my kids the opportunity to find something…anything that they may be half good at.

Unfortunately, with this extensive rota of clubs, comes an even more complicated and exhausting set of logistics. What I really need is a dedicated PA to schedule the diary and advanced technology enabling me to be cloned and in two places at once.

The amount of times I have to walk to and from the school equates to a trek up Mount Everest. Unfortunately, this ground is often covered with a grumpy child. Only a packet of Haribo, dangling like a carrot on a stick, will get them up and moving.

Great care needs to be taken in getting the right kit, for the right activity, on the right day. A simple miscalculation from you and all activities could end up coming to a grinding halt. There is nothing worse than the walk of shame to the school office, carrying the offending item. Failure.

Despite the ever groaning weight of the week’s agenda, you still feel like you may not be doing enough to encourage your children. Will they suffer without Tag Rugby? Am I being sexist by not introducing dance? What about art… and cooking…?! Someone even asked whether my children had started Parkour. I didn’t even know what that was until I googled it! I am sweating under the pressure…

Unfortunately, the amount of time these activities tend to take up does render anything of academic worth to the bottom of the pile. ‘Relaxing’ has to be scheduled in and normally occurs when the child collapses from sheer exhaustion at the end of the day. There simply isn’t time for pleasures. I guess this should set them up well for life.