I sometimes think I should rename this blog "101 Worries I Have About Nick."
Maybe it's because he's my first child, my oldest, my test-run. Or maybe it's because he's "sensitive." But I really do spend a lot more emotional time, if not actual real time, on him.
Nick is in school full time. It's Transition, which means he has little to no homework. But it is all day. Everything before school is about getting ready to go there.
Nick has piano lessons Wednesday. Tuesday and Friday is Karate. I like to make it to the pool at least once a week (to justify the money spent on membership). He has church school on Sundays, and also Youth Choir. He
Is that a lot? It seems like a lot. Most of these activities take place in a time slot I had previously tagged as "Home Time," time to rest and finish up whatever we didn't get done. Off Limit Time.
I try to think back to when I was a kid. I seemed to have taken a lot of lessons. And I went to school full time, and further away from home. I remember being miserable with homework, but that was when I was older, more of a fifth-grader. Then again, the lessons didn't seem to overlap as much.
I think I just feel bad when Nick comes home from school and I rush him to and from Karate, and he plays for ten minutes before I bug him to practice piano (but only for five minutes at this point, so it's mostly symbolic), and then we eat dinner and before he can start to play I'm bugging him to feed the dog, and then it's bath and bed. Tucking him in, I'm wondering when he played. I'm thinking that he has hardly seen Andrew all day. I'm wondering if I'm doing the right thing, or if I'm giving in to a pressure to "enrich the education" at the expense of letting my child discover on his own what he wants to pursue.
Oh, for Pete's Sake, I wish I hadn't lost the Child Raising Handbook.
3 comments:
There are a lot of different ways of looking at this. From my perspective, not every kid gets to do all of these cool things and the activities are not completely all-work-no-play oriented, per se. If he's tired, he'll let you know and from there, you can both decide if it's too much and if it's time to parse things down.
Well said Jamie -- i agree. And Kathleen -- handbook, shmandbook. Go with your best Mommy instincts -- you have them.
I agree with everyone else too. He's probably having way more fun in Karate and choir and at the pool (even school,for that matter, at least until they get to logarithms) than he would getting beaned by Nate with legos :). Go ahead and enrich the little guy, he'll than you for it.
He is a wonderful kid and you are a wonderful mom and everything's gonna be okay. Love!
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