Well, it’s spring. And as usual, we are overscheduled.
It is baseball season – and if your kid plays on a high school team, whatever sports season the activity occurs in, you can be sure that a disproportionate amount of after school time will be spent on the sport. Being on a team is a serious commitment.
But being on a team only lasts part of the year – and when that occurs in the spring, it coincides with the culmination of all other activities, academic and personal. Music recitals, orchestra concerts, the spring musical/school play, graduation, prom, final rounds of academic competitions. Field days and fundraisers that can only happen in warm weather also start up in the spring.
People get married in the spring and early summer. And they graduate.
Scheduling the orthodontist and the regular dentist and eye doctor appointments for my son is a nightmare until the end of May. If a game is cancelled and rescheduled for a day we have something else booked, I cannot even guarantee we will be there in time for the last appointment at 7 pm. And then there is homework and dinner.
I don’t remember life being so overscheduled when I was young, but then I did not play a sport. I also grew up in Florida, where it is not necessary to cram warm weather related activities into a few short frantic months. I wonder if this is just a phenomenon in the northeast, or if spring fever in other areas is an annual frenetic boiling point.
Fall also seems to be a time when if your student is on the football team or in the marching band, there can be nothing else in your life. Of course, that is not reasonable to expect – life goes on, homework goes on, religious and secular holidays happen. And then there are the other children in your family, and your job, and of course, the orthodontist.
I would love some comments from parents of high school athletes on how they handle the overload. As a parent of a sophomore, I find I am melting down in the spring thaw…..