I've have always believed you should give your children every opportunity you possibly can when it comes to out of school activities.                         I guess like many parents I believe, you learn and grow through opportunities. As a child

even though I grew up in quite a poor family, monetary wise. We (my three brothers and sister) were very well off as far as activities were concerned. We all did sports athletics, netball, football, soccer.  One of my brothers did scouts for a couple of years. My parents were always at our various sporting activities and I have such fond memories of these times. The activities were also very social and we made and kept many family friends through happy times.

With my older children as a parent I followed my parents example. My older son and daughter have both raced motorcross to quite a high level. We also made fantastic friends (some life long) from this and we haven't been to a motorcross meeting for over fiftenn years. They also did sports football ( my daughter and I played women's together) baseball, netball. It was a busy time but one we all enjoyed.

More recently however I have started to question weather you might do too much. And there seems to be a fine line between busy and burning out. Last year my 3rd daughter who was in year 8 high school was extremely busy. At the time I thought it's ok. Better than sitting in front of the TV or computor. But when I reflect I think we were lucky she was able to cope. This was her schedule (and mine as taxi driver).

Monday at lunch time Violin ensemble practice at school. Monday after school I would take her to a friends house, where she would teach a young home schooler the clarinet for 45 minutes. 

Tuesday during school time she would have a 1/2 hour flute lesson.  Tuesday after school she would have a 1/2 hr violin lesson. 

Wednesday during school time she would have a  hr 1/2Trumpet lesson. Wednesday after school she would have 1 hours concert band practice in which she played the flute.

Thursday after school she would have Jazz band practice 1 hour in which she played Trumpet . After finishing this we would race of to netball training for  1 hour.  

Friday thankfully  just home after school.Of course she still had to practice and do homework.

Saturdays. First thing in the morning she would have another violin ensemble ( a community based one) that she would practice with for 1 hour (sometimes longer if they had a performance coming up). Then we would go to her netball game.

Now whilst I'm am very proud of Natalya's achievements in music. With all of this she still had to do practice of all these instruments when we would eventually arrive home.  We had a rule if she had had a lesson on that particular instrument on that day she didn't need to practice that instrument. Of course their was school homework as well. She is a bright kid and in  mathematics is in an extended class, I guess that's to do with her gift in music ability. 

By the latter half of the year it was becoming quite apperrent  that the work load was getting hard to keep up. She got a couple of assignments for school in late. Luckily her school offered the scholarship of trumpet could change to Bassoon. We decided after some discussion that we would drop flute lessons. She only was originally taking them to play it better. She got the flute just to play for fun. So she did continue to play in the Jazz band just until the end of the year. The school violin ensemble folded as some of the students weren't coming to the lunchtime practices.               I can say Natalya was actually relieved at this, that it folded.   

So when is too much activity going to burn your child out? I think all kids are different and we really must moniter the signs. If it's effecting their school work. Or if they're starting to show signs of stress or loss of interest we need to question. Are they doing too much?

Luckily for us Natalya has a love of music that hasn't deterred her. She still plays with the Violin ensemble. The school one has just started back up. Netball is still a love for her. She has stopped Jazz band and the trumpet altogether. She is not teaching the clarinet this term. And we have dropped violin lessons for one term (her teachers just had a baby). Next term her violin teacher has said she can learn piano if she wants. And I know she wants, at present she just teaches herself that and the guitar also. But we seemed to have found a balance that she's happy with.

Although we are still very busy. She is not tired and snappy. Which is how she started to become by the 3rd term of 2008.

She could have easily just stopped all her music because it became too much. I'm am lucky that like me she does  make her feelings known. Otherwise things could have turned out very different. At thirteen she could have been burned out. What a fine line giving your children opportunities is..

One day I will probably watch her performing on some big stage. And if that doesn't happen that's OK too because we gave her opportunity and choices to make will be hers. I'm proud of her achievements thus far. But like most parents I guess you could say I'm Bias.