Thoughts on Recent Posts
You guys, I’m REALLY enjoying NaBloPoMo so far! I’m reading as many posts as I can every day (my apologies- I don’t get to every single one of them, but I am trying to hit them all as the month goes on) and the posting/responding to comments doesn’t feel as overwhelming this year. Kae has written a couple posts recently that I keep thinking about. The first was this one about finding the time to work out. She has ambitious goals of strength training 5x a week and doing cardio as well, and was wondering why it was so hard to fit that in on top of her full time job and caring for her family. I don’t remember who originally said it, but this is true: “You can have it all, but not all at the same time.” Kae has two teen boys who are heavily involved in school and extracurricular activities. In her comment section I pointed out that in a few years, her boys will be off to college, and at that point she will probably have all the time she wants to spend on her workouts. This is something I have to remind myself. My son is in grad school right now, and my daughter is a junior in high school. There are days when I seem to spend SO MUCH TIME shuttling her from one thing to another, or listening to her practice flute, or talking about her latest school dramas. At the end of the day I’ll think “hey, how come I didn’t have time for yoga today?” Then I have to remind myself that this phase will end- and I’ll miss having her at home. i want to soak it all up while I can. In another post, Kae talked about the pressures to volunteer for school/sports events. Does it seem like a lot more is expected of parents these days? I don’t remember my own parents driving me all over the place and spending hours and hours volunteering at various band events… because they, um, WORKED. Now it seems like all these activities are heavily dependent on parental involvement. Here’s a perfect example- my daughter made the all state band, hooray! And here’s what that means for me: I have to take three (unpaid) days off of work to go with her to Tampa as her chaperone, and pay for a hotel. I’m not complaining! I enjoy this trip. But when I went to all state in high school, the school provided our transportation and chaperone. . My parents stayed home (again, because they worked!) This is just one of many, many examples of where the parents are expected to drive and/or accompany the kids to events. AND- we pay a “fair share” payment every year of $550 for our kids to be in the band. This goes to cover… expenses? Again- I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing out that it seems very different from when I was in high school. I’m wondering if this is a sign of the times? Or is it different in different parts of the country? In Florida we pay no state income tax, so maybe we get less from the schools? I guess that’s fair enough, but I don’t think this is just a Florida thing. By the way, I know I get off easy having kids in band. From what I hear, the financial and time commitments for travel sports teams (and competitive dance, EEK) are absolutely insane. If you have kids, do you think things are very different from when you were growing up? Did your parents spend a lot of time at school events? Top photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash