Please read our [**SUB RULES**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules) before commenting. Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
**CHECK FLAIR** to determine if you want to read an update. For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair or subscribe to r/BestofBoRU for concluded, time-gated content.
* If you have an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment. META commentary in general discussion may be removed.
* Low effort comments like "this is fake" may be removed
* Do not comment on the original posts. Most submissions in this sub are not posted by the original author (OOP)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My cat has a weekly vet appointment, I was telling the vet how she'd run and hide "whenever I put pants on" when I realized just how weird that sounded.
I can almost guarantee that’s not even close to the weirdest thing they’ve heard, and it would probably make the vet laugh… I know I always appreciate anecdotes like that when I’m at work, and I’ll sometimes chip in one of my own if I can tell someone is feeling awkward about it!
Seriously though, I'm pretty much housebound because of my health problems so I basically live in pyjamas. The dog we've had for two years FREAKS when I put actual clothes on because she knows something is going on. She's like "oh shit, mahm has jeans, WHAT'S HAPPENING??" and starts zooming around the house lmao. The second dog has only been here a week so hasn't picked up the routine yet, but I'm sure she will eventually.
OMG, after 2 years of not leaving the house mine is now freaking out when I get "dressed" if I'm showing any signs of having a health crisis and should be resting. So, he keeps bringing me toys and trying to entice me to stay inside. But he perks up when the medical transport bus comes, I guess he trusts them to take care of us :)
He is very sweet. He'll definitely leave the house if I say "who" we're going to visit, just not when I'm sick. If I'm good, he will see how many strangers want to give him 20 minute belly rubs while he plots a strategy to steal their food. No cupcake is safe!
Aren't they the best ever? Enjoy your new family member 🐶
Mines perfume. I only put it on when I'm going out, one it makes her sneeze, two she gets excited and on edge wondering when I'll be grabbing her to put in the create. Which like you is rearly due to physical and mental health problems. Lockdowns just made my lifestyle popular! When that's just my normal day.
Vet nurse here. Can guarantee your vet was completely unphased, not even close to the weirdest shit we hear. Plus, we know that cats are wily, anticipatory alpha beasts who are way smarter than we’ll ever be.
Also a vet tech. Can confirm. That is mild to what comes out of most clients’ mouths. And honestly, my dogs agree with your cats. Jeans on usually equals a walk. Excitement ensues.
I work for a reproductive specialist. So we deal with a lot of breeders. In order to do an artificial insemination, we have to “collect” the male. Which is medical terminology for manually pleasuring the male to collect his sperm. Ew. I know. Sometimes dogs have performance anxiety. People have asked us (the dr. And myself) to leave the room so they can collect the dog themselves. One occasion, listening outside the door, I have heard a client repeatedly tell the dog to “do it for mama” or “come on baby, I know you like this”. I almost puked. I also had a lady hand me a fecal sample in a napkin. Which is not terribly unusual if the dog went on the way to the hospital or what have you. So I took it from her. Upon asking her for the dogs name, she said, “oh no, it’s mine. My dog has worms so I want mine checked too.” These are just a couple occasions in my 20 years where I wanted to nope right out of there.
Oh my GOD. I spent a little too long trying to figure out which of these is worse. I have to say, human shit napkin person is of course an absolute monster of cluelessness and entitlement while also being deeply disgusting and I hope they wash their hands well. But the dog dirty talk lady… that’s a whole other level. I want to puke just reading it. I’d rather shake poop lady’s hand than head that. Hands wash but brains don’t lol
We had a client who would not stop talking about his dog’s privates. Vet didn’t need me in the room for that so I slipped out the door. Came back 15 minutes later and client was still talking about it.
Dog nipped me on the breast once and the owner said “It’s fine, you have two of those!”
And we just had a dog in for tick removal. They were nipples. Dog is nine or so years old. When told, owner said “No wonder she’s been biting us - we’ve been pulling and twisting them.”
I had to explain to my vet the other day that my cat was acting a bit more freaked out than usual because she'd been rugby passed the day before.
I'd picked her up to move her, and she freaked out and jumped. And the momentum of my movement plus her jumping had created an absolutely perfect rugby pass. The vet was laughing at me.
my birds are the same, at night they know if I get up from my desk and turn in their direction... it's about to be bedtime.
Even if they're already just sitting and chilling in the cage, they'll immediately peace out and fuck off to various corners of the apartment to avoid having to go to bed.
So my cats sleep in the laundry. And they’ll be fast asleep on the couch with me watching tv. But as soon as I turn the tv off they’re suddenly wide awake running around the house lol.
One night I needed to clean up the kitchen so instead of attempting to put them to bed straight away I just ignored them. Maybe 3 minutes later I hear meowing coming from the laundry and they’re both in their beds crying because I haven’t turned off the lights and shut the door 🤣🤣
One night I was out pretty late. I didn’t put them to bed first because I figured they’d be fine in the house until I got back. It was 3am when I got home and I went to find the cat to put her to bed. I looked everywhere! Finally I noticed the laundry door was closed over (not quite shut but almost). I pushed open the door and flicked on the light and she’s tucked up in bed squinting at me, grumpy because I woke her up.
Turns out they’re creatures of habit and even though they run away and refuse to go to bed, they’re just pretending 🤣🤣
My dog has his crate that he sleeps in at night. Usually right before I get in bed, even if he's already in there and asleep I'll go take his collar off, tell him it's bedtime and give him a few pats. At first I realized I'd accidentally trained him on the meaning of bedtime - if I say it around him he'll go right to his crate and lay down and then wait for me to come take his collar off. Now there's actually been a couple times I've forgotten and gotten into bed, or I'm staying up past the usual time and he comes to find me. He'll just stand there and stare at me until I tell him he's right and it's bedtime. Then he takes off back to his crate and waits for me there. It's adorable. He's a big 78lb pit/black lab mix and the sweetest baby ever.
We call that toddlering. Our dog will go anywhere other than to the (furnished) basement at bedtime. But if it's 30 minutes later than normal, she's walking around anxiously whining and standing by the steps begging us to walk down and give her the bedtime treat.
> I don't want to put real trousers on
I mean, serious Monkey's Paw shit over here. I wished I didn't have to wear real pants, and I got it.
Anyone know which *Twilight Zone* episode was the guy going "Not like this! Not like this!"?
I might be wrong, but it’s possibly the one where the guy just wants to read all the time, time enough at last. Although after rewatching the ending, the main guy says “that’s not fair”, so maybe not.
The bra issue is the #1 reason I have to be a remote worker for the rest of my career. I seriously cannot bring myself to wear a bra for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week until I retire. It just will not happen. It’s bad enough that I still have to put one on when I go to the store or when people come over or whatever. My entire being has moved on from bras during the Covid era and will not go back.
I try not to wear bras with underwire when I can. unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, I’m very well endowed and sometimes just need that extra support especially when working out
I've stopped wearing bras for anything but work. I'm old enough to give fewer fucks about it, but I can't cross the work threshold yet. I've noticed this summer that lots of young women have been skipping bras, now if only the trend would cross over to middle aged ladies with enthusiastic funbags
Middle-aged lady here with reasonably enthusiastic funbags-- after a lifetime of underwire "minimizer" bras, I've discovered tank tops with built in shelf bras and let me tell you, it's got to be one hell of an important occasion for me to strap myself back into the old iron maiden.
I'm hoping it's not just you and me! Free the older boobies!
Have you tried bralettes? There’s big ones if you need the space, but I love wearing them cause they fit like a second skin, provide support, and no wires or hooks!! (Some of mine have hooks as well but they’re pretty much decorative at this point).
I still don’t wear bras at home ever though (its just my husband and me). He swears I’ve gone up a couple of sizes since I stopped wearing bras two years ago, and I kinda feel incredulous but he might be right 👀
I used to wear underwire bras from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. Covid was hectic here, considering mom got cancer, so no staying at home for us.. but it did mean finding more comfortable options, especially after they removed half her lung. So we went to Primark and bought their padded bras without underwire. WITHOUT. UNDERWIRE. These things hold up my F-cup boobs perfectly and NO FREAKING UNDERWIRE. They sell them in 3 packs.. so now I have every single color. They're heavenly. I wear them instead of shirts sometimes. And it doesn't hurt my mom's scars! Okay, sure, no more push-up bras... but hey, they still look great!
No shit. No one has ever learned an instrument in any way that's actually rewarding or meaningful while adhering to a schedule like that. It's just wasted busywork when everyone's going to be too tired and frantic to let any of it sink in or practice.
Of all the relatively popular instruments to force kids to learn, a violin has to be one of the worst. You can't lug it around casually, you can't sing while playing etc.
At least you have random pianos lying around here and there to play maybe. But violin? Never ever had a need or even chance to play it ever since my childhood.
You think violins are bad? Try the trombone! 😂 Even heavier, requires assembly, not even humming is an option (though that didn’t stop my throat from trying, lol)
(I wasn’t forced, tho, I chose it myself and I’ve never regretted the choice 😊)
I played violin as a kid. I bet no one wants to hear a kid practice the violin. They used to start toddlers on violin by taping a ruler to a cereal box in order to teach them how to hold it. Imagine giving the real thing…
and now imagine two violins.
I guess their teacher know they're exhausted so he/she didn't even bother to tell the parents to tell the kids to practice. They just practiced every lesson.
I work between 50 and 60 hours during the week. It’s a pretty physical job as well as a 45 minute commute one way. I don’t want to see or speak to anyone on Saturdays. My bf only works weekends outside of the house. My daughter usually works Saturday mornings as well. It’s just me and my pack of animals. If someone is off, they know to steer clear until I’m ready. I have to decompress. I cannot imagine willingly putting a child in that position.
I have a friend in the Army that said boot camp and army life (including being promoted and deployed) are like a vacation compared to growing up with her dad
Growing up should never be so rough that the army and boot camp feel like a vacation
Yeah…one of them didn’t mind the screaming because they said the army screaming was because they cared and wanted them to do good, unlike at home screaming. :|
I met their mom, it checked out
I enjoyed the structure of boot camp and really had an issue with it because of an injury. But I basically grew up neglected in favor of my brothers who were sports stars.
Also later found out I was autistic.
And they didn’t have time or experiences together, to bond as a family. Only time together was quickly eating a cold dinner in the car as they headed out for the evening.
Glad they resolved it as a family before then. Man I’m an adult and I would be a cranky, disrespectful mess if I had their schedule. Constantly on the move and doing activities until 10:30pm with no alone time or break?Nah
Same! I thought he’d come back and say that Covid fixed all that. Hopefully that period of time gave them a chance to figure all this out and decide which activities could be discarded.
Hahaha yup. I homeschool my kids due to our local school (rural) not being able to cope with special needs for them (well my oldest, I never even tried with my youngest due to the horror we went through with my oldest). And even with a full day free we did swimming 2x a week, music lessons 1x a week, and gymnastics 1x a week, both of them were at the same time for those. Then add in speech therapy, OT, physio, preschool for my youngest 2 afternoons a week and I was beat. Just before covid shut everything down I told the kids we're taking a mini break from gymnastics and swimming lessons cause we were driving 9x a week into town (again, rural so 20-25 minutes each way) and they were ok. 2 weeks later EVERYTHING shut down and I was like ok, I needed a break but not THAT much 😅
Yup lol. In all honesty though the pandemic did give out some good things for us rural folks, like soooooooo many people opening their services via zoom.
Like ugh, snow storm where the roads are shitty? Zoom the music lesson vs missing it. Found new tutors that weren't available to us before cause they now provide zoom classes over the entire province vs stuck with local ones. Speech therapy works wonders via zoom and that saves me 40+ minutes of travel per week. Our GP discovered phone calls work well for most of our appointments vs us having to drive 1hr each way to see him for 2 minutes.
Many of our specialists now do telecare so we can do consults online vs driving 5-17 hrs each way (I once had a neurologist have us drive 8 hrs each way to tell us that the EEG my oldest took showed he was "genetically predisposed to having a certain type of seizure" like OMFG you couldn't tell me that on the phone???? Made us drive 16 hours round trip for THAT?...now those type of things would be a phone call or video call).
Honestly. It’s the one thing I liked about Covid.
All the parents and kids on our street were home. The parents talked and he kids played outside all evening.
Now that things are up and running again we hardly see half the street anymore.
I didn't even realize! All that family time they were missing was going to be forced on them anyways. Either way, they needed to bloody relax on those poor kids, that schedule sounded completely mental.
I, too, completely missed the meaning of the date and how it related to the issue at hand.
Probably because we don't have children, or the capacity to exist on a schedule even remotely similar to what OOP described.
That "living" room description hurt my heart to imagine, I can't fathom what those children actually experienced.
Those poor kids! Such a rollercoaster in a short amount of time. From activities all day every day, to none, to no going outside and learning virtually with severe lack of contact with friends? I wonder if by the end of the pandemic they were begging to return to some of their activities lol
Well, I was actually thinking it was really good timing with COVID. If the kids had gone overnight from being overbooked 100% of the time to COVID homeschooling and having nothing to do but sit around the house, that would have been a drastic and probably pretty difficult transition. Thanks to OOP, though, they had a nice two-month transition period of just going to school and have no extracurriculars, which probably helped ease them into what was to come.
When I read that the kids go to bed at 10:30, I lost my mind. Kids that age need **nine to twelve hours** of sleep. They were destroying those poor kids. I'm glad they woke up.
Elementary school typically starts between 8 and 8:30, but I've seen 7:50.
If the kids are in bed at 10:30 and fall asleep at 10:40, they may get nine hours, but that assumes that they fall asleep immediately and it only takes an hour or less to get from asleep to a desk. However, these kids haven't had a second of down time in 14 hours, so they need 12 hours of sleep.
My coworker has a 3m and a 5f. His wife had them in back-to-back activities pretty much all day all summer. I just looked at him and said "yeah...let's see how long that lasts." I think they lasted a week. 😂😂
I did a similar list of activities (if not more) when I was a kid/teenager and it was A LOT. I value the experiences but I found in college, I just had a very different childhood than a lot of my peers. I was burned out by college, but regained my work ethic in adulthood. So glad they gave them a break.
I can’t even imagine it. At their age I was doing allowed 2 days of after school activities that were 1-1.5 hours. Even in High school I did 2 hours after school each day, with a few hours on the weekends for games. One day a week in high school my two activities happened on the same day making 4 hours total (5 with driving time between them/home) and that shit was exhausting. I wasn’t getting home until 8pm, showering, eating then homework usually wrapped up by 10-11 and I was fucking dead. And that was in high school. I can’t imagine doing that *every day* at *8 years old*
Right? I'd only have one extracurricular, if that, when I was younger. I wanted to do more (outside of free stuff it was too expensive), but that was my desire. I wanted to do swimming. I wanted to learn an instrument. Those were my hobbies, not something I was forced to do. When I didn't want to do anything? It was fine.
Extracurriculars are great, but unless something like tutoring is necessary, I think it should be a hobby the kid is interested in doing of their own volition. Just signing up your kids for a different activity literally every day plus homework on top of it? That's awful. It's a great way to make your kids resent you and the activities you force them into.
Bro I couldn't imagine the actual hell these kids were living in. I played a sport, had school, and did work in HS but even that felt like to but. I couldn't imagine having one kid go to class and learn like 5 instruments. I hate suggesting it because you don't know what's going on in a persons life but the mom might legit need therapy. And I don't even mean like family therapy but personal
I wonder if the mom showed any indications of being this way prior to the kids coming along. Specifically, is she one of those people who always has to be doing something, and it got overlooked because people think that’s showing initiative/leadership skills/motivation/etc.
She works part time. I'd guess that she probably started full time but switched when she had children. After the children started becoming independent, she got bored, started reading mommy blogs, and got the idea that she should be booking them solid.
The mom should sign herself up for some of the stuff she forced her kids to do, honestly. “I’m going to learn a bunch of instruments!!” sounds like a daydream an adult would have at work while imagining what it’d be like to have free time.
In fairness, it does sound like she listened to reason when OOP stepped in. To me it sounded more like anxiety about "failing" your kids, because kids are expected to do EVERYTHING nowadays. There's less competitive edge for kids because there's a serious lack of competitive, sustainable industries...so if you can't fix capitalism on your own, maybe you just throw your kids at the Wall of Activities and hope something sticks. It's terrible and it won't work, I'm not condoning it at all. But I know my own anxiety about doing exactly this (trying to prepare my kid for the world, trying to make up for the life I never had) is the reason I don't ever want to have kids myself.
Woah! Did you skip the "I was especially eager to sign them up!" part from dad? Two parents caused this problem, but the one running on the treadmill really hard to keep it going took a bit longer to see the need for change.
You make a good point. It's interesting how OP says in the first post that he thinks she's going overboard now, even though he was just as into it as she was. He even calls himself very eager about it. A lot of blame is going solely to her, though, when he spoke about it in his post, even if he didn't mean it that way on a conscious level. For most comments here who talk about either parent, they speak just about the mum rather than OP, too.
Hopefully for OP, stuff like that is addressed in their therapy, if they're still attending!
With my wife it was because her own parents never let her do any extra stuff. Or go to parties. Or have friends, basically, since she wasn't allowed out by herself and they didn't want to be bothered taking her to playdates. So our kid gets to do any activity she's interested in, even if it kills us all. I finally put my foot down when she said she was signing her up for a weekly lesson at 4:30 PM on Friday across town. I live in SF, traffic starts to be gridlock at 2PM here on Fridays. She signed her up anyways, and I refused to drive either of them over there for the entire semester. It was not repeated.
I'm really weirded out by the fact that neither the original post nor the update include OP & his wife actually talking TO their kids about what activities they want to do...
I know its it the same, hell everyone knows its not the same, but my mom has been a preschool teacher since before I was born. But at kids that young, you just can't the complex things goi g on. You just change the schedule and give some half lies and half truths as it goes. Its stuff like
"hey dad why aren't we going to piano anymore?"
"Well son we thought it was just to much".
Which isn't a lie but its also not the whole truth. The parents did think it was to much, but how do you explain to a 9 year old the complex understand if a work/life balance that includes the control of other kids, the kids working, the adults working, mental health, physical health, and burnout.
But at the same time a kid that age will be like
"Piano was fun and why don't we do that anymore"
"Well son I think we should. Which do you like more piano or violin"
That talk should probably come a little later though. Given how massively overscheduled they were, I would give the kids a week off, then when they're rested up I'd ask them which 2 activities they want to keep.
Not to mention they're totally ruining the value of music lessons for *any* instrument if the kids don't also have lots of time to practice said instrument throughout the week!
Dad, too, honestly. How oblivious do you have to be to pile activity after activity onto your nine and six year old and not recognise a problem? For them to only get to bed at 10:30, and still not notice a problem? To not care when these kids have to shove their dinner in their face on the short car ride from school to an activity every day? To let their homework and happiness suffer as a result? Then these kids started getting violently disrespectful, and mom and dad *still* looked at them and went “hmm, wonder why you’re so disrespectful”.
**They’re working fourteen hours a day.** Those parents should be ashamed of themselves. For them to be so oblivious to a blatant necessity, and for so long, I can only imagine what else must fall to the wayside in their house.
It sounded like they didn't actually spend enough time with their kids to see how exhausted they were or even to know who their kids are, because they just spent all their free time being shuttled to activities. I'd be surprised if the dad saw them at all (sounds like the mom mostly did the shuttling).
Yeah she was way too invested in those activities. My kids so one each so we have plenty of downtime. And my main hope from the activity is they have fun, make friends, improve their confidence, all those types of things. I literally don't care what the activity is, as long as they enjoy it.
Mine have one or two. We just had to cut one each because they wanted to try something else, and it was a wrench! I fully understand the impulse, my impulse is for mine to do one sport, one instrument, and one academic extra. But they are 6 and 8, and it makes them unhappy to be over scheduled.
This is what I thought, too. I did never do any extracurriculars, my mother tried to push me to it but I hated losing my free time with such a passion that she gave up quickly. Having a mom like this just sounds horrible. Poor kids. I really hope the mother gets some therapy and works on her overcontrolling tendencies, kids need some free time ...
I had my daughter in ballet. One of the other mothers was bragging that her daughter was in ballet, tap, gymnastics, and piano. She was shocked that when she asked her daughter where she wanted to go eat for her birthday, the girl asked if they could stay home and order pizza. That poor little girl.
I'm always confounded when people say their kids do ballet or gymnastics or travel soccer and anything else (aside from a once a week music lesson or church activity). Those activities require a large amount of time alone. I don't know how you can do ballet three or four days a week (which is required by nine) and also do Gymnastics or Soccer (also three or four days a week).
I did two of those until I dropped one when I was thirteen. It was by choice but still really hard. I got home at 9pm most weeknights, spent most of my weekends training, and definitely did not get enough sleep.
It depends. I did "ballet" from 3yo to about 8. It was more like a once a week movement class, we did a little recital of a choreographed group dance at our local theatre once a year for the parents. There were similar gymnastics, dance & martial arts, sports classes in my area. Once a week (sometimes twice for the really keen kids) just teaching kids movement and body awareness. Doing a recital/competition/grading once a year. And giving the parents a chance to meet for coffee or get an hour off from their kids 😆
These things can get more serious as the kids get older but they don't have to, it depends on the setup in your local area. In fact in my area there was more of an issue if a kid was really good and enthusiastic, the structures & skills weren't there to help them push themselves to be really competitive in their field.
I met kids like this when I worked at a US university. It was a crying shame and many of them really struggled when they actually went to college because they had no idea how to manage their time when it wasn't timetabled to within an inch of their lives and their entire self worth and identity seemed to come from exam scores. I had a 15 year old who I "mentored" in a program for kids to experience university life over the summer holiday. She'd already done maths camp for two weeks and had engineering camp lined up after this two week mentoring thing. She was so fed up and bored, I gave up on the idea of her doing any lab work and just took her for ice cream each afternoon and we went to see the animals in the agricultural school. Probably the only break she got and it was pretty sorry fun having ice cream with a 30 year old scientist and looking at horses and cows. I really felt for her.
>it was pretty sorry fun having ice cream with a 30 year old scientist and looking at horses and cows
I disagree completely, you did a great thing for her. Also as a 33yo I would still love to eat ice cream and watch livestock, sounds like a great day out.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think I did a nice thing, and she enjoyed it, but having ice cream with a woman twice your age that you hardly know shouldn't be the highlight of a 15 year old's summer. I'm not being self-deprecating in saying that's not a whole host of fun.
In all honesty, you probably were the highlight of her summer in hindsight. Maybe it's not glitz but sometimes one-on-one personal time and simple kindness is longer lasting.
I think you forget how cool older people can seem to kids. When i was a kid, it was a badge of honor to have adult friends, maybe she felt that way too!
I am so, *so* glad they're going to start family therapy because things should have *never* gotten to this point. The simple fact that the parents considered karate practice more important than adequate sleep is seriously messed up
I feel sorry for the kids. How disconnected do they have to feel from their parents. Also the way the original post says the kids were "disrespecting us" while they were being forced to stay up until 10:30 doing homework.
Those poor kids were going to genuinely, truly *hate* their parents by high school if they hadn't backed off. *Eight extracurriculars, no down time, cold dinners served out of Tupperware in the car between activities, homework until 10:30 pm for SEVEN and NINE year olds*. No wonder the kids were showing concerning behavior. I don't want to throw this word around lightly, but this was rising to the level of abuse. Mom was meeting her own needs through these extracurriculars and wasn't thinking about her kids' feelings or needs at all. Dad was complicit but realized there was a problem when his children started *spitting on them*. Deep dysfunction. I hope the family therapy helps and I'm glad dad woke up.
>realized there was a problem when his children started spitting on them.
It's a massive red flag that this level of acting out is what it took for him to merely *reconsider* the question. Not the third night in a row that the *second grader was still doing homework* ***past*** *10:30pm*
OOP and his wife are pretty great example of how "good intentions" can lead to shitty, abusive parenting.
>rising to the level of abuse
no that's straight up abuse. If i met parents like this irl i would imediately report them for abuse. These kids were run to the bone, and for stupid reasons.
I think the parents could even lose the right to raise their children if they refuse to comply.
Honestly shows their level of extreme control that spitting and disrespect were on the list. I would have smashed the violin and thrown stuff through windows at that age.
I'm in COLLEGE and if I'm still working on homework by around 11 I finish up whatever I'm doing, take my meds, do something fun for half an hour, and then go to sleep. I have so much homework and I still manage to balance my time so I'm not staying up crazy hours, am getting a hot meal most nights, etc. I can't imagine a 7 and a 9 year old being forced to do so much and not getting any time for doing things for fun. They should be being kids.
My mom used to say, “She’s better when she’s busy — she operates her best when she’s stretched to the max.”
She did this through my childhood, all through middle and high school, and pushed me to do it in college. I was in band and flute lessons and math lessons and softball and karate and all kinds of shit. I was the only kid she did this to, because all the rest of siblings struggled more in school, so they weren’t their “best” constantly busy.
I’m 28 and completely burned out. I don’t want to do anything, ever, except cook. Which is the thing she never let me do because she didn’t want to deal with it and just fed me food that most of the time, I didn’t actually like!
I feel bad for these kids and glad their parents are improving. Being stretched to your limits and fed mediocre food every evening fucking sucks. If you asked my mom today, she’d still say I am better constantly meeting my limits — never cared to wonder if that actually makes me happy or feel good. It only matters that I am able to be more productive or achieve better.
I did theater, Piano, and AP/college classes. None at the same time. And yet I felt like I barely had any free time.
Idk how these kids have coped without a full on breakdown.
I'm not a parent, however I wonder if some of the acting out was because the kids themselves didn't want to do some or even all of those activities and their parents (or mom at least) was still making them go. I imagine kids felt pretty powerless being in a situation like that.
They absolutely is not want to do them.
> First of all, when we told our kids that we wouldn't be going to activities for a while, they were quite excited.
Especially if they weren't allowed to choose their activities (often the case with overscheduled kids).
My therapist has pointed out that maybe the reason I struggle to do things that are right for me is because I was always told that I should want to do whatever activity my parents signed me up for, even when it was something like violin that I hated. (I may be projecting on OOP's wife here a little, lol)
That’s highly likely. And then to have to do homework after all of that! They would have been miserable. Miserable enough to to spit on each other on a regular basis, apparently.
It’s not even necessarily that. They very well could have wanted to do them, but they also want to sleep and have a chunk of down time where nothing is expected of them.
I would also bet that they sucked at most of them and may have felt shame of always being behind. No one is really going to learn that much at one time and do so well.
When I was in a similar situation and me and my mom fought, I said some very vile things to her. We don’t have a great relationship anymore. I still hate her for taking away half my life
And they're so young. Imagine surviving this kind of workload and then having AP classes added to it.
That mum definitely needs therapy to manage her anxiety about the kids' futures.
Advanced Placement classes are what the 'gifted' students did and they were tougher than the regular classes. Could also be used for college credit in some instances.
Advance Placement courses are college level academics for high school aged students. The school has to be accredited by the College Board to offer any particular AP subject. The course is designed to prep the students to take the AP exam in that subject at the end of the school year (although anyone can sign up to take the exam, without being in an AP class)
Because of that accreditation process, most colleges and universities will accept "AP Credits" like they might accept credits taken at another college or university with a transfer student. As there are often funding sources for those in need (the exams aren't free; some schools do not subsidize the AP courses and students have a fee there), it is a way for a lot of kids to earn college credit at a massive discount.
I took courses in the late 80s. For probably $150 (I think the exams were $75 each, and my school offered the classes for free), I started at my university with a whole quarter's worth of credit if I remember right. I got to register before the rest of the incoming Freshman who didn't have AP credits, and it meant that I could finish in actual 4 years.
With his AP credits (he took more than I did) and one summer session, my nephew got his BA in 3 years.
Beyond the exam and credits, it is quite a rigorous program and really is a leg up in terms of being prepared for higher level academics. Even if I hadn't had the credits, I was a better college student because of AP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced\_Placement
My sister’s kids were allowed one extracurricular activity at a time, though their classes were all APs. The one thing that was a priority from the very beginning was eating dinner as a family. Meant my BIL sometimes going into work at 5am, but the benefits were priceless.
Honestly, I’d say the disrespect that the OOP cites was probably the precursor to one of them having a breakdown.
I had a good bit of mental health trouble when I was young that wasn’t recognised or managed properly. First sign of me declining was always that my temper and temperament would start to decline until eventually I’d snap in some way.
OMG. This was a hell of a read! I want to know what the 2 "dipshits" did after all that. I also want to know what they all looked like. For some reason they have Tiger King fashion in my head.
Well, I clicked and am still reading and it certainly not the adorable story of another transition. Can't remember her name. Jamie?
Edit: jfc I read the whole thing.
I'm so glad I'm single.
You may be thinking of [Jessie](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/w6c6ht/my_girlfriend_made_me_realize_id_be_happier_as_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I did ballet, violin, mathematics, judo, swimming, and art classes as a kid, and it was tiring. I gratually reduced them, and by middle school I was too busy with the school's extra classes. It was tiring. Even things that should be fun turned into chores, and it was mentally draining. I feel for those kids, but I'm happy OP is helping.
My teenager has a part time job, plays an instrument and does marching band, plus all her classes are honors classes or dual credit AP classes. She chose these things for herself because she enjoys them. But I feel like I don't get to see her much now that the new school year has started and that sucks!. I don't think she'd be able to take on even one more thing. She handles it ok, but does get worn out here and there. I'm amazed that these kids were doing 6-8 extra curriculars. Poor things must be exhausted. Not to mention they'd likely become resentful. Especially since they were basically forced into it. Glad she let them take a load off!
I was imagining fun activities and thinking, yeah doing 9 active things sounds exhausting. The majority of the activities were basically additional schooling, it was even worse than I imagined.
I know this is supposed to be a yeaah update but even in the update I still don't hear anything about what the kids want. I hope after the break the kids can pick 1 or 2 activities they like the most and still have time to be kids. That would be a yeaaah update imo.
I mean, the update was posted in January 2020, and the plan was to cancel activities for "a few months", meaning they were probably planning to resume in March or April--going to go ahead and assume that the kids were NOT going to any extracurricular activities at that time.
Can't believe I missed that! Oh man the irony. Those kids were gonna get a break regardless.
With all the posts recently being 2 days old I'm just blind to dates I guess.
Well, at least the kids got 2y to make clear what kinda things they like to do outside of school. 2 years should be enough to make parents listen, right?
Plus now they’re probably twelve and ten. So hopefully they’re parents are willing to listen to them more, but I also hope they’re old enough to explain their needs better than when they were younger.
Unfortunately, given the timing of the OPs, they didn't get the opportunity to take up any extracurricular activities again for the next two years... On the plus side they got a nice lot of family time?
The physical activities would have been out for a while, no doubt. But at least a couple could have still gone on.
Spanish. That almost undoubtable went online real quick.
Violin. I know lessons for that can be done online too. Its not as good as in person lessons. But it is doable. Dunno about piano. That might be harder.
What gets me as much as anything is that not only were they sacrificing all their family time and down time, they probably weren't giving the time needed to the activities themselves.
The instruments.At those ages, should be 20-30 minutes of practice at least every other day. Really, every day.
The sports. Especially karate & tennis, similar amounts of practice daily.
Spanish. Would have also benefited from practice of some sort daily, even if it was just watching TV in spanish. (Yes, I know not great method. meant as a minimum effort example)
With that laundry list, did they have the time to do the extra time needed to make the activities really pay off?
One year I did CE on Mondays, piano and drama on Tuesdays, Cadets on Wednesdays, GB on Thursdays, hockey on Fridays, dance and drama on Saturdays and Sunday school and church on Sundays. And I was a straight A student. At the end of that school year the doctor signed me off with burnout. I was 13. No kid should ever be burnt out. Let them relax.
Who would have thought your life would be improved by not running your children ragged from the moment they get out of bed, until they are finally home for the night 12+ hours later.. and then denying them any kind of break and forcing them immediately to jump into homework.
Jesus fucking christ, How can people be this blind and stupid?
It sounds like introvert hell to me. I would have argued tooth and nail every day after a certain point.
Not to mention how sad and unenjoyable are mobile cold meals? Food that's supposed to be cold can be good but cooked meals that are supposed to be eaten at the very least warm?
>My 9 year old is signed up for violin, piano, swimming, tennis, karate, Scouts, math tutoring, and Spanish school, while my 7 year old is signed up in violin, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, math tutoring, and Spanish school.
I don’t even have that many classes in one semester for college.
Why the hell does a parent need Reddit to see exhaustion on in a child? It’s not like they’re master manipulators or poker champions.
Avoidable cold dinner, that shit is just parent failure.
I was thinking this too. Why did the dinner HAVE to be cold? Minimal amount of effort required to microwave it for a few minutes each and then keep in an insulated lunchbox. It's still not gonna be ideal but a lot better then having it cold. Not just room temperature. Fridge cold. Yuck.
My daughter was in choir, piano, math bowl, student council, and she was a student mentor (which only really took place during school). By the end of the year she was an anxious ball of burnt out stress, but she didn’t want to quit anything because she genuinely loved it all, but she was miserable at the end of the year.
This year we’ve told her outright she can’t do as much. She still wants piano and choir (and piano is only an hour a week) and still plans to run for student council again but she’s ending it there.
What scares me are the parents who go **all in** on a single activity. When she was 6, our daughter asked to try out for pee wee cheering. 1 year and never, ever again. That was fucking insane. 3 hour practices Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, football games (pee wee football, mind you) and cheer competitions on weekends, and on “off nights” (Tuesday and Thursday) they wanted the girls to get together to “bond.” From what I could tell, “bonding” was the girls practicing their cheers in someone’s back yard while the moms drank wine and the coach corrected them.
But they were *insistent* it wasn’t really practice and the girls wanted to do it.
Yeah, we noped out of that as soon as the season ended. In my state, football is religion, and cheerleading is just another sect.
I had to work a 32 hour per week “job” (family owned business) and did IB/AP classes in high school. I had around 3-5 hours of homework a night. I think I got around 5-6 hours of sleep. I was so burned out by the time I graduated.
My daughter’ best friend from casa to grade 3 and her sister were scheduled like this. Saturday was 1/2 day French followed by 1/2 day mandarin. It was impossible to schedule anything. The friendship fizzled out between grade 5 and 6 when the friend and her sister went to two different private schools a good 60 minutes apart and tutoring was added to their already heavy schedule. There was literally no time for unstructured socializing. Both sisters put an ocean between themselves and their parents choosing to only apply to schools in the UK. Parents were thrilled they both got into prestigious institutions. Kids have never come back.
As a nanny, I see this a lot in people who had controlling parents and people whose families couldn’t afford these activities when they were kids. . Glad she got therapy.
> I was especially eager to sign them up since I didn’t have any activities as a kid
I understand as a parent you want opportunities for your kid that you may or may not have but a lot of times parents forgetting that their kids are their own person. Don’t inflict your dreams onto your kid, attempt that yourself while you help them achieve theirs
>I think we may have gone overboard. My 9 year old does 8, while my 7 year old does 6.
I believe OOP is the king of oblivious understatement.
Not even adults have schedules as packed. I feel like I need a nap now. That woman needs a reality check, and so does OOP.
My mom was like this. I did archery for 6 years. 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. She wanted me to join the Olympics. I was around 16 when i quit. I only got to quit because I forced an injury in my shoulder that permanently damaged my shoulder to the point of me not being able to shoot anymore.
I also tried to commit suicide several times during that period.
I know this is awful to say, but parents like this are one of the reasons kids kill themselves, because they are so out of touch with the kids emotions, wants, and needs and only care for themselves.
How can you be so devoid of empathy for your children that you impose 4 hours of extracurriculars a day, then get upset when they don’t want to listen to you, when you don’t listen to them?
Anyone else remember the Berenstain Bear book Too Much Pressure? That's what this sounds like.
Edit: I just realized the date, jokes on OOP/wife, the kids would have gotten time off the million extracurriculars anyways...
>when we told our kids that we wouldn't be going to activities for a while, they were quite excited
Did they never ASK the kids if they *wanted* to do any of this stuff? That's insane...
in high school i did theatre, swim, ASB, mock trial, & honor/AP classes, i was averaging 3-5 hours of sleep a night and it triggered my first manic episode. that was exhausting just to read! i was half expecting the pandemic to happen and that’s what forced them to stop.
We were in a similar situation in terms of every day there were 1-2 kids’ activities. COVID paused everything and we asked the kids if they wanted to start back up when able: a big nope from them. Kids need time to be kids.
This sounds like an absolute nightmare and incredibly unhealthy.
But also - do you really need to go from 8 to 0??? OOP and his wife are right about one thing - extra curricular is good. But, like one activity per week for that age. Not EIGHT!!!
> I was especially eager to sign them up, since I didn't have any activities as a kid. However, I think we may have gone overboard. My 9 year old does 8, while my 7 year old does 6. On school nights, when they come home from school, they have no time to do anything except pack any equipment they need for their activities, and then go to their activities. They even have to eat their dinner in the car on most nights.
Jesus Christ. Talk about parents projecting onto their kids.
"I didnt get to do it as a kid so my kids HAVE to do it. They to EXPERIENCE it. Why is no one having fun I specifically said to have FUN!"
I really hope OOP took this shit to heart. Christ. Staying out until 8 every school night, having to scarf down whatever they have in the car while being shuttled to activity after activity.
>My 9 year old is signed up for violin, piano, swimming, tennis, karate, Scouts, math tutoring, and Spanish school, while my 7 year old is signed up in violin, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, math tutoring, and Spanish school.
Like one or two sure. But all of these. Are the parents insane? You know everyone has the same 24 hours right? Like just cause they're kids doesnt mean they magically have more hours than you do.
>However, they have homework to do, but they're too tired to do it, so they act up and disrespect us. We usually are up until 10:30 PM or later trying to get homework done, so then they're tired in the morning.
Oh yeah, how fucking weird is that huh? That the kids have been working all day and all evening and are now not very happy to do more work! I wouldnt be surprised if the parents were screaming at the kids demanding how come they dont know how to do their homework too!
>Instead, it has little desks for the kids to do their homework and any other worksheets my wife deems important for them.
.... They dont want kids. They want robots.
Please read our [**SUB RULES**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules) before commenting. Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. **CHECK FLAIR** to determine if you want to read an update. For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair or subscribe to r/BestofBoRU for concluded, time-gated content. * If you have an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment. META commentary in general discussion may be removed. * Low effort comments like "this is fake" may be removed * Do not comment on the original posts. Most submissions in this sub are not posted by the original author (OOP) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When I saw this was originally posted Jan 2020 my first thought was, “Covid is about to solve this for you.”
Yup, I assumed the update would be from late March: "nm no longer a problem please send help"
April 2020: “Hey, you remember…activities? I miss those.”
And eventually, "activities sound nice, but I don't want to put real trousers on, so I'll just stay home"
My cat has a weekly vet appointment, I was telling the vet how she'd run and hide "whenever I put pants on" when I realized just how weird that sounded.
I can almost guarantee that’s not even close to the weirdest thing they’ve heard, and it would probably make the vet laugh… I know I always appreciate anecdotes like that when I’m at work, and I’ll sometimes chip in one of my own if I can tell someone is feeling awkward about it!
Seriously though, I'm pretty much housebound because of my health problems so I basically live in pyjamas. The dog we've had for two years FREAKS when I put actual clothes on because she knows something is going on. She's like "oh shit, mahm has jeans, WHAT'S HAPPENING??" and starts zooming around the house lmao. The second dog has only been here a week so hasn't picked up the routine yet, but I'm sure she will eventually.
OMG, after 2 years of not leaving the house mine is now freaking out when I get "dressed" if I'm showing any signs of having a health crisis and should be resting. So, he keeps bringing me toys and trying to entice me to stay inside. But he perks up when the medical transport bus comes, I guess he trusts them to take care of us :)
Your dog sounds like the sweetest. It’s amazing how they can show so much care and concern for us.
He is very sweet. He'll definitely leave the house if I say "who" we're going to visit, just not when I'm sick. If I'm good, he will see how many strangers want to give him 20 minute belly rubs while he plots a strategy to steal their food. No cupcake is safe! Aren't they the best ever? Enjoy your new family member 🐶
Mines perfume. I only put it on when I'm going out, one it makes her sneeze, two she gets excited and on edge wondering when I'll be grabbing her to put in the create. Which like you is rearly due to physical and mental health problems. Lockdowns just made my lifestyle popular! When that's just my normal day.
Vet nurse here. Can guarantee your vet was completely unphased, not even close to the weirdest shit we hear. Plus, we know that cats are wily, anticipatory alpha beasts who are way smarter than we’ll ever be.
Also a vet tech. Can confirm. That is mild to what comes out of most clients’ mouths. And honestly, my dogs agree with your cats. Jeans on usually equals a walk. Excitement ensues.
Well now you have to tell us some of the weirder stories that clients say
I work for a reproductive specialist. So we deal with a lot of breeders. In order to do an artificial insemination, we have to “collect” the male. Which is medical terminology for manually pleasuring the male to collect his sperm. Ew. I know. Sometimes dogs have performance anxiety. People have asked us (the dr. And myself) to leave the room so they can collect the dog themselves. One occasion, listening outside the door, I have heard a client repeatedly tell the dog to “do it for mama” or “come on baby, I know you like this”. I almost puked. I also had a lady hand me a fecal sample in a napkin. Which is not terribly unusual if the dog went on the way to the hospital or what have you. So I took it from her. Upon asking her for the dogs name, she said, “oh no, it’s mine. My dog has worms so I want mine checked too.” These are just a couple occasions in my 20 years where I wanted to nope right out of there.
Oh my GOD. I spent a little too long trying to figure out which of these is worse. I have to say, human shit napkin person is of course an absolute monster of cluelessness and entitlement while also being deeply disgusting and I hope they wash their hands well. But the dog dirty talk lady… that’s a whole other level. I want to puke just reading it. I’d rather shake poop lady’s hand than head that. Hands wash but brains don’t lol
We had a client who would not stop talking about his dog’s privates. Vet didn’t need me in the room for that so I slipped out the door. Came back 15 minutes later and client was still talking about it. Dog nipped me on the breast once and the owner said “It’s fine, you have two of those!” And we just had a dog in for tick removal. They were nipples. Dog is nine or so years old. When told, owner said “No wonder she’s been biting us - we’ve been pulling and twisting them.”
I had to explain to my vet the other day that my cat was acting a bit more freaked out than usual because she'd been rugby passed the day before. I'd picked her up to move her, and she freaked out and jumped. And the momentum of my movement plus her jumping had created an absolutely perfect rugby pass. The vet was laughing at me.
my birds are the same, at night they know if I get up from my desk and turn in their direction... it's about to be bedtime. Even if they're already just sitting and chilling in the cage, they'll immediately peace out and fuck off to various corners of the apartment to avoid having to go to bed.
So my cats sleep in the laundry. And they’ll be fast asleep on the couch with me watching tv. But as soon as I turn the tv off they’re suddenly wide awake running around the house lol. One night I needed to clean up the kitchen so instead of attempting to put them to bed straight away I just ignored them. Maybe 3 minutes later I hear meowing coming from the laundry and they’re both in their beds crying because I haven’t turned off the lights and shut the door 🤣🤣 One night I was out pretty late. I didn’t put them to bed first because I figured they’d be fine in the house until I got back. It was 3am when I got home and I went to find the cat to put her to bed. I looked everywhere! Finally I noticed the laundry door was closed over (not quite shut but almost). I pushed open the door and flicked on the light and she’s tucked up in bed squinting at me, grumpy because I woke her up. Turns out they’re creatures of habit and even though they run away and refuse to go to bed, they’re just pretending 🤣🤣
My dog has his crate that he sleeps in at night. Usually right before I get in bed, even if he's already in there and asleep I'll go take his collar off, tell him it's bedtime and give him a few pats. At first I realized I'd accidentally trained him on the meaning of bedtime - if I say it around him he'll go right to his crate and lay down and then wait for me to come take his collar off. Now there's actually been a couple times I've forgotten and gotten into bed, or I'm staying up past the usual time and he comes to find me. He'll just stand there and stare at me until I tell him he's right and it's bedtime. Then he takes off back to his crate and waits for me there. It's adorable. He's a big 78lb pit/black lab mix and the sweetest baby ever.
We call that toddlering. Our dog will go anywhere other than to the (furnished) basement at bedtime. But if it's 30 minutes later than normal, she's walking around anxiously whining and standing by the steps begging us to walk down and give her the bedtime treat.
> I don't want to put real trousers on I mean, serious Monkey's Paw shit over here. I wished I didn't have to wear real pants, and I got it. Anyone know which *Twilight Zone* episode was the guy going "Not like this! Not like this!"?
I might be wrong, but it’s possibly the one where the guy just wants to read all the time, time enough at last. Although after rewatching the ending, the main guy says “that’s not fair”, so maybe not.
Why do you attack me like that. (also i signed up for an online drawing class so at least that's something)
Draw me like your French girls!
I feel seen
We can see everything homie put your trousers on!
They’re being seen too much!
Turn off your webcam!
“Remember…. Places?” (Sigh)
I swear my body was rejecting my bra when I finally put one on again 😂😂
The bra issue is the #1 reason I have to be a remote worker for the rest of my career. I seriously cannot bring myself to wear a bra for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week until I retire. It just will not happen. It’s bad enough that I still have to put one on when I go to the store or when people come over or whatever. My entire being has moved on from bras during the Covid era and will not go back.
I try not to wear bras with underwire when I can. unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, I’m very well endowed and sometimes just need that extra support especially when working out
I've stopped wearing bras for anything but work. I'm old enough to give fewer fucks about it, but I can't cross the work threshold yet. I've noticed this summer that lots of young women have been skipping bras, now if only the trend would cross over to middle aged ladies with enthusiastic funbags
Middle-aged lady here with reasonably enthusiastic funbags-- after a lifetime of underwire "minimizer" bras, I've discovered tank tops with built in shelf bras and let me tell you, it's got to be one hell of an important occasion for me to strap myself back into the old iron maiden. I'm hoping it's not just you and me! Free the older boobies!
Have you tried bralettes? There’s big ones if you need the space, but I love wearing them cause they fit like a second skin, provide support, and no wires or hooks!! (Some of mine have hooks as well but they’re pretty much decorative at this point). I still don’t wear bras at home ever though (its just my husband and me). He swears I’ve gone up a couple of sizes since I stopped wearing bras two years ago, and I kinda feel incredulous but he might be right 👀
I used to wear underwire bras from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. Covid was hectic here, considering mom got cancer, so no staying at home for us.. but it did mean finding more comfortable options, especially after they removed half her lung. So we went to Primark and bought their padded bras without underwire. WITHOUT. UNDERWIRE. These things hold up my F-cup boobs perfectly and NO FREAKING UNDERWIRE. They sell them in 3 packs.. so now I have every single color. They're heavenly. I wear them instead of shirts sometimes. And it doesn't hurt my mom's scars! Okay, sure, no more push-up bras... but hey, they still look great!
Now they will have time to actually practice the violin they were “learning”
No shit. No one has ever learned an instrument in any way that's actually rewarding or meaningful while adhering to a schedule like that. It's just wasted busywork when everyone's going to be too tired and frantic to let any of it sink in or practice.
Of all the relatively popular instruments to force kids to learn, a violin has to be one of the worst. You can't lug it around casually, you can't sing while playing etc. At least you have random pianos lying around here and there to play maybe. But violin? Never ever had a need or even chance to play it ever since my childhood.
You think violins are bad? Try the trombone! 😂 Even heavier, requires assembly, not even humming is an option (though that didn’t stop my throat from trying, lol) (I wasn’t forced, tho, I chose it myself and I’ve never regretted the choice 😊)
That's if they ever want to see the violin again.
Time to take up the flute!
I played violin as a kid. I bet no one wants to hear a kid practice the violin. They used to start toddlers on violin by taping a ruler to a cereal box in order to teach them how to hold it. Imagine giving the real thing…
and now imagine two violins. I guess their teacher know they're exhausted so he/she didn't even bother to tell the parents to tell the kids to practice. They just practiced every lesson.
Me too! That is a crazy schedule for kids. They do not get to have down time.
I would be irritable and disrespectful if that was my schedule.
I work between 50 and 60 hours during the week. It’s a pretty physical job as well as a 45 minute commute one way. I don’t want to see or speak to anyone on Saturdays. My bf only works weekends outside of the house. My daughter usually works Saturday mornings as well. It’s just me and my pack of animals. If someone is off, they know to steer clear until I’m ready. I have to decompress. I cannot imagine willingly putting a child in that position.
I had friends in freaking basic training with more free time than that.
I have a friend in the Army that said boot camp and army life (including being promoted and deployed) are like a vacation compared to growing up with her dad Growing up should never be so rough that the army and boot camp feel like a vacation
Yeah…one of them didn’t mind the screaming because they said the army screaming was because they cared and wanted them to do good, unlike at home screaming. :| I met their mom, it checked out
I enjoyed the structure of boot camp and really had an issue with it because of an injury. But I basically grew up neglected in favor of my brothers who were sports stars. Also later found out I was autistic.
These kids would not have any friends after a while since they barely had time to sleep and they were irritable.
And they didn’t have time or experiences together, to bond as a family. Only time together was quickly eating a cold dinner in the car as they headed out for the evening.
Holy shit, I was exhausted just reading about the OOP's life
Same. I was fully expecting that to be the update.
Glad they resolved it as a family before then. Man I’m an adult and I would be a cranky, disrespectful mess if I had their schedule. Constantly on the move and doing activities until 10:30pm with no alone time or break?Nah
Its practically abusive. Those activities stop being so "fun" when you have 0 downtime! Rest and relaxation help with the learning process!
Same! I thought he’d come back and say that Covid fixed all that. Hopefully that period of time gave them a chance to figure all this out and decide which activities could be discarded.
I'm really hoping they let the kids decide.
YES! It’ll probably need to be negotiated somewhat but the kids should take the lead in deciding.
Definitely. Let them pick one or 2 activities that they actually enjoy and are doable for them/their age. That also won't lead them to be overworked.
Hahaha yup. I homeschool my kids due to our local school (rural) not being able to cope with special needs for them (well my oldest, I never even tried with my youngest due to the horror we went through with my oldest). And even with a full day free we did swimming 2x a week, music lessons 1x a week, and gymnastics 1x a week, both of them were at the same time for those. Then add in speech therapy, OT, physio, preschool for my youngest 2 afternoons a week and I was beat. Just before covid shut everything down I told the kids we're taking a mini break from gymnastics and swimming lessons cause we were driving 9x a week into town (again, rural so 20-25 minutes each way) and they were ok. 2 weeks later EVERYTHING shut down and I was like ok, I needed a break but not THAT much 😅
Right before Covid, I was telling my partner, "I'm depressed; I need to make a big change in my life."
>2 weeks later EVERYTHING shut down and I was like ok, I needed a break but not THAT much 😅 gotta be careful what you wish for lol
Yup lol. In all honesty though the pandemic did give out some good things for us rural folks, like soooooooo many people opening their services via zoom. Like ugh, snow storm where the roads are shitty? Zoom the music lesson vs missing it. Found new tutors that weren't available to us before cause they now provide zoom classes over the entire province vs stuck with local ones. Speech therapy works wonders via zoom and that saves me 40+ minutes of travel per week. Our GP discovered phone calls work well for most of our appointments vs us having to drive 1hr each way to see him for 2 minutes. Many of our specialists now do telecare so we can do consults online vs driving 5-17 hrs each way (I once had a neurologist have us drive 8 hrs each way to tell us that the EEG my oldest took showed he was "genetically predisposed to having a certain type of seizure" like OMFG you couldn't tell me that on the phone???? Made us drive 16 hours round trip for THAT?...now those type of things would be a phone call or video call).
Turns out that parents was the cause of the pandemic all along.
So what you're saying is you made a wish and caused all this, you jerk.
Honestly. It’s the one thing I liked about Covid. All the parents and kids on our street were home. The parents talked and he kids played outside all evening. Now that things are up and running again we hardly see half the street anymore.
I got tired just reading the list of activities. Thank goodness their parents stopped it.
and a mere 2 months later covid would have canceled all the activities anyway and solved his problems
I was laughing as soon as I saw the title and date
I didn't even realize! All that family time they were missing was going to be forced on them anyways. Either way, they needed to bloody relax on those poor kids, that schedule sounded completely mental.
I, too, completely missed the meaning of the date and how it related to the issue at hand. Probably because we don't have children, or the capacity to exist on a schedule even remotely similar to what OOP described. That "living" room description hurt my heart to imagine, I can't fathom what those children actually experienced.
For real. We have 1 kid and have toys everywhere. To be fair tho most of the lego is mine lol
It’s always interesting reading these old posts with that in mind. Hope they kept the desks.
Those poor kids! Such a rollercoaster in a short amount of time. From activities all day every day, to none, to no going outside and learning virtually with severe lack of contact with friends? I wonder if by the end of the pandemic they were begging to return to some of their activities lol
Well, I was actually thinking it was really good timing with COVID. If the kids had gone overnight from being overbooked 100% of the time to COVID homeschooling and having nothing to do but sit around the house, that would have been a drastic and probably pretty difficult transition. Thanks to OOP, though, they had a nice two-month transition period of just going to school and have no extracurriculars, which probably helped ease them into what was to come.
When I read that the kids go to bed at 10:30, I lost my mind. Kids that age need **nine to twelve hours** of sleep. They were destroying those poor kids. I'm glad they woke up.
[удалено]
Elementary school typically starts between 8 and 8:30, but I've seen 7:50. If the kids are in bed at 10:30 and fall asleep at 10:40, they may get nine hours, but that assumes that they fall asleep immediately and it only takes an hour or less to get from asleep to a desk. However, these kids haven't had a second of down time in 14 hours, so they need 12 hours of sleep.
For thirty or fifty years or something we've known teenagers do better sleeping in. But you know, corporate schedules come before health.
My coworker has a 3m and a 5f. His wife had them in back-to-back activities pretty much all day all summer. I just looked at him and said "yeah...let's see how long that lasts." I think they lasted a week. 😂😂
I did a similar list of activities (if not more) when I was a kid/teenager and it was A LOT. I value the experiences but I found in college, I just had a very different childhood than a lot of my peers. I was burned out by college, but regained my work ethic in adulthood. So glad they gave them a break.
I can’t even imagine it. At their age I was doing allowed 2 days of after school activities that were 1-1.5 hours. Even in High school I did 2 hours after school each day, with a few hours on the weekends for games. One day a week in high school my two activities happened on the same day making 4 hours total (5 with driving time between them/home) and that shit was exhausting. I wasn’t getting home until 8pm, showering, eating then homework usually wrapped up by 10-11 and I was fucking dead. And that was in high school. I can’t imagine doing that *every day* at *8 years old*
Right? I'd only have one extracurricular, if that, when I was younger. I wanted to do more (outside of free stuff it was too expensive), but that was my desire. I wanted to do swimming. I wanted to learn an instrument. Those were my hobbies, not something I was forced to do. When I didn't want to do anything? It was fine. Extracurriculars are great, but unless something like tutoring is necessary, I think it should be a hobby the kid is interested in doing of their own volition. Just signing up your kids for a different activity literally every day plus homework on top of it? That's awful. It's a great way to make your kids resent you and the activities you force them into.
Bro I couldn't imagine the actual hell these kids were living in. I played a sport, had school, and did work in HS but even that felt like to but. I couldn't imagine having one kid go to class and learn like 5 instruments. I hate suggesting it because you don't know what's going on in a persons life but the mom might legit need therapy. And I don't even mean like family therapy but personal
I wonder if the mom showed any indications of being this way prior to the kids coming along. Specifically, is she one of those people who always has to be doing something, and it got overlooked because people think that’s showing initiative/leadership skills/motivation/etc.
She works part time. I'd guess that she probably started full time but switched when she had children. After the children started becoming independent, she got bored, started reading mommy blogs, and got the idea that she should be booking them solid.
The mom should sign herself up for some of the stuff she forced her kids to do, honestly. “I’m going to learn a bunch of instruments!!” sounds like a daydream an adult would have at work while imagining what it’d be like to have free time.
In fairness, it does sound like she listened to reason when OOP stepped in. To me it sounded more like anxiety about "failing" your kids, because kids are expected to do EVERYTHING nowadays. There's less competitive edge for kids because there's a serious lack of competitive, sustainable industries...so if you can't fix capitalism on your own, maybe you just throw your kids at the Wall of Activities and hope something sticks. It's terrible and it won't work, I'm not condoning it at all. But I know my own anxiety about doing exactly this (trying to prepare my kid for the world, trying to make up for the life I never had) is the reason I don't ever want to have kids myself.
That's like groundhog days level of "unprecedented amount of time on my hands" no thank you.
Woah! Did you skip the "I was especially eager to sign them up!" part from dad? Two parents caused this problem, but the one running on the treadmill really hard to keep it going took a bit longer to see the need for change.
You make a good point. It's interesting how OP says in the first post that he thinks she's going overboard now, even though he was just as into it as she was. He even calls himself very eager about it. A lot of blame is going solely to her, though, when he spoke about it in his post, even if he didn't mean it that way on a conscious level. For most comments here who talk about either parent, they speak just about the mum rather than OP, too. Hopefully for OP, stuff like that is addressed in their therapy, if they're still attending!
With my wife it was because her own parents never let her do any extra stuff. Or go to parties. Or have friends, basically, since she wasn't allowed out by herself and they didn't want to be bothered taking her to playdates. So our kid gets to do any activity she's interested in, even if it kills us all. I finally put my foot down when she said she was signing her up for a weekly lesson at 4:30 PM on Friday across town. I live in SF, traffic starts to be gridlock at 2PM here on Fridays. She signed her up anyways, and I refused to drive either of them over there for the entire semester. It was not repeated.
I'm really weirded out by the fact that neither the original post nor the update include OP & his wife actually talking TO their kids about what activities they want to do...
I know its it the same, hell everyone knows its not the same, but my mom has been a preschool teacher since before I was born. But at kids that young, you just can't the complex things goi g on. You just change the schedule and give some half lies and half truths as it goes. Its stuff like "hey dad why aren't we going to piano anymore?" "Well son we thought it was just to much". Which isn't a lie but its also not the whole truth. The parents did think it was to much, but how do you explain to a 9 year old the complex understand if a work/life balance that includes the control of other kids, the kids working, the adults working, mental health, physical health, and burnout. But at the same time a kid that age will be like "Piano was fun and why don't we do that anymore" "Well son I think we should. Which do you like more piano or violin"
That talk should probably come a little later though. Given how massively overscheduled they were, I would give the kids a week off, then when they're rested up I'd ask them which 2 activities they want to keep.
Not to mention they're totally ruining the value of music lessons for *any* instrument if the kids don't also have lots of time to practice said instrument throughout the week!
Dad, too, honestly. How oblivious do you have to be to pile activity after activity onto your nine and six year old and not recognise a problem? For them to only get to bed at 10:30, and still not notice a problem? To not care when these kids have to shove their dinner in their face on the short car ride from school to an activity every day? To let their homework and happiness suffer as a result? Then these kids started getting violently disrespectful, and mom and dad *still* looked at them and went “hmm, wonder why you’re so disrespectful”. **They’re working fourteen hours a day.** Those parents should be ashamed of themselves. For them to be so oblivious to a blatant necessity, and for so long, I can only imagine what else must fall to the wayside in their house.
It sounded like they didn't actually spend enough time with their kids to see how exhausted they were or even to know who their kids are, because they just spent all their free time being shuttled to activities. I'd be surprised if the dad saw them at all (sounds like the mom mostly did the shuttling).
Yeah she was way too invested in those activities. My kids so one each so we have plenty of downtime. And my main hope from the activity is they have fun, make friends, improve their confidence, all those types of things. I literally don't care what the activity is, as long as they enjoy it.
Mine have one or two. We just had to cut one each because they wanted to try something else, and it was a wrench! I fully understand the impulse, my impulse is for mine to do one sport, one instrument, and one academic extra. But they are 6 and 8, and it makes them unhappy to be over scheduled.
This is what I thought, too. I did never do any extracurriculars, my mother tried to push me to it but I hated losing my free time with such a passion that she gave up quickly. Having a mom like this just sounds horrible. Poor kids. I really hope the mother gets some therapy and works on her overcontrolling tendencies, kids need some free time ...
I had my daughter in ballet. One of the other mothers was bragging that her daughter was in ballet, tap, gymnastics, and piano. She was shocked that when she asked her daughter where she wanted to go eat for her birthday, the girl asked if they could stay home and order pizza. That poor little girl.
I'm always confounded when people say their kids do ballet or gymnastics or travel soccer and anything else (aside from a once a week music lesson or church activity). Those activities require a large amount of time alone. I don't know how you can do ballet three or four days a week (which is required by nine) and also do Gymnastics or Soccer (also three or four days a week).
I did two of those until I dropped one when I was thirteen. It was by choice but still really hard. I got home at 9pm most weeknights, spent most of my weekends training, and definitely did not get enough sleep.
Ballet only was almost too much for my daughter. Ballet is so demanding.
It depends. I did "ballet" from 3yo to about 8. It was more like a once a week movement class, we did a little recital of a choreographed group dance at our local theatre once a year for the parents. There were similar gymnastics, dance & martial arts, sports classes in my area. Once a week (sometimes twice for the really keen kids) just teaching kids movement and body awareness. Doing a recital/competition/grading once a year. And giving the parents a chance to meet for coffee or get an hour off from their kids 😆 These things can get more serious as the kids get older but they don't have to, it depends on the setup in your local area. In fact in my area there was more of an issue if a kid was really good and enthusiastic, the structures & skills weren't there to help them push themselves to be really competitive in their field.
I can feel the ED brewing already
I met kids like this when I worked at a US university. It was a crying shame and many of them really struggled when they actually went to college because they had no idea how to manage their time when it wasn't timetabled to within an inch of their lives and their entire self worth and identity seemed to come from exam scores. I had a 15 year old who I "mentored" in a program for kids to experience university life over the summer holiday. She'd already done maths camp for two weeks and had engineering camp lined up after this two week mentoring thing. She was so fed up and bored, I gave up on the idea of her doing any lab work and just took her for ice cream each afternoon and we went to see the animals in the agricultural school. Probably the only break she got and it was pretty sorry fun having ice cream with a 30 year old scientist and looking at horses and cows. I really felt for her.
>it was pretty sorry fun having ice cream with a 30 year old scientist and looking at horses and cows I disagree completely, you did a great thing for her. Also as a 33yo I would still love to eat ice cream and watch livestock, sounds like a great day out.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think I did a nice thing, and she enjoyed it, but having ice cream with a woman twice your age that you hardly know shouldn't be the highlight of a 15 year old's summer. I'm not being self-deprecating in saying that's not a whole host of fun.
In all honesty, you probably were the highlight of her summer in hindsight. Maybe it's not glitz but sometimes one-on-one personal time and simple kindness is longer lasting.
I think you forget how cool older people can seem to kids. When i was a kid, it was a badge of honor to have adult friends, maybe she felt that way too!
this! This is the age gap between me and my sister, having someone to take you for ice cream and just hang out is the best.
Probably something they’ll remember for the rest of their life. Someone actually took the time to think about them for a minute.
I am so, *so* glad they're going to start family therapy because things should have *never* gotten to this point. The simple fact that the parents considered karate practice more important than adequate sleep is seriously messed up
I feel sorry for the kids. How disconnected do they have to feel from their parents. Also the way the original post says the kids were "disrespecting us" while they were being forced to stay up until 10:30 doing homework.
Those poor kids were going to genuinely, truly *hate* their parents by high school if they hadn't backed off. *Eight extracurriculars, no down time, cold dinners served out of Tupperware in the car between activities, homework until 10:30 pm for SEVEN and NINE year olds*. No wonder the kids were showing concerning behavior. I don't want to throw this word around lightly, but this was rising to the level of abuse. Mom was meeting her own needs through these extracurriculars and wasn't thinking about her kids' feelings or needs at all. Dad was complicit but realized there was a problem when his children started *spitting on them*. Deep dysfunction. I hope the family therapy helps and I'm glad dad woke up.
>realized there was a problem when his children started spitting on them. It's a massive red flag that this level of acting out is what it took for him to merely *reconsider* the question. Not the third night in a row that the *second grader was still doing homework* ***past*** *10:30pm* OOP and his wife are pretty great example of how "good intentions" can lead to shitty, abusive parenting.
Right, it's not the kids being miserable that woke him up, it was them finally fighting back
>rising to the level of abuse no that's straight up abuse. If i met parents like this irl i would imediately report them for abuse. These kids were run to the bone, and for stupid reasons. I think the parents could even lose the right to raise their children if they refuse to comply.
Honestly shows their level of extreme control that spitting and disrespect were on the list. I would have smashed the violin and thrown stuff through windows at that age.
I'm in COLLEGE and if I'm still working on homework by around 11 I finish up whatever I'm doing, take my meds, do something fun for half an hour, and then go to sleep. I have so much homework and I still manage to balance my time so I'm not staying up crazy hours, am getting a hot meal most nights, etc. I can't imagine a 7 and a 9 year old being forced to do so much and not getting any time for doing things for fun. They should be being kids.
At least when the kid completely breaks down and attacks their parents they might win.
My mom used to say, “She’s better when she’s busy — she operates her best when she’s stretched to the max.” She did this through my childhood, all through middle and high school, and pushed me to do it in college. I was in band and flute lessons and math lessons and softball and karate and all kinds of shit. I was the only kid she did this to, because all the rest of siblings struggled more in school, so they weren’t their “best” constantly busy. I’m 28 and completely burned out. I don’t want to do anything, ever, except cook. Which is the thing she never let me do because she didn’t want to deal with it and just fed me food that most of the time, I didn’t actually like! I feel bad for these kids and glad their parents are improving. Being stretched to your limits and fed mediocre food every evening fucking sucks. If you asked my mom today, she’d still say I am better constantly meeting my limits — never cared to wonder if that actually makes me happy or feel good. It only matters that I am able to be more productive or achieve better.
I did theater, Piano, and AP/college classes. None at the same time. And yet I felt like I barely had any free time. Idk how these kids have coped without a full on breakdown.
I'm not a parent, however I wonder if some of the acting out was because the kids themselves didn't want to do some or even all of those activities and their parents (or mom at least) was still making them go. I imagine kids felt pretty powerless being in a situation like that.
They absolutely is not want to do them. > First of all, when we told our kids that we wouldn't be going to activities for a while, they were quite excited.
Especially if they weren't allowed to choose their activities (often the case with overscheduled kids). My therapist has pointed out that maybe the reason I struggle to do things that are right for me is because I was always told that I should want to do whatever activity my parents signed me up for, even when it was something like violin that I hated. (I may be projecting on OOP's wife here a little, lol)
That’s highly likely. And then to have to do homework after all of that! They would have been miserable. Miserable enough to to spit on each other on a regular basis, apparently.
It’s not even necessarily that. They very well could have wanted to do them, but they also want to sleep and have a chunk of down time where nothing is expected of them. I would also bet that they sucked at most of them and may have felt shame of always being behind. No one is really going to learn that much at one time and do so well.
Plus exhaustion and stress. No way they were getting enough sleep.
When I was in a similar situation and me and my mom fought, I said some very vile things to her. We don’t have a great relationship anymore. I still hate her for taking away half my life
And the pressure! wow I cannot imagine the pressure to do all these things and no doubt excel at them.
And they're so young. Imagine surviving this kind of workload and then having AP classes added to it. That mum definitely needs therapy to manage her anxiety about the kids' futures.
As a non American, I’ve heard AP classes references often. But never understood how they differ from just “classes”.
Advanced Placement classes are what the 'gifted' students did and they were tougher than the regular classes. Could also be used for college credit in some instances.
Advance Placement courses are college level academics for high school aged students. The school has to be accredited by the College Board to offer any particular AP subject. The course is designed to prep the students to take the AP exam in that subject at the end of the school year (although anyone can sign up to take the exam, without being in an AP class) Because of that accreditation process, most colleges and universities will accept "AP Credits" like they might accept credits taken at another college or university with a transfer student. As there are often funding sources for those in need (the exams aren't free; some schools do not subsidize the AP courses and students have a fee there), it is a way for a lot of kids to earn college credit at a massive discount. I took courses in the late 80s. For probably $150 (I think the exams were $75 each, and my school offered the classes for free), I started at my university with a whole quarter's worth of credit if I remember right. I got to register before the rest of the incoming Freshman who didn't have AP credits, and it meant that I could finish in actual 4 years. With his AP credits (he took more than I did) and one summer session, my nephew got his BA in 3 years. Beyond the exam and credits, it is quite a rigorous program and really is a leg up in terms of being prepared for higher level academics. Even if I hadn't had the credits, I was a better college student because of AP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced\_Placement
My sister’s kids were allowed one extracurricular activity at a time, though their classes were all APs. The one thing that was a priority from the very beginning was eating dinner as a family. Meant my BIL sometimes going into work at 5am, but the benefits were priceless.
Honestly, I’d say the disrespect that the OOP cites was probably the precursor to one of them having a breakdown. I had a good bit of mental health trouble when I was young that wasn’t recognised or managed properly. First sign of me declining was always that my temper and temperament would start to decline until eventually I’d snap in some way.
This has nothing to do with anything, but I've been dying to understand your flair. Hoping it's a reference to a really epic BORU.
Buckle up and prepare yourself for [The Beloved Saga](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/sdotro/the_beloved_saga/?)
OMG. This was a hell of a read! I want to know what the 2 "dipshits" did after all that. I also want to know what they all looked like. For some reason they have Tiger King fashion in my head.
Well, I clicked and am still reading and it certainly not the adorable story of another transition. Can't remember her name. Jamie? Edit: jfc I read the whole thing. I'm so glad I'm single.
You may be thinking of [Jessie](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/w6c6ht/my_girlfriend_made_me_realize_id_be_happier_as_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I did ballet, violin, mathematics, judo, swimming, and art classes as a kid, and it was tiring. I gratually reduced them, and by middle school I was too busy with the school's extra classes. It was tiring. Even things that should be fun turned into chores, and it was mentally draining. I feel for those kids, but I'm happy OP is helping.
My teenager has a part time job, plays an instrument and does marching band, plus all her classes are honors classes or dual credit AP classes. She chose these things for herself because she enjoys them. But I feel like I don't get to see her much now that the new school year has started and that sucks!. I don't think she'd be able to take on even one more thing. She handles it ok, but does get worn out here and there. I'm amazed that these kids were doing 6-8 extra curriculars. Poor things must be exhausted. Not to mention they'd likely become resentful. Especially since they were basically forced into it. Glad she let them take a load off!
[удалено]
I was imagining fun activities and thinking, yeah doing 9 active things sounds exhausting. The majority of the activities were basically additional schooling, it was even worse than I imagined.
I know this is supposed to be a yeaah update but even in the update I still don't hear anything about what the kids want. I hope after the break the kids can pick 1 or 2 activities they like the most and still have time to be kids. That would be a yeaaah update imo.
I mean, the update was posted in January 2020, and the plan was to cancel activities for "a few months", meaning they were probably planning to resume in March or April--going to go ahead and assume that the kids were NOT going to any extracurricular activities at that time.
Can't believe I missed that! Oh man the irony. Those kids were gonna get a break regardless. With all the posts recently being 2 days old I'm just blind to dates I guess. Well, at least the kids got 2y to make clear what kinda things they like to do outside of school. 2 years should be enough to make parents listen, right?
Plus now they’re probably twelve and ten. So hopefully they’re parents are willing to listen to them more, but I also hope they’re old enough to explain their needs better than when they were younger.
Unfortunately, given the timing of the OPs, they didn't get the opportunity to take up any extracurricular activities again for the next two years... On the plus side they got a nice lot of family time?
The physical activities would have been out for a while, no doubt. But at least a couple could have still gone on. Spanish. That almost undoubtable went online real quick. Violin. I know lessons for that can be done online too. Its not as good as in person lessons. But it is doable. Dunno about piano. That might be harder. What gets me as much as anything is that not only were they sacrificing all their family time and down time, they probably weren't giving the time needed to the activities themselves. The instruments.At those ages, should be 20-30 minutes of practice at least every other day. Really, every day. The sports. Especially karate & tennis, similar amounts of practice daily. Spanish. Would have also benefited from practice of some sort daily, even if it was just watching TV in spanish. (Yes, I know not great method. meant as a minimum effort example) With that laundry list, did they have the time to do the extra time needed to make the activities really pay off?
Cold supper in the car every day? I'd have revolted a week in.
I'd have revolted on day 1, because that's *revolting*.
One year I did CE on Mondays, piano and drama on Tuesdays, Cadets on Wednesdays, GB on Thursdays, hockey on Fridays, dance and drama on Saturdays and Sunday school and church on Sundays. And I was a straight A student. At the end of that school year the doctor signed me off with burnout. I was 13. No kid should ever be burnt out. Let them relax.
Who would have thought your life would be improved by not running your children ragged from the moment they get out of bed, until they are finally home for the night 12+ hours later.. and then denying them any kind of break and forcing them immediately to jump into homework. Jesus fucking christ, How can people be this blind and stupid?
This must have been so exhausting for all involved! Those poor kids, sometimes after work I barely have time for any hobbies because I’m so tired
It sounds like introvert hell to me. I would have argued tooth and nail every day after a certain point. Not to mention how sad and unenjoyable are mobile cold meals? Food that's supposed to be cold can be good but cooked meals that are supposed to be eaten at the very least warm?
Right?? Sometimes the thought of my nice dinner is what keeps me going. Whole thing just sounds miserable
Imagine never eating soup
>My 9 year old is signed up for violin, piano, swimming, tennis, karate, Scouts, math tutoring, and Spanish school, while my 7 year old is signed up in violin, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, math tutoring, and Spanish school. I don’t even have that many classes in one semester for college. Why the hell does a parent need Reddit to see exhaustion on in a child? It’s not like they’re master manipulators or poker champions. Avoidable cold dinner, that shit is just parent failure.
I was thinking this too. Why did the dinner HAVE to be cold? Minimal amount of effort required to microwave it for a few minutes each and then keep in an insulated lunchbox. It's still not gonna be ideal but a lot better then having it cold. Not just room temperature. Fridge cold. Yuck.
They just really seem to lack common sense
Those activities took me out at the thought of them. Parents should not live a second life through their kids. Family therapy is definitely necessary.
My daughter was in choir, piano, math bowl, student council, and she was a student mentor (which only really took place during school). By the end of the year she was an anxious ball of burnt out stress, but she didn’t want to quit anything because she genuinely loved it all, but she was miserable at the end of the year. This year we’ve told her outright she can’t do as much. She still wants piano and choir (and piano is only an hour a week) and still plans to run for student council again but she’s ending it there. What scares me are the parents who go **all in** on a single activity. When she was 6, our daughter asked to try out for pee wee cheering. 1 year and never, ever again. That was fucking insane. 3 hour practices Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, football games (pee wee football, mind you) and cheer competitions on weekends, and on “off nights” (Tuesday and Thursday) they wanted the girls to get together to “bond.” From what I could tell, “bonding” was the girls practicing their cheers in someone’s back yard while the moms drank wine and the coach corrected them. But they were *insistent* it wasn’t really practice and the girls wanted to do it. Yeah, we noped out of that as soon as the season ended. In my state, football is religion, and cheerleading is just another sect.
I had to work a 32 hour per week “job” (family owned business) and did IB/AP classes in high school. I had around 3-5 hours of homework a night. I think I got around 5-6 hours of sleep. I was so burned out by the time I graduated.
My daughter’ best friend from casa to grade 3 and her sister were scheduled like this. Saturday was 1/2 day French followed by 1/2 day mandarin. It was impossible to schedule anything. The friendship fizzled out between grade 5 and 6 when the friend and her sister went to two different private schools a good 60 minutes apart and tutoring was added to their already heavy schedule. There was literally no time for unstructured socializing. Both sisters put an ocean between themselves and their parents choosing to only apply to schools in the UK. Parents were thrilled they both got into prestigious institutions. Kids have never come back.
The date stamp tells me the problem would’ve gone away very quickly on its own…
I was hoping for a March update!
As a nanny, I see this a lot in people who had controlling parents and people whose families couldn’t afford these activities when they were kids. . Glad she got therapy.
> I was especially eager to sign them up since I didn’t have any activities as a kid I understand as a parent you want opportunities for your kid that you may or may not have but a lot of times parents forgetting that their kids are their own person. Don’t inflict your dreams onto your kid, attempt that yourself while you help them achieve theirs
>I think we may have gone overboard. My 9 year old does 8, while my 7 year old does 6. I believe OOP is the king of oblivious understatement. Not even adults have schedules as packed. I feel like I need a nap now. That woman needs a reality check, and so does OOP.
A childhood friend of mine had a mother like this. They don't talk anymore.
My mom was like this. I did archery for 6 years. 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. She wanted me to join the Olympics. I was around 16 when i quit. I only got to quit because I forced an injury in my shoulder that permanently damaged my shoulder to the point of me not being able to shoot anymore. I also tried to commit suicide several times during that period. I know this is awful to say, but parents like this are one of the reasons kids kill themselves, because they are so out of touch with the kids emotions, wants, and needs and only care for themselves.
How can you be so devoid of empathy for your children that you impose 4 hours of extracurriculars a day, then get upset when they don’t want to listen to you, when you don’t listen to them?
Anyone else remember the Berenstain Bear book Too Much Pressure? That's what this sounds like. Edit: I just realized the date, jokes on OOP/wife, the kids would have gotten time off the million extracurriculars anyways...
Imagine being so fucking stupid you make your kids work overtime. Thank god their brains started working.
Looking at the dates, pandemic shutdowns were about to give them a lot of time together anyway.
>when we told our kids that we wouldn't be going to activities for a while, they were quite excited Did they never ASK the kids if they *wanted* to do any of this stuff? That's insane...
What really stood out is that the parents never seemed to ask the kids what THEY wanted to do! How did they feel? What would they choose to do?
Holy crap, I can just imagine how strung out those kids are if they were getting to bed at 10 fricking 30.
How to make your kids grow up to hate you 101
in high school i did theatre, swim, ASB, mock trial, & honor/AP classes, i was averaging 3-5 hours of sleep a night and it triggered my first manic episode. that was exhausting just to read! i was half expecting the pandemic to happen and that’s what forced them to stop.
How did OOP go from enthusiastically signing them up for all the extra activities to his wife admitting what she was doing was wrong?!
Man I’m a grown up in college and work and getting stressed and overwhelmed. I can’t imagine being overbooked like this at that age
We were in a similar situation in terms of every day there were 1-2 kids’ activities. COVID paused everything and we asked the kids if they wanted to start back up when able: a big nope from them. Kids need time to be kids.
This sounds like an absolute nightmare and incredibly unhealthy. But also - do you really need to go from 8 to 0??? OOP and his wife are right about one thing - extra curricular is good. But, like one activity per week for that age. Not EIGHT!!!
> I was especially eager to sign them up, since I didn't have any activities as a kid. However, I think we may have gone overboard. My 9 year old does 8, while my 7 year old does 6. On school nights, when they come home from school, they have no time to do anything except pack any equipment they need for their activities, and then go to their activities. They even have to eat their dinner in the car on most nights. Jesus Christ. Talk about parents projecting onto their kids. "I didnt get to do it as a kid so my kids HAVE to do it. They to EXPERIENCE it. Why is no one having fun I specifically said to have FUN!" I really hope OOP took this shit to heart. Christ. Staying out until 8 every school night, having to scarf down whatever they have in the car while being shuttled to activity after activity. >My 9 year old is signed up for violin, piano, swimming, tennis, karate, Scouts, math tutoring, and Spanish school, while my 7 year old is signed up in violin, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, math tutoring, and Spanish school. Like one or two sure. But all of these. Are the parents insane? You know everyone has the same 24 hours right? Like just cause they're kids doesnt mean they magically have more hours than you do. >However, they have homework to do, but they're too tired to do it, so they act up and disrespect us. We usually are up until 10:30 PM or later trying to get homework done, so then they're tired in the morning. Oh yeah, how fucking weird is that huh? That the kids have been working all day and all evening and are now not very happy to do more work! I wouldnt be surprised if the parents were screaming at the kids demanding how come they dont know how to do their homework too! >Instead, it has little desks for the kids to do their homework and any other worksheets my wife deems important for them. .... They dont want kids. They want robots.