After School Activities

This is something that I am constantly on at myself about, after school activities. My children do swimming and riding, when we aren't doing anything else. I am thinking of upping the swimming as we currently pay a fortune for term time swimming and we've just had 5 weeks off for the holidays, as that seems to be the way the Irish teacher works.

It's not because I am competitive, it's really because I am selfish. I want my children to be able to swim on holiday, so that they don't drown if either me or husband isn't attached to them whilst they are in the pool. You see, the girls used to swim at the municipal cesspit, but 8000 ear infections later and after 6 months, we took a trip to swim with the Uncle. Where, foolishly, I imagined that they'd be pretty competent. So, I let them go in the pool, confident that they wouldn't drown. I now realise that being able to swim doesn't automatically make me a swimming teacher nor indeed, does it make me the best guage of how far ones children are supposed to have progressed in 6 months. Both children had to be saved by me and Uncle, on several occasions, smallest from the bottom of the pool, once. You see now, why I am thinking of upping the sessions, you can go to prison for negligence!

Beyond that though, my children do very little. I still think that the youngest is too young to be at school and so pay very little attention to any of the requests for extra curricular, or indeed curricular activities. In my house, home work is child lead in the main, except when we know that X child will be unhappy if not keeping up with peers.

So, imagine my surprise this am, when I dropped my little weasels off in the playground at a very cool 9 53 and fled to the school office clutching pieces of paper that had come home in the book bags the night before, telling of an after school bead making club, to which we had paid great attention (including forgetting the book bags this morning as we had made a special effort to remove them from the back of the car, you can't have everything, where would you put it?) Cheque in hand and slips of paper made out, I went to the office like a smug Uber Mother and handed the sheets in. Tick a flipping box! Lovely lady at reception looked at me as if nothing ground breaking was happening here, I imagined triumphant fanfares and the like.
"I have some here already!" She pointed out,
"WTF" my raised eybrow said.
"Only 10 people allowed per four week session,"
"Yes, so it says." I had read the info', didn't need it repeated back at me negatively at 9am.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine... with your two, that makes 11"
"hmmmm, yes, so it does" I sort of spat
"I shall check and see if that's ok, then I shall let you know."
"Righto!" I said, once the right side of my brain had engaged and reminded me that, despite the girls wanting to do the club, I had only really agreed to it because I wanted to pick them up on a Thursday at 4 30. You see, totally selfish. Just had the call, and they're in, wouldn't surprise me if the lovely lady at reception pushed this through a little harder because she was very worried for her safety at the hands of this very unhinged mother, we'll never know.

For a very short time we tried ballet, couple of years back. That sent me doo lally and broght out the very worst of Allan Rickman's Sherrif of Nottingham that hides very shallowly below my unrippled psycho surface. There was never anywhere to park, the girls hated leaving the house and I had to light dynamite behind their backs to get them into the dance studio. We also tried gymnastics, that was even worse, them and their friends fought all the way there in the car and then all the way home. There were tears and whinges all round, this is not what after school clubs are supposed to be made of, in anyone's imagination.

I never did any after school activities really, and I'm a social lepper! It's not done me any harm, so unless they go on at me constantly and make my life a living nightmare, as they do about horses and riding, they can be underprivileged and deprived most days after school. Frankly, as I said to my Mother in Law over Easter, they should consider themselves luck that they aren't dead. That's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it.

So,to Mr and Mrs "my child does everything all day every day including weekends and the holidays!" can I just say, I am very happy for you, my children don't, they'll probably, with any luck, be social leppers too, but, my Christ will they be able to drink their depressions away. Apple never falls far from the tree, does it?