If you have changed the meetings in the cafeteria for the changing room of the pool, watching TV on Saturday mornings lying on the sofa for 30 kilometers of car to take your children to a game, if the time of the reeds has gone from being "when I get up I go" to a "when the game is over, see you", it is time to realize that your children's extracurricula monopolize your social life.
It's five o'clock in the afternoon, departure time in schools. The kids finish their school day and it's just when a crowd of parents get ready to start their own, races and hurries are mixed with backpacks, dance costumes, judo, football boots and an endless variety of paraphernalia. stress to finish the job on time was over, they are very wrong, now begin extracurricular, it is time to change the agenda and meetings, for training, English classes and painting.
I remember when I was little that it became fashionable to take your children to English extracurriculars and that academies began to appear like mushrooms in the forest. I would have about 10 years or so, I went to English classes twice a week and combined it with guitar lessons and some soccer training. I do not remember, except the first few days, that my parents accompanied me. But of course, I did not live in Madrid, but in a much smaller city and they were other times.
Today, at least in what I see around me, children start classes as soon as they stand and his first words come out of his lips. My children, to give an example, began going to extracurricular with four years and I get the feeling that the age continues to fall.
The parents of my children's friends are my friends
There are so many hours and meters of hallway, changing rooms and cafeterias to make time while they finish classes, that by force you end up making friends with the rest of the parents, who, like you, are waiting.
And so, sooner or later you end up adding another group of WhatsApp, "Maria Ballet", "English Silvi"that they are relegating your old lifelong groups to the last row.How many of your current friends are the parents of a friend of your children? And it is that many of us, I do not know if by necessity or by impossibility of combining our social life of 100% before with the extracurriculars of our children, we end up creating a new group of friendships that is clear now they have or have something in common, Waiting hours
And so in the end you end up leaving several families on weekends, in a cheerful caravan. Of course, after the end of the social events of our children.
Sacrifice or evolution?
I would not know very well to say if it is a sacrifice of our previous social life or simply a mere evolution, after all, most of us still keep their lifelong friends, we may not see them as much and not even half than we would like but there they are.
We cannot always reconcile our agenda with that of our children and in many cases there is no choice but to make sacrifices, choose your agenda or ours. If once we become parents it becomes difficult to meet those friends who are still single or have no children, imagine what it is to be with those friends who are also parents. Because having a plan for children is relatively simple, but staying one night to go out to dinner and enjoy an evening without children together is a bit more complicated.
We manage our agenda based on that of our children
Surely it will have happened to you that at the time of requesting an appointment at the doctor, or that someone comes home to repair an appliance or when staying with friends, you have had to adjust according to the schedules of the classes of your children. Even on Saturdays or the sacred Sunday nap, nothing escapes our children's agenda.
We went from having our children in the nursery to coincide with our work schedules and as they grow they are the ones who will continue to mark, to some extent, our non-working hours, although in many cases we are ourselves who caused all that. And as our son or daughter moves forward in their extracurricular things, the thing can be even more demanding, especially once we enter the competitions and with greater reason if we live far from the big cities and we have to move to the different events in the Let our children participate.
This I expose, It is not a complaintIt is a sacrifice that many fathers and mothers have been making a lifetime, even in some cases, sacrificing much more than their own time. But we would have to see what is the point at which this fashion of taking our son to all the extracurricula that our pocket allows us, begins to give more problems than benefits.
Our life is also important.
Because I am very clear that My children are a tremendously important part of my life, but so is my own life.Like his wife, we are parents, but also people who need to interact with our own friends and enjoy "adult" time. And what I mean is that we want our children to have the best we can give them, to receive all the training that will come in handy in the future so that they can, if they wish, become great sports stars. , of the arts, etc. But it is also important that they understand, both they and us, that enjoying a weekend with family or friends is very important.
On many occasions, the majority perhaps, our children simply want to enjoy the activity they practice, without aspiring to anything else. And it is important, that both they and us, realize that not everything has to be taken as if they were professionals, as if there was nothing more than the activity, that it is also important to enjoy time outside of requirements, what we used to call " leisure time and relax. "
Don't forget that living our own lives is also very important, that the life we lead, always busy, always with something on the agenda, without a single minute to rest or to have a coffee with friends, with the family or simply read a book calmly, burns and wears us down our children.
Since we cannot prevent our social life from changing and that we have to make certain sacrifices for our children, why not adapt to the new situation and try to find a place to enjoy the family and the new friendships that come with it?
