Oh, the Extracurriculars!

Like a lot of teenagers in America, I've spent the majority of my life involved in lessons of some sort. It started with ballet lessons around the age of three, then there was a brief foray into the world of gymnastics at a gym with a decidedly religious tilt (all I really remember about it was falling off the balance beam with "Jesus Loves Me" playing in the background). There were piano lessons and voice lessons, and then I started performing in community musical theatre productions.

Of all of these, I think that being involved in ballet has had the largest impact on my life--positively and negatively. Of course, almost every little girl takes ballet at some point in her life, but I actually stuck with it for years and years afterward, and danced pretty seriously (six days a week) for a while. I learned how to behave in a rehearsal, when not to ask questions, and that adults can behave even worse than eleven-year-old girls (among other things).

My question is this: how do the lessons we take and activities we do as children affect us later on in life? Are all those thousands of dollars our parents end up spending worth it?

I'm thinking yes. I mean, I don't dance all that much anymore, but from my experiences I think that I know more about people, maybe even understand how they work a little better than I would have otherwise.

These musings are starting to take a decidedly after-school-special turn, so I'll move on.

I think that more and more lately, it has become ridiculously important in our culture to have every minute of every day scheduled, especially when it comes to the kids. There's never any time to just chillax and watch Reading Rainbow when they're being shuffled from school to lesson to practice to whatever else their parents find important for them to do. Do these kids even enjoy all the constant activity? I guess it could be argued that if they weren't playing peewee football they would be at home watching television and eating cookies. But I'm thinking, let the poor kids have a break. It's important for them to be able to learn some things that they're interested in outside of school, but do parents really need to be pushing their kids to the point that they hardly have time to sit down and eat dinner?

I say let the kids watch television for a while, let them go outside and play.