We've often been highly scheduled. The Kid likes having a lot of things to do, and she is interested in nearly everything I can think of. When we moved this summer, I told her that we were going to be careful not to overschedule so that we could enjoy our time in our new city, with all the opportunities the city afforded us.
And then it seemed we were constantly not getting to anything on our list. We were skipping field trips, she was always trying to catch up in her online class, we weren't even getting the basics done, we were always running late. It didn't make any sense to me. I finally laid out everything we were doing on a schedule grid, and found out that the reason it wasn't working is that it literally did not work. Even though the total number of hours technically could fit in a week, it didn't fit in the spaces of time that we had. And no amount of organization was going to make it work.
Here's the thing: each year, we ease the number of hours spent on school up. Just a bit at a time. And the same extracurriculars that The Kid has previously enjoyed take at least as many hours as before, if not more due to increasing levels. This was simply the year that we hit the breaking point. It doesn't all fit anymore. Something had to give, and there was nothing that we really wanted to give up.
Decisions are hard.
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