I can’t help feeling we have, as a society, swung too far in being kid eccentric…

Easy. Just leave them in their rooms playing XBox whilst you get on with enjoying yourself.

My parents weren’t in a position to support me in stuff I wanted to do. I am in a position where I can therefore I will. Not for any “return on investment” but because I love spending time with my children and seeing them enjoy what they do. Don’t view this as “kid eccentric” just part of being a good parent.

Luckily, both my kids have focused on ‘cheap’ sports- Rugby*, swimming, XC running. We followed the principle of ‘chuck enough activities at them, and some will stick’. Shame MTB-ing never really got its claws into them, but to be honest it’s about them doing stuff that they enjoy and are pretty good at. Result is happy kids, therefore happy missus, and therefore I get nagged about other stuff instead.

*well, boots + kits + club fees + tour contributions add up, but at least we’re not in the market for a polo ponies or go-karts.

Let me go further with my “kid eccentric” comment.

We (as in middle class/STW society) don’t let our kids have too many sweats or too much ipad or give them everything they want out of the Argos catalogue.

But time …. time its seems they can have every given second….. I’m not sure that’s right ?

I’d love to spend all my spare time with my two… but I purposefully don’t..

Like all parenting it’s a balancing act …. I guess we all have our “pivot points” in different places.

Who said anything about dedicating all their time?

Sure, there are things I would like to do that the skating gets in the way of but that’s what being a parent is about. My wife came from a family that did that as well and they are as far from the STW middle class demographic as you can get yet did their ballet, guiding and whatever else. Similarly my dad was happy enough to drive me around doing SDA’s at uni as it gave us time together.

Like anything else you need your own time to do your own things, I work shifts so I get that, similarly my missus works part time. I have no doubt that as she progresses we will have to manage that time better but there are other things we could do to mitigate if we wanted to.

As for return on our investment, I’d say happiness, a sense of achievement and general development have paid that off many times over. We get a lot out of it too.