Mr Al Young Dot Com

This week marks the end of the school year for my kids. Its only preschool and toddler classes, not even real school yet, but with the end of classes comes the start of the busy summer “activities” season. My wife has had various community resources catalogs and the calender out for months planning the next 3 months, making sure that there is no “down” time unaccounted for. I know the other Moms are doing the same thing. Something about idle hands and minds or something like that. Our summer is now packed and can be broken down into 3 parts, camps, lessons, and vacation.

Camps

These are daily or weekly camp activities such as nature camp, sports camp, and daily vacation bible school. These activities will eat up a good chunk of the summer. The plus of these camps is that it is every day and it lasts from half a day to a whole day, so plenty of time to get some rest or work done. Of course camps are the most expensive summer activity.

Lessons

In addition to the camps, there will several weeks of lessons in such activities as swimming golf, soccer, tennis, and art lessons. These lessons generally last anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. A short break. There goes most of the rest of the summer, but any free time left will be devoted to family vacations.

Vacations

We are scheduled for a family vacation to Arizona in July, and probably a few other shorter trips. This is in addition to the vacations we have already taken to Hawaii, Disneyland, and San Diego this year. When I was young, we had one summer vacation and that was it. You all know that vacations are not cheap, but traveling with kids, its also a lot of work and not too restful.

So, that basically covers our whole summer. And that’s not including the “normal” play dates, zoo outings, and birthday parties. I’m not sure what to make of all this activity. In my youth, I would look forward to summer days of sleeping in, watching tv, and spending the afternoons, and early evening playing in the neighborhood until it got dark. Without all these activities, we had to find things to entertain us such as games of wiffle ball, or riding skateboards, or finding and building things in the backyard. You had to be creative with your time, but these things kept us entertained for hours. Now, kids have their activities all mapped out for them, and they expect to be entertained.

Of course, all these activities are not free like the lazy summer days of my youth. Camps and lessons cost money, and it adds up with $75 dollars here, $200 there, and so on. Pretty soon, you are approaching a private school tuition not for academics, but for summer “activities”. A recent Newsweek article estimates that it will cost $1,589,793 to raise the average middle-class child to age 18. This includes college savings and lost income if one parent stays at home for that time. I wonder if that figure includes all the “extracurricular” activities we have to pay for these days. All the middle-class families I know are doing the same thing we are. How much would this figure be if we cut out some of these “activities”?

I am glad that my kids are able to experience a lot of different thing that I never got to experience at an early age, and we are fortunate that I am better able to afford these opportunities than my parents. My kids have traveled much more extensively at a young age than I ever did. Much of the summer lessons are valuable life skills such as learning how to swim, and the sports activities help their physical development. Vacations are an opportunity for family bonding, and to expose the kids to many new things and cultures. I can’t argue that the money spent is worthwhile, but still I wonder if we are going overboard in that every day and week is accounted for. Can we do it more cheaply? My kids have not even started kindergarten yet. Will it be like this for the next 15 years?

Here is my son Marcus playing with a cardboard box, binoculars, and a few throw pillows. He is playing in his boat, or plane, or rocket ship. Its called using your imagination, and you don’t have to pay $200 to go to a camp in order to exercise it.