After-school activities? Nope

Back in the day, swimming meant in the murky pond down the road, hockey was hitting things with a stick, and guitar was just yelling down a toilet roll. And I turned out fine, right?

Well, who knows? Maybe if my parents had pimped me out to multiple after-school gigs, then I may well have been prime minister by now. All Blacks captain? Taika Waititi?

Of course, being at a new school and desperately trying to gain access to the cool mums and dads clique, we’ve gone ahead and enrolled the girls into rippa rugby for one term.

No trainings, no stress, just one game a week and then we’ll see if they want to do it again next term or try something else. It’s cheap, it isn’t a full week schedule and it gets my wife onto the first rung of the clique ladder.

I don’t know what long-term effects there are of upping a kid’s school week from 30 hours to 40 hours-plus with a jawdropping amount of extracurricular work – maybe we should all be doing it but hey, I’m a traditionalist.

While they’re young, I think less is more. I’m not a parenting expert, but after waking up, being told what to do by your parents, then told what to do by a teacher, to then go be told what to do by a sports or music coach and then back home to be told to go to bed. It all seems a bit bloody full-on.

I love them coming home and exploring, fighting, blobbing out, yelling and not pinching their fingers in these new fully-fenced PC trampolines.

Maybe I’m just getting soft. Maybe I’m over-protective. Or maybe I’m just a tight ass when it comes to these extra fees.

All I know is my young kids are happy doing less and for now that’s fine by me.