After School Activities For Boys

As a parent of three boys who seemed to love winding each other up I was getting to the end of my tether. I needed something that would channel their energies and tire them out. So I set about trying to find the right sort of after school activity to keep them busy and me sane! But just my luck each of them wanted to stamp their individuality on their choice of activity and so began a goldilocks-type selection of after school activities.

My eldest son was really up for a team sport activity as he was always the type of child who thrived on the company of others. I was a big football fan (soccer in some parts of the world) so we tracked down a couple of centres offering a pay-as-you-play type situation. This worked for him for awhile as the format was play a match, do some skills development and then finish with another match.

After a couple of years he had developed into quite a good player and starting asking if he could join a team so he could get picked up by Manchester United! We looked at the FA’s website and found a local team with qualified coaches who had been vetted for the children’s safety. The first two years he was in a non-competitive league which means the scores were not record but he was in a league format paying one home game and one away game with 11 other teams in the league. Once he moved into the competitive league the scores where published on the local league’s website and teams moved up and down through the leagues as normal.

My second son didn’t take to football – probably as a result of being dragged to tons of football practices as a baby and a toddler. His grandmother was a big rugby fan so we tried that. A local team had touch rugby for young children but he didn’t take to it. It was then we had the realisation that he just wasn’t into team activities. He was very comfortable in himself and wanted an individual activity – after a lot of soul searching we came up with Karate – which he loves as it is HIS after-school activity.

Armed with the knowledge of gained from our experiences with our middle child, my wife and I try to channel our third child into music and we started from an early age when he was still a toddler – there are many franchised operations out there offering pre-school musical development. It was good and we made some new friends amongst the parents and managed to nurture our son’s interest in music.

There are a host of after-school activities from private tutoring to a range of sports and the only two activities my children could agree on were swimming and joining in the scout network (beavers, cubs, scouts) – I guess because that was the only after activity that allowed them to try all after school activities during their time with them.