I have a major parenting dilemma.  Way back in mid-May, we signed my oldest son up for teeball.  I was told that practices would start in June, with games to begin in July and finished by the first week or so of August.  I figured this would be fine with our school schedule beginning in mid-July.

As it turned out, practice didn’t start until mid-July, the week before school started for him.  I heard many reasons as to why this happened…equipment didn’t come in, coaches hadn’t picked up rosters, rosters weren’t finished yet, and a few others that I’ve forgotten.  I called several times trying to figure out what was going on because I was being asked daily by a little boy who just wanted to play teeball.  As it turns out, we’re practicing from 7PM to 8PM one night a week.  Which I could deal with, though the timing bothered me somewhat.  We’ve never been strict about bedtime, but with school starting we’ve spent most of the summer trying to get him used to going to bed around 8PM so he’d be able to get up and make it to school and not be tired all day.  So now, one night a week he’s got teeball practice that *ends* at 8:00, and then we have to get home, get him in the shower and then to bed.  It’s made for some late bedtimes and a couple of difficult mornings.  But I didn’t complain.

Last night we got news of our first game.  Make that games, plural.  Next week, he has 2 games.  Plus a practice.  All on school nights, all ending at 8PM, if not later.  This is NOT going to work.  I realize that we choose to make sacrifices when we enroll our children in a year round school.  But based on the info I was given when we signed up, it was not going to be but for the first few weeks of school.  And I had NO idea there would be 2 games a week, plus practice!  Even if he wasn’t in school, that’s a LOT of family time and evenings that are being interfered with.  Undoubtedly I should have asked more questions.  But since I was told it would be over in early August, I just didn’t think it would become such a big issue.  This whole teeball thing has been a mess and it seems very badly organized, so I’m sure that doesn’t help with the annoyance factor.  I had used Lee County Parks & Rec for activities before but I’m having second thoughts about using them for anything in the future…which is too bad, because you can’t beat the price!  We really wanted to do football this fall, but now I’m really doubting whether we should.

So now what do I do?  Do I pull him out of teeball completely?  He really enjoys it, so that doesn’t seem the right thing to do…I don’t want to punish him for something that’s not his fault.  But I just don’t see him being able to handle having so much to do in the evenings and still getting the sleep he needs to do well in school.  So what options do I have?  I talked to my mom and her suggestion was to limit him to one game and one practice per week.  I think this would be a good compromise, but again I am concerned that he will feel punished either by us or the fact that he’s in school.  I don’t want him to hate school for interfering with the fun of teeball, and I don’t want him to resent us or feel punished, either.  So wise blog readers, what are your suggestions?  I’m completely at a loss here and all of the parenting success I felt at my ingenious method of teaching him his b and d has completely evaporated.