Need Advice on Picking Courses for Your Kid? Here’s What I Learned From Trial and Error
The steam from my oat latte was curling up into the fluorescent lights of our neighborhood coffee shop last month when Lila pulled her phone out and shoved it across the table toward me. Her 10-year-old son just quit rec soccer after two years, she said, and every parent in her carpool group was sending her course recommendations: coding for kids, competitive robotics, a state-wide youth leadership program that meets twice a month. “I need advice on courses,” she said, tapping the screen so hard it dimmed for a second. “What do I pick? What if I pick the wrong one?”
I didn’t even have to think to know exactly how she felt. Three years ago, when my oldest was 11, I had a Google Sheet titled “2021 Fall Extracurriculars” with tabs for cost, travel time, “future value,” and parent reviews. I’d spent three weekends scrolling Facebook parent groups, reading blog posts about which middle school courses look best on high school transcripts, and crossing off anything that felt too “easy” or “just for fun.” I ended up signing him up for a weekend AP Computer Science prep course, 3 hours every Saturday, an hour drive from our house. Everyone said it was the smart pick.
The first week, he complained that the teacher talked too fast. The second week, he begged to skip it and go to his friend’s birthday party. I told him no, commitment is important. By the sixth week, he just pulled the covers over his head when I knocked on his door at 7:30 a.m. and said he wasn’t going. I stood in the hallway, mad, my blood pressure up, thinking I’d wasted $400 and he was throwing away a good opportunity. Then I walked past his bedroom door an hour later and heard him sketching. I knocked, and he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by crumpled paper, drawing a 12-panel comic about a dragon who works at a coffee shop. He said, “I just don’t care about coding. I like this.”
I canceled the coding course that day, and we found a beginner cartooning course at the local community center, 2 hours on Wednesday nights, $75 for the whole semester. I was still nervous it was a waste of time and money. I kept waiting for him to get bored and move on. But he never did. He showed up 10 minutes early every week, brought extra sketch paper to share with classmates, and came home chattering about perspective and character design. Now, three years later, he’s putting together a portfolio of his work to apply to a summer pre-college digital design program. The thing I thought was a useless hobby ended up being the thing he’s most excited to put on his college applications.
What I told Lila that day isn’t some big fancy secret. It’s just three small, low-effort rules I use now that work way better than my old spreadsheet ever did.
First, always do a low-cost taster first before committing to a whole semester or year. Almost every community center, rec department, and even private course providers offer 1-2 session tasters for $10 to $25, way cheaper than dropping hundreds on a whole course that your kid will hate after a month. When my younger daughter thought she wanted to do competitive gymnastics last year, we did a taster first. She hated the 6 a.m. practices and the strict no-talking rules, and we only lost $15 instead of $300. We tried a taster for a young authors group at the local bookstore instead, and she’s been going for a year now.
Second, when you’re torn between an “impressive” course your kid doesn’t care about and a “silly” low-stakes course they do, just ask yourself one simple question: does this course leave them energized or drained after? It sounds too simple, but it works. After my son’s coding class, he’d come home, eat an entire bag of potato chips, and hide in his room for an hour before he’d even talk to us. After cartooning, he’d come home chattering about what his teacher said, pull out his sketchbook, and draw for another hour before dinner. One takes everything out of them, the other gives something back. That’s all you need to know, a lot of the time.
Third, stop listening to the hype that says certain courses are non-negotiable for future success. I talked to a former admissions officer at a state university last year at a parent night, and she said she sees hundreds of applications every year with the same list of “impressive” courses that the kid didn’t even want to take. The applications that stand out are the ones where the kid stuck with something they cared about, even if it’s not something that’s supposed to look good. A kid who did a gardening course for four years and started a little community garden at their school is way more interesting than a kid who checked a box on a coding camp they hated.
After our coffee, Lila went home and looked through the local rec department catalog with her son. They found the two-session comic illustration taster at the library, and he loved it. He signed up for the whole semester, and last week she sent me a photo of him drawing at the kitchen table after homework, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich next to his sketchbook.
I still don’t get it right every time. Last month, my daughter wanted to quit her creative writing group because the new teacher yelled at the kids for bringing snacks to class. My first instinct was to tell her to stick it out, that quitting is a bad habit. But I left it up to her, she quit, and we found a different group that lets them eat granola bars while they share their stories. It’s not perfect. Some courses don’t work out. Some semesters we have nothing planned after school, and that’s okay too. I don’t think there’s one right answer for everyone. But so far, this slow, low-stakes way of picking courses has worked a lot better than my old color-coded spreadsheets ever did.
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