A father says enough is enough and is demanding the kids stop all weekend activities and claim back time as a family.

Are their children missing out or being enriched?

How many activities are too many? How many events and parties are too many? How much do you put up with before you say stop and seize back your family life?

It’s a dilemma facing many parents as our children’s lives become busy and our weekends no longer look like they used to.

The days of sleep ins and lazy brunches, heck even the days of wheeling one newborn in a pram around a shopping mall look positively easy at times compared to life with multiple children and their competing social lives.

But is it ever okay to just say no, to put a stop to it all and claim back your family life?

The scenario is one facing a friend. She says that the lives of her four kids has taken over completely.

With two school-aged children and two pre-schoolers you can only imagine how busy their weekends are. A whirlwind of sport and parties and school events and more sport and dance and music lessons and even more parties, occasionally there is time for a playdate and somewhere in all that their parents fit in.

“Probably just like any other family life” she tells me in an email when I ask her to describe it.

“There isn’t much time left for anything else apart from ferrying the kids around. It’s like being taxi drivers for a bunch of under 8’s except without the payment.”

The thing is that my friend loves it and never really paid much attention to her husband’s constant grumbling that the children’s schedules were cutting into what he termed “important family life”.

“He says its crazy to run around after the kids all weekend and I am starting to get a little afraid when I open the school bags and yet another party invitation falls out. Not that he gets angry he just gets fed up. “

Its finally reached breaking point and he is so fed up in fact, he wants to shut it down.

All of it.

He wants a family wide rule to say no, he wants the weekend to be, as my friend says “sacred family time.”

“No sport, no swimming lessons, no violin, no ballet and the thing that will disappoint the kids the most he says no parties.”

No playdates, no scouts, nothing. Just family time.

My friend says her relationship with her husband has always been a partnership so she isn’t used to this sudden step away from that. She says he is pretty serious about it.

Other friends have advised her to cut each child down to one activity each and limit them to one party a fortnight – but she says they've discussed that option and he won’t compromise.

“He says all or nothing. He just wants a break for at least six months to a year to take back family time and then he says he will think about allowing Saturday sport to recommence."

Her husband says that it is unfair to make the children pick one party over another, that it will offend friends, he says they can do their sport during the week and they can drop any other activity deemed unnecessary.

He says its selfish to have all these other people demanding his children’s time, that he wants to be considered for once.

But my friend, and mother-of-four disagrees. She says she loves the children’s busy schedule and that she thinks birthday parties, ballet and sport are really important for improving their social skills

“The events are only going to increase as they get older though,” she explains “So how is he going to cope then? “

She says she also worries that her children will miss out and won’t be invited back into teams and back to parties when the moratorium ends.

But what she worries about most of all is what message this sends to her kids. Are they learning the wonderful lesson about family life being important or are they just getting the message that when it is all to hard quit.

What do you think she should do?