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Overscheduled Kids- Is Your Child at Risk?
By Meaghan Montrose
This week’s schedule: Soccer, dance, karate, girl scouts, violin, choir, school play, gymnastics, and debate team. Does this sound like a week in the life of your child? Does your son or daughter have every hour of their week scheduled with an activity? If so, it may be time to make some changes before your child suffers from burnout!
First, let me start by saying that participating in activities is excellent for the development of a child. These organized activities give students a sense of connectedness and belonging. They provide opportunities for students to socialize and make friends. In addition, these activities help a child develop physically and intellectually. Children can learn valuable life lessons and develop self confidence by participating in organized activities.
It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing. As more and more opportunities are available each day (it wasn’t that long ago that sports teams for girls were virtually nonexistent), parents are signing up their children for everything that they can. The result- overscheduled kids.
Many children today suffer from a form of burnout before they even reach their teens. The pressure to participate in so many activities while still being expected to maintain good grades in school is taking a physical and mental toll on the child. Overscheduled kids are suffering from stress, anxiety, and sleep disorders. These issues can then lead to even more severe problems.
The solution- Your child doesn’t need to give up activities all together, just choose two or three of the activities at a time. If any of the activities require a large time investment I would suggest only doing one other activity. Cutting back will free up some time throughout the week so your child won’t have every moment of their life pre-scheduled. Providing a child with free time to relax, hang out with friends and family, read a book, etc.. is important to their development.
Topics: Child Development, Parenting | 3 Comments »
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Like my father used to say; “Jack of all trades and master of none.” It’s great to teach kids how to socialize and make friends but a child will never learn – never even come to understand – what it it to master something if they don’t have one guiding focus that brings it all together. And that focus my friends, is going to take thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of practice. In the practice, the pursuit of mastering one thing, the student is going to come to understand how he/she learns. How long it takes them to get to their peak at one sitting, how many repetitions it takes to get there and when to stop practicing “the downside” (ie. you don’t want to practice after the peak – set it down and come back later). A jack of all trades, will never learn when to back off, they won’t recognize when they’ve peaked for the session, they won’t recognize that every time they practice – and stop at the right time – that they are increasing the amount of time they can be in “the zone”. For these kids, getting into “the zone” will be something crazy artists talk about.
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I agree wholeheartedly that parents overschedule their kids. I teach a teens Sunday school class and I am amazed at the schedules they try to keep. They don’t have one morning all week to just sleep in and watch cartoons. I pray with them every Sunday that their week is productive, but that they also find time just to relax and think.
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This is a very intelligent post, as it draws attention to one of the ways stressful and adverse conditions usually associated with adult life are affecting kids. This is a trend that shows itself in other ways as well, like childhood obesity.
Plenty of adults suffer from the same problem of a life that is over-structured and under-coordinated. One of the best treatments of the problem I have found is a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. The GTD philosophy and related materials provide a framework for adapting to the world in a proactive, productive way while remaining human that is perfectly suitable for practically anyone. Kids are perfectly capable, in my opinion, of learning and incorporating these types of principles and skills at a very young age.