Activity Overload: Are Kids Doing Too Much?

2008 January 28 by: Scott

Set a reasonable schedule

Over the years I have tried to set reasonable schedules for my boys, for their sakes as well as my own. My basic rule is no more than two activities per boy per season.

That means Robin plays soccer in the fall, plus his saxophone; in the winter chess replaces soccer, and in the spring he has swimming or track, but not both. Akira has typically played chess and a sport or two, most recently lacrosse.

Sometimes we need to bend the rule, as we did when the boys were going to Japanese language classes on Saturday mornings, which upped the total to three activities each.

For your own situation, look at how many kids you have, how many parents are involved, how many hours a week each activity consumes, and do the math. This will help you come up with a reasonable schedule.

Children with no siblings and with a parent who doesn’t work outside the home can probably handle the heaviest schedule of activities, because they have so much parental support. A child who is one of six children of parents who work full time may only get to do one outside activity.

Back to the kids…

If your kids are stressed out, you owe it to them to solve this problem. Studies show that stress is affecting American children at younger and younger ages.

Some stress, like the anxiety kids experience before a test, is an inevitable part of learning and growing. Other types of stress–from a parent’s illness or a divorce in the family–are also unavoidable, although children may need extra help to cope.

“If a child is filled with ‘Hurry we’re gonna be late’ and ‘why haven’t you finished … you know we have to get to … ‘ a child learns feelings of inadequacy and never being ‘enough,” says Nightingale.

Experts claim that ongoing negative stress can cause a range of problems in children, from behavioral problems like bed wetting to serious illness, even failure-to-thrive syndrome in infants. Stressed children cannot learn.