These days, many children have schedules that could challenge most CEOs. Their days start early, end late, and are full of organized activities. Sports practices, music lessons, playdates, and homework for school-age children can result in stressed-out, unhappy children—and parents.
While parents want to prepare their children for the future, involving your child in too many extracurricular activities is not always a good idea and can be detrimental to their health.
Many children who are over scheduled will begin to show signs of being stressed out such as:
- Saying they don’t want to go to their scheduled activities or cling to you when you try to leave
- Complaining or being tired all the time
- Anger, whining, or crying when it’s time to go to a scheduled activity
- Frequent stomach aches
- Not eating or sleeping well or having nightmares
- Low self-confidence
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to avoid overscheduling you child:
Balance
While child experts acknowledge that organized activities have many positive effects, as with most things, finding a balance is key. Young children are not often able to function well with so many responsibilities and may start to feel anxious about all the added pressure. Research shows that children need relationships more than they need activities. Pediatricians continue to stress the importance of family bonding.
Free Time
Children need to have time without planned activities. Downtime allows for relaxation, free play, and family time. Adding this downtime to their schedule can help a child see that these unstructured times are just as important as their organized activities.
Boredom is not that bad!
Parents sometimes worry their children will be bored if every minute of their lives aren’t planned out. However, boredom can actually be beneficial to children! If your child complains of boredom, your first instinct may be to organize something for him to do, but really, you should be letting them figure it out for themselves. The ability to think critically, gather information, make decisions, and put all that into action is an important life skill and we need to give children practice with this skill. Children who are able to do these things are generally more successful in school and later in life.
Many parents lament that childhood goes by too quickly, but limiting extracurricular activities is one way of slowing it down. As a parent, you want your child to think fondly of their childhood, remembering all the time you spent together playing board games and talking walks outside. Children only have one chance to be a kid, they should enjoy every minute of it.
Sources
https://www.tutortime.com/blog/2017/09/stop-the-madness-dont-overschedule-your-child/
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