Intentional parents help their children learn skills, gain confidence, grow in character, find interests, and experience new opportunities. When they are young, we desire to give them every opportunity to discover what they love and where they will succeed.
Often, this results in busy family schedules. We are presented the opportunity for busyness by living in communities that offer countless options. We feel compelled by the fear that our kids will fall behind. And we are guilted into the life by relatives, friends, or neighbors.
Even worse, there seems to be a little voice inside each of us calling us to impress others by the success of our children. As the philosopher Ernest Becker might say, “We exalt our children into the position of our own ‘immortality symbol’.”
Somewhere along the way, childhood activities became less about the goals outlined above and more about trying to keep up with everyone else. They became less about our kids and more about us—as if busy, successful kids is a badge of honor we could wear on our sleeves to parties and social outings.
41% of children, age 9-13, said they feel stressed either most of the time or always because they have too much to do. And more than three-quarters of kids surveyed said they wished they had more free time.
Now, don’t misread me. There is great value in extracurricular activities. Kids learn teamwork, discipline, and social skills. Some studies correlate physical play with improved intelligence. Each of us would be wise to count the benefit of involving our children in a variety of extracurricular activities.
That being said, we would also be wise to consider the costs associated with overscheduling children.
More and more families are eating dinner on the fly, often grabbing fast food on their way to soccer practice or music lessons. Unhealthy eating habits aside, this robs many kids of the important, life-influencing opportunity of simply eating together and discussing the day.
Overscheduled kids miss out on opportunity for extended free play. Free play allows kids to burn off energy and learn social skills in an unstructured environment. It provides opportunity for kids to exercise their imagination, create games, and refine rules. It forces children to learn awareness, police themselves, and develop empathy.
Overscheduled children lose the space to simply be with themselves and learn the art of being alone. In our noisy, busy world, the importance of developing the life skill of solitude, meditation, and quietly being with oneself can not be overstated.
Children need an opportunity to explore their world and themselves. They should be provided the space to discover their own passions and talents. Overscheduling kids from one activity to another often stunts their development in this area.
It would be wise for us to rethink the heavy scheduling of our children.
What strategies might we implement to slow down and create margin in our family’s schedule? Consider these 9 ideas.
Slowing Down Your Family’s Schedule
1. Discern where the motivation is coming from: you or your child.
Take a step back and honestly evaluate the activities, teams, organizations, and clubs your child is enrolled in. Is the underlying motivation truly the welfare of your child? Or are there personal motivations shaping your decisions: succumbing to pressure, trying to impress other parents, or trying to make up for missed opportunities in your own childhood?
2. Determine an ideal baseline number of activities.
Without consulting your calendar, ask yourself this question: “Ideally, how many hours each week should my child be involved in structured, organized activities outside of school?” This will likely vary by age, personality, need, and even season. Once a baseline has been determined, compare this with your current calendar. Are the numbers close? Or do adjustments need to be made?
3. Elevate the importance of family dinnertime.
According to the American Dietetic Association, eating together as a family during adolescence is associated with lasting positive dietary choices in the future. Eating together as a family promotes relationship, understanding, and love. It provides opportunity for kids to digest not only their food, but also the events of the day. Elevate its importance. Guard it. Most likely, you will not be able to eat together every night of the week. But using it as a reference point in your decision-making will provide a valuable filter in saying yes or no to future opportunities.
4. Schedule time for yourself to be with them.
The most important influence in their life is you. You love them the most and know them the best. Too often, we take this for granted and just assume we will find quality time with them as we go our separate ways. But quality time does not occur without the presence of quantity time.
5. Leave space between events.
A spaced-out calendar is more enjoyable than one crammed too tight. In your weekly calendar, create space. Sometimes, this may mean waking early or eating early to relieve the anxiety of rushing out the door. Other times (vacations for example), this may display itself by scheduling one less activity each day—or adding “walk to the bakery” instead.
6. Develop a family, weekly routine.
Help your kids navigate their schedules by establishing a weekly schedule. Some scheduled events are difficult to move: school, sports practices, religious activities. Others are more flexible: weekly chores, bathing schedules, play dates. Intentionally establish a family routine that children can learn to rely on each week.
7. Reduce your personal commitments.
Embrace the seasons of life. There are times in our lives when we are more available than others. Raising young children is an important responsibility and will require time. Provide yourself with the necessary space to do it well by removing less-important commitments from your personal schedule. You’ll be glad you did. You can never get the time back once it’s gone.
8. Own less stuff.
It is difficult to recognize how much time and energy our possessions take from us. They require our attention to be cleaned, organized, managed, maintained, repaired, and removed—not to mention all the time we spend on the front end just to make the money to buy the item in the first place. Owning less means less burden, less stress, less anxiety, and less time spent caring for it.
9. Leave room to add.
If our schedules are so full with no room for margin, there is little opportunity to add something new or something better (whether that be joining a gym, getting to know the neighbors, or handling a family crisis). A too-full calendar leaves no room for addition. As you consider the coming months, take the bold step of actually under-scheduling your family calendar. This will provide margin when something better comes along.
Wise parents take their role seriously. They seek to develop talents, skills, and self-sufficiency in their children. However, they realize this does not occur best within the confines of a cluttered schedule.
Busy is not the same as productive. (tweet that)
Drea Moore says
Hi Joshua. Found this 5 year old post as I was doing some digital decluttering. This is exactly in tune with the moment we are having as a society. Right now it’s March 2021, one year into this awful pandemic. Turns out the silver lining has been the fact that we canceled all activities. Yes it has been sad, and isolating. My 4 year old didn’t get preschool, as it was shut down. My 9 year old daughter misses Karate, and her 12 year old sister can’t wait to get back to Volleyball. However, despite all the hardship and isolation from loved ones, (and we have been the lucky ones all things considered) through it all, this pandemic has taught me how great it has been to not be “overscheduled” and for the kids to be able to just be bored and figure it out, like I had to when I was a kid. I teach my children that there is always a greater purpose, that everything happens for a reason even if we don’t know what it is. However this past year has made that a difficult message to teach. One thing I can say though, is that the pandemic did force the whole world to slow down. If that’s one positive I can find in all this, I’ll take it.
Liz says
Great article. In particular, I think it’s so true that we have to be honest about where the motivation comes from – us or our children. But even if the motivation is coming from the child it still needs to be assessed. Older children especially may be motivated by what they perceive is the ‘cool’ activity to be involved in or may say they want to do something because they believe it makes their parents happy.
Lisa of Hopewell says
My kids are in their 20s. My advice to young parents is: STOP. Your kid brings home a sign-up sheet. Circle the deadline and wait. Soccer? Play it for a few nights in the yard. Ask what they really, really like about it. Chances are “everyone is playing,” or “the cool uniform shirt” or “I want a trophy” will be the answers. One Mom I knew was stunned, when job loss forced them to cancel ALL kid activities, to learn her supposedly soccer-mad daughter was in it for the cool little snack–her mom never buys little bags of goldfish crackers (or whatever)–just family size. All that time, all the money because she was “saving” money by buying family sized snacks! Now, if you kid goes straight to youtube for soccer coaching videos then runs outside to try it, is never ever separated from his soccer ball, wants only soccer stuff for gifts and bugs everyone in his world to play soccer, watch soccer, go to soccer matches, clinics, etc and plays only soccer video games, it might simplify your life to let him play. But all parents should honestly read the NCAA stats [ncaa.org] on getting a college sports scholarship and making it as a pro. Sobering. As Dave Ramsey says if you’re putting more into sports leagues than the college fund you’ve got it wrong. Soccer is just an example. Before signing up make sure you look at the schedule–are their make-up practices if the coach can’t be there? Are games rescheduled due to weather? That can throw off everything in your life just so a 4 year old can wear a cool jersey and get a plastic trophy. Is your kid shy and dreamy? What about time to go to the library or take a hike together or just be able to say “Go Play” and everyone has time to do their own thing. Consider it all very carefully.
Motherof4girls says
Agreed sports teams can be a life suck especially in the early years. I waited until my athletic child was 10 before letting her join a team sport. I think one of the fears families face is “if my child doesn’t develop a sport or skill outside of school will they hang out with the wrong crowd, do drugs, get into trouble?” I think a lot of parents keep their children intentionally busy. In fact, I’m hearing lots of parents say that unless they leave the house their children only plays on screens, don’t get exercise, won’t help with chores or even talk to their parents. Then there are the children who won’t do physical activities with their parents because they don’t like physical activity but will if their friends are. It’s a hard call to figure out. Statistic shows that physical exercise is important for mental health, and reduces weight issues into adulthood. I think it would help if schools educated families on ways to do fitness as a family through challenges with prizes, family night meet up for hikes, etc would go a long way to encouraging fitness over team sports and over scheduling.
AGS says
Great piece! As children mature, it’s useful to explain to them how as a family we make choices to reflect our values. Already we tell my 4 year old that watching a movie on the ipad is a special “sick or plane” activity, and he already gets a 30 minute TV show most days, so the rest of his time is to be with humans “because we value being with others.” But beyond this, we as adults must model this – do we give ourselves breathing room in our schedules? Do we personally live our values – or even talk about them? Depending on where you live in the USA, the value of family time may be tough to adhere to.
Terri-lee says
This is one of the many reasons we homeschool our children. We want our days to be very intentional and everything our children learn to be purposeful, useful and necessary. But even as homeschoolers the opportunity to overbook is rampant. In fact we have a plethora of activities and outings to choose from, even more so, and we must pick and choose or we would never be at home! So, you can’t escape the options, you just have to evaluate each option. Is this a good opportunity? Or will this take away from what we are building as a family and as an individual. One thing I really do love about homeschooling though is that it gives us an enormous amount of flexibility. We have dinner together almost every single evening. We don’t have to miss out on that because we simply do not plan other things at that time. We know it’s not like that for everyone and we feel truly blessed to be able to do this and many other things too :-)
Aimee says
We had to work through this area this fall, when four out of my five children were all signed up for different teams/sports/activities. I realized that the schedule was overloaded before we began, and I approached my older boys to request that they take a break from sports and give our family some breathing room (see the link above). It made a world of difference. We are still quite busy, but each child only has 1-2 days of outside activities each, which is manageable since they often overlap with each other, and we are able to enjoy dinner together at home every night.
Catherine Favole-Gruber says
Great post, as usual! :) And I also love (most of) the comments! It’s so refreshing to see that so many like-minded people exist – I have been feeling alone in a sea of suburban-busyness-badge wearers. We homeschool our three kids, and each kid takes just one “extra-curricular” activity and participate in a once a week co-op. That’s it. They have time to be bored, which means time for self discovery, lengthy conversations with their dad and me, and time to nurture friendships with a few close friends. And we cherish our family dinners! Sometimes our 17yo misses one, more often we have to set extra places; and we love our time around the table so much, we’ve added having dessert together right afterward!
And minimalsim fits right in with and has enhanced our lifestyle. We live on my husband’s rather lean income, my even leaner part-time freelance earnings, and need to count every penny – twice! But we’ve pared down to what brings us true joy, and are re-learning that our greatest treasures cannot be bought. And we’re doing our best to instill these values in our kids. We’re by no means perfect parents, but we’re doing our very best to preserve and enjoy our kids’ childhoods. :)
David says
I am finding these discussions fascinating and agree with a lot. However, my “busyness” is largely controlled by others. I am a veterinarian. I am expected to work from 8 to 6 weekdays and 8 to 12 on Saturdays. I am hardly ever able to walk out the door at 6 or 12 because usually there is a late appointment or walk-in patient that must be seen. I have often wondered how I can cut back when employers and consumers keep demanding more. It is interesting to me that the US is the only major industrialized nation where the work week has actually increased. It seems simple to say “go find another job”, yet reality is that finding other suitable employment is not always that easy. I would be interested to hear others thoughts.
Cate Scolnik says
Hey Joshua,
Great post. I think it’s also really important to be tuned into your child, or children. I have one that’s a real live wire and needs lots of social contact and lots of physical activity. She’s interested in everything, and wants to try it all. My focus with her is to encourage her to be involved, but also have quiet time.
My other daughter is very reserved, and would not cope with the level of activity that makes my eldest thrive.
So it’s very much about finding the balance for each individual child, as well as the family as a whole.
Thanks for getting me thinking!
Cate