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)
Stacy@awellstockedlife says
I agree that knowing where the motivation comes from is essential for both parent and child. Family activities have succumbed to a game of keeping up with the Joneses. However, while the outside world can see this obvious change (the new Motts commercial for example). I think many parents rationalize their actions and believe they enroll in activities for the betterment of the child only, but if they look deeper (I include myself in this statement) their actions also involve keeping up.
Mark Tong says
Excellent post Joshua – I’ve never really understood why if you come home from a hard day at work and have extra work to do, it’s seen as you are ‘overworked’ and struggling with ‘work/life’ balance but kids come home form a hard day at school and have homework to do and this is seen as ok. Some well known schools in the UK are now stopping homework
Lori in Prescott says
What a wonderful post, Joshua! This will result in many comments. I think the point that is rarely addressed is the importance of family meals for real conversational bonding. Growing up in the ’50’s, the Sunday afternoon dinner was an event to look forward to. My grandparents were always invited and we often went for a “Sunday drive” taking them to a great restaurant. Much of the talking then took place in the car. I think that when we are overly scheduled and insanely busy, we forget that these moments will pass, never to come again, and these memories are a wonderful reservoir that ground us.
Pernilla says
I really love this post. It reminds me of something crucial ie happiness. We spend our life preparing for happiness when it is so close to Us in the first place. Having the freedom to choose is the closest we can get to it. While money will help us choose im life it is not am advantage of you are not happy in the first place. Stress us the indicator of if we are on the right track or not. To have challenges is important. Every human being is created to be creative to inspire and if we don’t let our space and time reality free of clutter and hobbies you can’t be as happy and inspired ad you could have been.
Tana says
This is so true.I was a Professional Nanny for 20+ years and have seen this first hand.Parents overscheduling their kids from the second they get of the school bus.Homework,snack,back out the door every single day with,Basketball,Baseball, Football,After School Clubs.
Even in summer constant running around,being sent off to camp and then home after 6 weeks to more schedules.I have seen kids looking out the window in their own backyard watching other kids chasing frogs,playing tag,having lemonade stands and they would have complete meltdowns and cry,fall to the floor saying,”I want to stay home and play outside!!” As a Nanny my hands were tied.I gave up a Career I loved because of this.I could not take seeing kids just wanting to be kids and play in the dirt,instead being dragged out the door.Always being pressured by parents to succeed in everything they were forced into.Glad I was raised in the 60’s and 70’s.
Liz Smith says
I loved everything about this post Joshua. As a family of 5, we subscribe to slow evenings, slow weekends and even slow holidays when we are fortunate enough to indulge in them. We rarely schedule and love to go with the flow.
Other than one child’s weekly dance class, we don’t engage in after school activities. Right now the emphasis is on imaginative play and not having gaming devices in our household has helped a lot with this too. The most important aspect to our intentional living approach, is the ongoing conversation I have with my kids around how our choices are aligned with our family values.
Our kids have so much to teach us adults about the value of real play. I’m still learning!
Alethea says
I’m curious where you live. This is not an option where I live- Long Island. It’s just not
Terri says
That is how we do it, as well. Slow. Time to reflect, time to recharge (especially for introverts!!), time to be with those who love you. Each child has one dance class a week and stringed instruments through the schools. Although I confess that we have allowed screens (with limited access) in our home….after years of not allowing them.
Nice to hear we are not alone. Oh, and we live in a suburb of Philadelphia, so it can be done.
Kim says
As a child, that was involved in competitive dance, and loved it, and was later also a dance teacher, I have seen a changing trend in extracurricular activities. When I was involved as a child, over 25 years ago (yikes) specialization in my activity (dance) didn’t start til I was around 12. During my early childhood years I danced, but only an hour or two a week. There was still plenty of time for free play, outside play, and time with family. I still had a childhood full of opportunity to spend time in nature, explore, and connect deeply to the place I lived and with the people I lived with and around. But what I see now is early specialization. Children in competitive activities from the age of 5 or 6, demanding much of their free time, and taking away time for free play, family, and friends. Times have changed, for sure, for many reasons, but as you said there is a cost to over scheduling, and that is something as parents we need to pay attention to.
Daisy Chain says
You are absolutely right Kim-
my 9 year old is being offered a 4th gymnastics session each week and every fibre of my being is saying no, but nowadays it seems it is all or nothing with activities. It would mean the loss of valuable family down time on a friday evening. Clubs, parents and schools all need to take responsibility here. Thank you so much for this post Joshua, it has helped me decide to say no.
ren says
Ita hard to get off the merry go round, but where is the balance…kids burn out on stuff younger and younger, who cares if a kid is the best, they should be having fun and learning, plus whole generation who think their activities are more important than any other family activity.
terri says
I agree with you, but it is not the job of the schools or clubs to keep an eye on how much time our children are spending in their activities; rather, it’s our job as parents to say “no” when we think it is too much. It is difficult to go against the grain, particularly when their friends are also becoming more involved in the activity. But that is OUR problem…not our kids, not the schools’, not the organizations’. We have to be okay saying “no”.
Judy says
I agree with you, Joshua. There needs to be a balance. BTW—took 4 large bags of “junk” to Goodwill last night. It felt wonderful. The house looks better too. I’m a work in progress—but getting there, for sure! Thank you for all you do. Hugs! :) :) :)
Nathalie says
As a child i loved all my extra scheduled activities and I did a lot of them. When I was 12 for example I took dance lessons for 4.5 hours a week (in the evenings), drawing lessons 3 hours on Saturday morning and a youth club on Sunday afternoon (4 hours). Combine that with 3 times a week half an hour of tutoring and school than you have a busy schedule. But the majority of these activities don’t continue during school breaks so those left enough free ‘playing time’. I personally never had the feeling that I missed out on anything. But a while ago my friends where talking about their favorite childhood TV programs and I didn’t even know half of them, let alone watched them regularly. So I assumme the time for my hobby’s took over the time I would have spend in front of the TV…
Daphne says
So good and so true of tv! I didn’t spend half the time as a kid as some kids today do, in front of a tv. My children are the same way. Our rule is one sport or activity at a time, per season. That way the space and time I between can be used for free play, time alone, and just being with family. I don’t like being too busy.
EmmyLou W.A. says
Exactly. If you take away the activities they have to be replaced doing something else. Most likely the TV will be the lesser option!
Mama S says
I’m just curious if you pursued a career in dance or drawing? If not, maybe your time would have been better spent learning a life skill. You could be fluent in a few foreign languages or be able to program a computer language with 7.5 hours of lessons per week. Just a thought.
Yuvrajsinh says
After morning tea, me and my mother sits for 15 minutes, to have a deep conversation.
I stop everything else and this is really refreshing. !
And i’m a big believer of,
“Being Busy is not the same as Productive”
Tweeted !