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)
Alice@lifeandotherweirdtales says
Another teacher here, who often has to advise parents to offer their kids a little more free time!
Another tip, for me, is to spend time in nature – it seems to automatically slow things down and add that special quality time we can spend as a family.
jen at barnraised says
Very important post, I enjoyed this. It’s good to know that others understand the idea of slowing down and enjoying our children!
Daisy Chain says
Jen@barnraised??? Raised in a barn?? I love it!!!!!!
Jen says
As a teacher I was always amazed at how exhausted my students were on a Monday morning. The weekends were hardly a time to recharge for them. They were run ragged from one activity to the next. I have tried very hard for this not to be the reality for my own children. http://www.lifewrangling.com
Fiona says
Great post! Our girls are reaching the end of their schooling and have each played an instrument and done some dance and other activities, but throughout those years we have always had dinner together (until very recently when youth group has clashed with dinner) and we have always scheduled 1-2 free afternoons a week, preferably 3, during the week, with weekends mostly free also. This has been a great balance for us over the years. As my girls are getting older, I see how many one-off events arise, eg school rehearsals, other commitments, driving lessons etc (not to mention fun social events with friends), so I’m relieved that we set boundaries early on regarding extra-curricular activities.
Emily says
The other thing a friend and I often talk about is the need for “slack in the system”. If every moment is programmed, there’s no slack to handle an emergency, nor any space for spontaneity.
We have intentionally built a lot of slack into our family system, and it serves us well. As I type, 2 kids are at a youth evening, one is playing a board game with dad, and the youngest is contentedly cutting a sheet of paper into confetti.
Another thing that’s helped is ‘lessons aren’t forever’. All of our kids have tried things out for a while and moved on. Just because she’s done 5 years of piano doesn’t mean she can’t do bass guitar instead next year! (Or switch from dance to gymnastics, or quit soccer, or change his mind about pursuing lifeguard qualifications, or…).
Boyink says
We travel fulltime – and I can’t count how many times we have had someone say “hey – come look us up when you get to our town!”.
We get there and try to make plans for dinner and it’s impossible.
“Johnny has Little League, Missy has dance practice, then there are piano lessons and study group and then Youth Group at church…”
We made a concious decision to not become “suburban busy” and we’ve been out of that life so long it’s hard to understand where they get the time, money and energy to keep it up.
Katie O'Brien says
I’ve never heard anyone call it ‘suburban busy’ before but you’re right on the money. That describes the area I live in well… It def takes intentional, conscious living not to fall trap!
Gladys (The Pinay Mom) says
It’s really an advantage to learn from others.I have a friend who has two kids and the kids’ sports and school activities alone make them super busy,even on summer.They barely stay home on weekends as they travel a lot for different games.I think having control of your kids’ schedule and personal commitments will make your time more manageable and less stressful too!
Alyssa says
This is so good for me to read now, while my kids are young. I see so many people with these crazy schedules and I already know I don’t want that for my family. Thanks for sharing this.
http://www.sweetlytattered.com
Chris says
I have watched my brothers two daughters, over the last 10 years, adhere to a relentless, gruelling schedule of extra curricular actives that makes me exhausted thinking about.
They live half a block away from a neighbourhood playground. My brother confessed that his girls have never gone to the park to swing or play with other kids on the block. Instead they do swimming lessons, piano, tennis, “elite” soccer “six nights a week”, classical guitar, and are in countless academic “camps”.
Last summer, they were sent alone to grandmas house for a two week visit and things didn’t go well. You see, grandma is still programmed for living in the 60s, 70s and 80s… you know… kids “played” outside on their own, used their imagination, in the dirt, random games, random friendships with other kids as they explored the town. Instead, these modern granddaughters sat in the house absolutely stupefied with boredom.
These girls are nothing without a coach telling them what to do. They sit and wait for their next command from a hyper vigilant parent, teacher or coach. No imagination, no sense of self. Little automatons programmed to jump when told to jump.
The motivation from the parents? Apparently they do it all so they can brag on social media. “Try and keep up with us! We’re so successful with our super-star straight-A athlete children!”
Lori in Prescott says
That was powerful. Harsh, but powerful.
Amber says
Great insight. Couldn’t agree more.
Lauren Jade Martin says
YES! I love that. ‘busy is not the same as productive’ it is so so true! Great tips!
– Lauren Jade –
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