Overscheduled, Underworked
My son left this note for me at breakfast. But I guess he was willing to wait a day so he could practice with his biking team…
I’m just going to come out and say it:
Kids need to work more.
They need to scatter legos and build, build, build. They need to challenge each other with board games and don old clothes, pretending to be a Spy Kid, Dorothy from Kansas or Captain America.
If play is a child’s work, why don’t they get to do it more often?
School has started and so have after-school activities. My husband and I try to keep extracurriculars to a minimum, not just because three kids in two activities each is way too hectic but also because our trio are pooped after a scheduled seven-hours in school. Despite our resolve, our weekly after-school docket includes two music lessons, two nights of gymnastics and two afternoons of mountain bike team. And then there is Cub Scouts for both our boys. That’s eight activities. Two more than our family’s critical mass. What happened?! Homework has become something we do while driving to trailheads and music studios, and we have actually tried to slip either that or music practice in after breakfast and before we walk to the bus. Insanity has taken over.
Jennifer Senior (and the families she interviews) has lots to say about over-scheduled kids in her book All Joy and No Fun (September 2014’s pick, see my post “The September 2014 Book is Not About a Lot of Things”) but two points in particular got my attention. First, Ms. Senior explains one reason kids are booked-solid these days is parents are trying to prepare their offspring for an unpredictable future world. Add globalization to the “American Dream” that children will be more successful than their parents at something of their choosing (not in the “family business”), and you have a true “sky is the limit” parental mindset. So kids are involved in everything from soccer to viola lessons to AP classes. Parents hope to hit the mark with at least one of the many extras they sign their kids up for.
Second, parents may be doing kids a disservice by keeping them in several organized activities after school: kids won’t learn how to occupy themselves if they are idle. They won’t cultivate personal interests, hobbies for example, to take into adulthood. I found this second point particularly compelling, especially when my husband extrapolated this idea to the ubiquitous collegiate party animal. We all know someone from high school, he said: the popular star athlete, honor-roller and student council member who dropped out of college because he/she drank and ditched. Could this sad reality be in part because of the “un”structure that is the college campus? No one holds kids accountable for class attendance other than the students themselves. So it could be easy for the coed, accustomed to the watchful eye of high school administration or to Mom’s limo service running the extracurricular carpool, to feel idle. Bored. And then take the path of least resistance.
Yikes. No one wants their child to be the one who couldn’t hack collegiate life. We parents want well-rounded kids: active (sports), thoughtful (challenging academics) and musically-inclined (Suzuki method, anyone?). But if the cost is the inability to manage time responsibly and productively…that is a price that reaches farther and has more impact than any nurtured talent can.
Our society values “busy.” But I think Jennifer Senior clearly states how unhealthy this modern family attribute can be. For one, busy negates freedom. And this reason is why our family has said no to some popular extracurricular activities and communities. Our weekdays may be hectic but we keep weekends as open as possible and have reaped the benefits of this strategy. Our kids have been able to attend almost all birthday parties they have been invited to. We can drive into the mountains for a hike or a picnic. And if we hear about a cool event, like a Lego home-building contest happening the next day, we can go. Busy? Totally overrated.
But stepping outside the social pressure to “be busy” is not easy. We want our kids to try new things and allow them to do so if they express interest…nurturing curiosity is important. So here we are…our eight activities a week. And finding little time for the kids to put in a good day’s work of building with Magformers, shooting stomp rockets and doll-dressing. Or even having an impromptu playdate with the neighbor kids. But I think our lesson is learned…the hard way. We need to recalibrate our scale in favor of what kids truly need: more time to “work,” to engage in free play.
Because as the saying goes, no one looks back on life and says, “Gee, I wish I had put in more hours at the office.” So I doubt anybody would look back on childhood and say,
“Gee, I wish I had even less time to play than I had.”
