Are Your Kids Overscheduled?

With the beginning of the school year comes the temptation for kids to get involved in lots of activities. No harm is done if a child or young adult chooses one or two activities to get involved in, but the consequences of overscheduling can have a negative effect on physical and emotional well-being.

In January 2007, a study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics discussed this very issue. While the authors noted a multitude of factors that were changing the social landscape in which American children are raised, they essentially found that overscheduling kids is detrimental because it gives them less time to engage in free play.

"Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children," the authors wrote.

The study recommended that pediatricians discuss with parents that while engaging kids in structured activities is well-intentioned, an activity overload can take away from family quality time together, contribute to childrens' stress, and hinder their development into healthy and happy adults.

"Pediatricians can remind parents that the most valuable and useful character traits that will prepare their children for success arise not from extracurricular or academic commitments but from a firm grounding in parental love, role modeling, and guidance," the report said.

In response to this study, later that month TIME published "The Overscheduled Child Myth," by John Cloud. The article outlined reasons why participation in activities is good for kids, and noted a report by Yale University researchers that found that kids benefitted from being involved in scheduled activities.

"The paper notes that only 6% of adolescents spend more than 20 hours a week in organized activities," Cloud wrote. "And there's no consistent evidence that even these enthusiasts are worse off. Instead they report better well-being and less drug use. They even eat meals with their parents more often than those who don't participate at all."

But concerns about the ill effects of overscheduling kids remain a hot topic in parenting culture.

Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of "The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap," has coined the term "hyper-parenting," to describe parents who are overly involved in their children's lives and often pressure them to be perfect in all aspects of their lives.

Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise offer tips for avoiding hyper-parenting on their website.

"Kids should not be judged on every aspect of their performance in life - it puts too much pressure on them, and too much pressure on us," they say. "By definition, children are immature and should not be expected to perform to adult standards. Resist the pressure from coaches, and the media, that tells you how to push your child to excel early."

Other tips include prioritizing family time, encouraging kids to "be unproductive" once in awhile, limiting activities for both parents and adults, and cherishing relationships with one's partner and children.

"Live the values that are important to you, because your children will emulate your daily conduct when they grow up and go out into the world," they said.

While parents can do their best to facilitate balance in their childrens' lives between structured and unstructured time, influences outside the family realm may send kids different messages.

In a 2009 report "Crisis in Kindergarten: Why Children Need Play in School," Edward Miller and Joan Almon of the Alliance for Childhood discuss how play time has become less important in schools.

"The latest research indicates that, on a typical day, children in all-day kindergartens spend four to six times as much time in literacy and math instruction and taking or preparing for tests (about two to three hours per day) as in free play or 'choice time,'" they said.

Miller and Almon say that increasingly strict academic standards are inappropriate for young children, and less time for "unstructured play and discovery" could be contributing to "a rise in anger and aggression in young children, reflected in increasing reports of severe behavior problems."

Moreover, "High-stakes testing and test preparation in kindergarten are proliferating, as schools increasingly are required to make decisions on promotion, retention, and placement in gifted programs or special education classes on the basis of test scores."

Interestingly, federal and state policies that encourage more academic time and less play time for kids, the authors write, go against the need for adult creativity in the workforce that is often valued by businesses.

"While many politicians and policymakers are calling for even more tests, more accountability, and more hard-core academics in early childhood classrooms, the leaders of major business corporations are saying that creativity and play are the future of the U.S. economy."

For us adults doing our best to be productive members of a shaky economy, research shows that our stress and activity overload can rub off on our children.

According to "Stress in America 2010," a survey by the American Psychological Association, one third of children ages 8 - 17 surveyed said that their parent was "always or often worried or stressed out about things during the past month."

Of parents surveyed, the top three stressors were money, work and the economy, with 69 percent saying that "their stress has only a slight or no impact on their children."

But 91 percent of children said "they know when their parent is stressed because they observe a multitude of behaviors, such as yelling, arguing and complaining." Only 14 percent of kids said that their parents' stress didn't bother them at all.

The survey also found direct correlations between parent and child obesity rates and higher levels of stress and fatigue when compared to people of healthy weight.

It's apparent that we live in a culture in which more is never enough. More activities probably aren't going to make it more likely that your child will attend an Ivy League school, and more work for you might help pay the bills, but probably won't make you happier.

If parents are going to do their best to ensure their childrens' happiness, the best thing we can do is unplug, unwind and spend more time enjoying life with a healthy dose of nothing on the calendar!