Our kids need a break

There’s something very wrong with kids being stressed out by extracurricular activities to the point they aren’t enjoying them.

A few weeks ago my 16 year old daughter, Zoe, was on her way to a choir competition. On the way there I asked her how she was feeling:

"I’m too busy. I need more time to do nothing," she said.  This made me worried, and a little sad. 

There’s been a lot of attention over the last decade or so around the over-scheduling of our children. If you think about it, it starts before they’re even born:  reading to them and choosing their schools while they’re still in utero and such. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do those things, but the foreshadowing might warrant caution. 

I never did much as a kid other than going to school, reading books and playing with my friends. We usually went on a vacation in August before school started back up. My siblings and I did nothing but play all summer and it was pretty glorious. We might have been bored at times, but then we found things to do, which, of course, helped develop things like resourcefulness, initiative taking, and creativity .

We also had chores, a lost art these days. In my house it’s a chore for me to wait for a time when Zoe's home to unload the dishwasher, pretty much her only household responsibility.

My parents might have put us in a bunch of programs if they’d thought about it, or could even afford it. I remember being briefly in the Girl Scouts at school, which mainly reinforced my love of reading. I got to go to summer camp for a week once, too, which was cool. I think my younger siblings did more things because my parents were more experienced by then, but I don't remember any over-scheduling.

I wonder about all this frenzied activity today, and who it’s for. In my 30 years of parenting, I’ve seen a lot of stressed out, resentful kids along the way, on soccer fields, in gyms and cafeterias, and on stages. They have so much pressure on them already to perform academically. And we heap on more responsibility all the time. Why?

I read an article recently that kids with "hyper-involved parents have more anxiety and less satisfaction with life."  I know these parents mean well, but it can’t be good to fill up every minute of our kid’s time.  The article goes on to say that "when children play unsupervised, they build social skills, emotional maturity and executive function."

Last year Zoe found out she was accepted into the National Honor Society. My initial feeling of pride quickly morphed into dismay because I know what a pain in the ass the required "volunteer hours" were going to be on top of school, theater and choir. But what kind of mom tells her kid she can’t be in the national honor society?

I know I sound ancient, harkening back to my school days, but I was in the honor society and I never had to do one second of volunteer work for it. It was something I was awarded because of all the hard work I’d ALREADY done to be such a stellar student. (Thank you very much.) It’s got to be confusing to tell a kid nowadays that they’re such a great student that they get to go do more work. "Hey kids, how’d you like to do more work that will in no way assist in improving your schoolwork, and may even end up interfering with your schoolwork at some point? Here, let me sign your form."

My daughter also feels like she doesn’t have enough time to be with friends. She has to schedule her friends, another thing that didn’t happen in my childhood. And she is more resentful than any normal teenager should have to be about spending time with family during school breaks. 

Which by the way, when did School Breaks stop being school breaks?

During pretty much any school holiday these days, I guarantee there is a practice or a rehearsal or a volunteer obligation on the schedule.  Sunday is the only day Zoe gets off from theater rehearsal, and they’ve even had a few of those along the way. I just can’t imagine my parents putting up with this. 

The high-jacking of school breaks is particularly egregious once kids get to high school. Over the last three years, Zoe’s father and I have had to come to terms with the fact that Zoe no longer has any free time for us to force her to endure family traditions to the degree that we tortured her much older sisters.

It sucks more for her dad than me, mostly because he does a lot more stuff. I’m kind of over-scheduled at a job that has things going on days and nights and weekends. I’m just grateful I can fit in all the chauffeur duties I’m required to perform for Zoe's activities. I can’t wait til she drives herself next year even though that means I will probably see her even less.  

It’s not that I think Zoe hates all her extracurricular activities. I know she loves performing in plays. I know she’d rather be at rehearsal than going to the lake for spring break. She’s told me so many times over the last couple of weeks. I just hope she’s becoming a more rounded person from all of it because I can see that she’s exhausted.  And I resent that school breaks are not school breaks anymore. Kids need time to recharge and rest their brains.