Dateline 2-27-20
An article came across my desk this morning from the New York Times Parenting Newsletter, entitled The Outrageous Cost of Overscheduling Your Child. The reporter, Dani Blum, reports the monetary cost in New York City of several common activities that parents enroll their children in to enrich their lives. Art, Music, Sports, you name it and there is an organization that is targeting you, and your child, with persuasive messages about how their lessons or activities will be of inestimable value to your child’s future. Don’t get me wrong. I support enriching a child’s life with extra-curricular activities. Someone will be the next Picasso, Swift, Ali or Streep, and it all has to start somewhere. But there are costs, and not all of them are monetary. I will refer you to Ms. Blum’s article (for the details on the type of financial investment you may be considering. As a quick reference, Ms. Blum reports a cost of $738 for 16 beginner swim lessons, including goggles at one New York City Upper East Side location. If you add just one music lesson and instrument ($239.99) and one sport (12 weeks of soccer plus cleats for $450) you have a grand total of $1,447.99. But that’s just the financial cost. How about the unintended personal cost to your child?
Over-scheduled parents can lead to over-scheduled children. Too many commitments can result in too little time to be together as a family. Too little time for your child to complete complicated homework assignments, play with friends or even just to think. The resulting stress can be overwhelming for everyone in the family. So, how do you make choices for your child that will allow the necessary balance between school, organized sport, art lessons, clubs and free time? Start with the fixed time constraints. School is 5 days a week, averaging from 8 am to 3 pm. This means there are 5 weekday afternoons and two days on the weekend available in a child’s schedule. Organized sports, like little league baseball or dance lessons, typically require one weekday afternoon of practice and a Saturday game or practice/performance. A youth club like scouts will take up one weekday evening at a minimum. A musical instrument or art lesson is another minimum one-afternoon commitment, not to mention time for practice. Then you have Sunday or Saturday afternoons, depending on your religious preference. If you have more than one child the time cost is compounded.
Having raised two children to adulthood with no internet to consult I learned from experience, meaning I made the mistakes, so you don’t have to. I now pass my hard-learned wisdom on to you. Your children will want to do everything they hear that their friends are doing. Here is when you help them make choices by using my not-so-secret formula to keep scheduled activities in a beneficial balance. My formula for avoiding over scheduling is as follows: A maximum of School + One Organized Sport/Dance Club +One Youth Club + One Musical Instrument/Art Class per week. You and your child accept a commitment of 3 months. At the end of the 3 months your child can decide to continue, try a different club, sport or art or drop one activity to expand a preferred activity. For instance, at one point my son decided to drop scouting to take more guitar lessons. My daughter dropped piano lessons to take more dance lessons. My formula allows your child an average of two after school afternoons/evenings and one whole day on the weekend free to follow his or her own star. At some point your child may decide to scale back to one (or none) club/activity per week to allow for more time for friends or hobbies. This plan is flexible. The main point here is that it is important for your child to have “down-time”. Unstructured time is an opportunity to reflect on what they learned at school, explore their own interests, play or listen to music, draw pictures, read for pleasure, see friends or choose to be alone. The ability to independently use the social and academic skills you seek for them is a gift for life.