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Family Matters
By Jeff Kemp
Leave room for childhood on your kids’ schedule
With a new school year starting the schedules of both parents and children will be filling up fast. Seattle cartoonist David Horsey recently published a cartoon of a mother going over a checklist while her son is shown buried in school books. The mom is on the phone talking to one of her son’s friends: “I’m sorry Billy, Johnny’s got four hours of homework tomorrow, soccer, swimming lessons, math tutoring, Tae Bo on Tuesday, science camp this weekend, youth group, piano... ahhhhh, he can squeeze you in for a half hour, two weeks from Sunday.”
We can laugh at this exaggerated caricature of our hurry-up world, but as parents we need to be asking the question, “Is this kind of lifestyle what’s really best for our kids and for us?”
Co-founder of Parenting Press and Northwest College educator Elizabeth Crary recently concluded that today’s kids are being thrust into the rat race way too early in life. She says children are telling her that they are overwhelmed and just want time to be kids. One little girl expressed her frustration by asking, “Is there any way I can just hang out with my mom?” The rat race has gotten so bad that three top Harvard officials actually declared in the New York Times that kids need to slow down. They urged children and teens to discover their true passions and possibly even put off college for a year.
Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, formerly the head of Stanford’s Child Psychiatry Training program, studied this phenomenon of over-scheduled kids and the dilemma it causes for many families. From year-round select sports teams to kids taking summer school classes to excel academically, Rosenfeld says “everybody is so nervous about getting it right that they’re trying too hard.” He wishes parents would shift gears, relax and take time to enjoy their kids. After conducting his research, which included one-on-one interviews with children, he reported that kids want one thing: time... to do nothing!
As a parent of four boys, I can empathize with parents who are trying to give their children the best start in life. We all want our kids to succeed. At times my family has taken “relaxing” vacations that wore my kids out because I tried to fit two weeks of activity into one week. My wife usually has to remind me “We’re on vacation! It’s time to chill out a bit.”
But experts like Dr. Rosenfeld are worried that kids are being hurt by this activity overload. Year-round select sports, expensive SAT prep courses and even toddler gymnastics are forcing kids to grow up way too fast. He even gives an extreme example of a couple that paid their nanny five hundred dollars for each developmental milestone their toddler hit ahead of schedule.
Children and parents run the risk of sacrificing relationships for activity. Research shows that small children and teens need and want time with their parents. It also shows that strong, healthy family relationships are what give kids the best opportunity for future success in the things that matter most: their own marriages and families.
Of course we want our kids to achieve their goals, but we need to remember that they’re not ready for the hurry-up world of adult life. Are you over-scheduling you’re kids? Could they use a break to spend more time with their family? Childhood will pass quickly and our kids will be adults soon enough. Early childhood educators remind us that childhood is a journey not a race. Parents can prevent the pressure and pace of the adult world from squeezing the childhood right out of their kids’ lives. With a new school year starting, isn’t that better than becoming their fulltime secretary and chauffeur?
Jeff Kemp is a husband and the father of four boys. He also serves as President of Families Northwest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Northwest the world's premier place for marriage, family life and children.
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