Are You Overscheduling Your Children This School Year? Here's How to Know

As parents, we all want the best for our kids.

We want them to excel academically, to thrive in their sports, and to pursue a career path that will bring them joy and success.

So we enroll them in as many extracurricular activities as we can. Swimming, football, gymnastics, dance, extra math tutoring, art class, karate. It can get to the point where you spend all your evenings and weekends driving them from activity to activity, with very little free time left. But it can seem worth it because of the perceived benefits for our kids.

I know that for me personally, I want to give my children every opportunity possible to help them flourish. Their extracurricular activities help them to develop social, physical, and life skills, as well as give them a sense of community. What more could we want for our children?

But with all these commitments comes a risk of overscheduling. There have been months in my household where I have felt so exhausted from our busy schedule, and then I look at my kids and see the same exhaustion written all over their faces. I know they enjoy all of their extracurricular activities — but do they need to be doing so much? Are all these commitments actually good for our kids?

Time management is a skill that children learn while participating in extracurriculars, but sometimes the demands of these activities can potentially lead to academic neglect, physical fatigue, and stress. They may also partake in them at the expense of family time, as too many activities can leave little opportunity for bonding, communication, and interaction within the family unit.

Overscheduling can also limit unstructured play time, which is unfortunate, given that free time has numerous health benefits — it allows children to use their imaginations, develop their creativity, and boost their problem-solving skills.

In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published an article in 2018 on the importance of unstructured play in development. Play has been shown to enhance the brain's structure and function. It can also improve children's ability to plan, organize, and get along with others and regulate emotions, as well as enhance the parent-child relationship.

I want to acknowledge that even beyond our kids' activities, life does get busy. Parents are also juggling work and home life, and sometimes it can feel like we get little time to truly switch off. So, I try my best to find 15 to 30 minutes on weeknights to play or just be silly with my kids, and I find it's so good for my mental health, too.

If you're struggling to know what the right balance between structured and unstructured time is, here are some guiding questions I've found helpful in my own life before I add anything to my kids' plate. In carefully evaluating new opportunities with the following questions, I can make informed decisions about whether a new activity is worth committing to, or if it's something we can pass on for now.

Sleep deprivation can lead to negative health and developmental outcomes. One study of teens who were sleep-deprived showed an association with lower grades, lower mood, increased daytime sleepiness, and behavioral problems.

As aforementioned, there are numerous benefits to unstructured play, including problem-solving and creative thinking. If you're finding your child's week has little or no space for free time, then it might be time to start saying "no."

There are many benefits to family dinners, including improved language development for children, and studies suggest that teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to obtain better grades in school. In addition to improved academic performance, studies have also shown improved family relationships and decreased risk of substance abuse for teens. Eating together also reduces the risk of childhood obesity and the risk of eating disorders. The more frequently family meals are enjoyed together, the better the emotional health of the adolescents, according to a study of more than 26,000 Canadian teens between 11 and 15 years of age.

There have been times I felt like I was constantly rushing from one activity to another and feeling stressed and overwhelmed. This was a sign to me that I was taking on too much, and your kids will likely act or speak out if they're feeling stressed by the activities, too.

Sometimes, if the new activity comes with more benefits for the children, we need to make decisions about how we can fit it in. This might involve swapping it with an existing commitment. We have switched out soccer for karate based on my kids' interests, for example; I also really liked not only the physical activity component, but also the discussions the kids would have with their sensei.

When we consider a new extracurricular activity for our children, we need to think not only of the benefits it may bring, but also of what we need to compromise on to make room for it. If it means cutting out another activity, fine. But if it consistently takes away from family time and sleep, or leaves little time for unstructured play, then it's a no for me. It's important to balance extracurriculars with spending time exploring with their imaginations and bonding with the people they love.

Dr. Stephanie Liu, MD, is a family physician who delivers evidence-based health information for moms and little ones. After the birth of her first child, she launched her blog, Life of Dr. Mom, to debunk scientific misinformation. Dr. Liu, aka Dr. Mom, became known as a relatable and credible source on topics ranging from infant nutrition to postpartum depression. Dr. Liu is a PS Council member.