Are your kids overscheduled and stressed?

Road to stress is paved with good parental intentions
By Heather Wines, Gannett News Service
Donna Ernst and her daughter, McKinzie Schultz, 12, sit with their cocker spaniel, Daisy, near their Crofton, Md., home. McKinzie has had a busy summer. Shortly after school ended in June, she attended sailing camp, then a week-long adventure camp, followed by softball camp and Girl Scouts camp. Her mom says her school year was even busier.By Lottie L. Joiner, Gannett News Service
McKinzie Schultz has had a busy summer. Shortly after school ended in June, the 12-year-old attended a sailing camp near her home in Crofton, Md. Then there was the week-long adventure camp, followed by softball camp and Girl Scouts camp.
The school year was even busier. McKinzie, whose day would begin at 6:30 a.m. and end around 10:30 p.m., was scheduled nearly every day with some type of extracurricular activity, including art classes, softball and math tutoring. And the weekends, says her mother, Donna Ernst, "are never free."
"I want to expose her to as many things to make her a well-rounded person," says Ernst, 34. "By introducing her to different things, I'm showing her the real world, all sides of life. She can get an art scholarship, academic scholarship or athletic scholarship."
Ernst says her daughter, an A student, is doing things she enjoys.
"When she was young, I pushed her into stuff like ballet and soccer," says Ernst, who is divorced. "Now she says what she wants to do. She really doesn't get stressed out — not that I know of."
Ernst is like many parents who fill their kids' afternoons and evenings with programmed activities, hoping to prepare them for a competitive future.
The 21st-century child has a MySpace page, a cellphone and a flurry of academic and artistic pursuits designed to help him or her navigate a high-tech world.
Most experts agree that extracurricular activities are good for kids. But what happens when the actions of well-meaning parents lead to teens who are overwhelmed and overburdened in their quest to reach the Ivy League?
"It may be intuitively clear to parents that they have to push kids because it's a very competitive world, but they may be doing more harm than good because they may not be nourishing the kinds of abilities and skills that are most necessary in today's world," says David Elkind, a psychologist and professor of child development at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
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The kinds of abilities and skills that Elkind, author of The Power of Play and The Hurried Child, are referring to include creativity and innovation — skills children acquire naturally during free, unstructured play time, he says.
Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a report touting the benefits of play. The report found play "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 lack of self-initiated play and the opportunity to learn critical skills during play is a result of overscheduling that can have a devastating impact on a child's future success.
Denise Pope, a lecturer at Stanford University's School of Education and founder and director of the college's Stressed Out Students Project, says some students burn out before they reach college.
"A lot of these kids, they get to college and say 'Now I can live. I can breathe,' " Pope says.
"But what happens is that they overschedule themselves again. Some of these kids only know how to be scheduled, and that's a problem."
The result is kids who know how to multitask and work on a team but who are living someone else's dream of who they are. Pope says university mental-health clinics are full of stressed college students, and businesses are increasingly disappointed in the graduates.
"They're not seeing the leadership skills they need," Pope says. "They want someone who's willing to take risks, be creative, someone who can think outside the box."
Even more important is the impact of overscheduling on family well-being. "If family life is being sacrificed, then marriage suffers," says Alvin Rosenfeld, author of The Overscheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap and co-author of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard?
Of course, no one is calling for children to just sit home and watch hours of TV or play video games, but when extracurricular activities get in the way of functions that help build character and morality, parents must rethink their priorities, Rosenfeld says.
"When our family life takes a back seat to soccer games, something's wrong."