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Stop Planning Every Minute

As my son entered second grade, we spent an evening reviewing the after-school activities with the notices spread out on the kitchen table. There were soccer, football, golf, basketball and swim programs. We had a letter from Cub Scouts. The after-school scholastic enhancement program included opportunities for computers, math, reading and science. The school offered an art program to allow fun, creative time – in planned one hour art projects. And we were presented with two “optional” book reading programs.

I was exhausted. If you asked any adult to schedule this much after their work day, they would call you crazy. But because we are all so driven to give our kids the best and ensure that they keep up with the rest of their peers, we don’t hesitate to start filling out registration forms. We want them to have an edge in their math skills and swim the length of the pool by age 7.

As parents, do we really believe that they have to keep up to other kids, or the more extra-curricular activities, the better? Ask any parent how their child is doing and they won’t say, “He is great – he plays at home five times a week.”

As parents, we measure our success by the success of our child’s accomplishments. Whether it’s their grades, the number of Girl Scout cookies they sold or the number of goals at their last soccer game. It is very evident in sports as we see parents getting in brawls on baseball fields and children running to orthopedic surgeons with sports injuries at younger and younger ages. Our culture values achievement and competition.

The continual focus on measuring our success with the progress of our kids has to stop. Why don’t we measure success by how happy our kids are? Let’s pay as much attention to what our kids are doing as we do to how well they are doing it. I remind all parents that Michael Jordan didn’t play on the high school basketball team until he was a junior in high school, so why rush?

The Youth Sports Institute of Michigan State University sponsored a study on why kids were quitting sports and here were the top ten reasons:

They lost interest
They were not having fun
It required too much time
The coach played favorites
The coach was a poor teacher
They got tired of playing
There was too much emphasis on winning
They wanted to participate in non-sports activities
They needed more time to study
There was too much pressure

In fact, a sports radio program reported as many as 70 - 80% of kids who begin playing a sport at an early age drop out by age 15.

We think young kids should only participate in three activities, and families balance their weeks with playtime and family time. Try to expose kids to different activities each semester. They may not be the best at any one thing at a young age, but they will have an idea of what they like later. Then they can decide if they want to dedicate time to become better at it.

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