Scheduling Sweet Spots

There are any number of ways to plan a child’s schedule, from leaving open blocks of freedom to cramming it full like a débutante’s dance card. Possibilities fall all over the parenting spectrum, each carrying the respective weights of obligation, burden, guilt, bonding, joy, nostalgia, the teaching of skills and the learning of lessons, to name a few. We find the time and the funds that said schedule dictates, then we fill the car with threadbare pinnies and a miasma of knee pad funk.

At what point does it all become too much? A different activity each night of the week, and twice on Wednesdays? When the waking hours cut away too much sleep? When you drop your kid off at karate in her soccer uniform? Or when family time is only spent in commutes and early morning hallways?

There is nothing wrong with extracurricular activities, in fact, just the opposite, they offer a very long list of benefits packed with all the keywords needed for a happy, healthy childhood, but [spoiler alert] we don’t have to do it all.

Downtime has its moments. It’s perfectly acceptable to pace ourselves and let kids have some elbow room. Stretching is important, too, and the sidelines are the perfect place for a picnic.

When I was a kid, my options were somewhat limited. Granted, I grew up in a rural farming community, so many extracurricular activities had an immediate, practical value. For the most part it was 4-H and yard work. Our schedule was “be home by dark.” However, we had baseball in the summer, and I seem to recall playing one down in one game of flag football. There were a few weeks of camp, which, in hindsight, may have been more of a glorified daycare. The local pool only charged a quarter for a chance to become a belly-flop legend, living in infamy long after the sting had gone. But we didn’t have fencing, glassblowing, parkour or coding classes to compete for our wandering attention. We didn’t even have soccer. We certainly didn’t have cable.

Now, my boys have access to all the above. Then there’s also water polo, lacrosse, art, music, science camps, writing retreats and countless others. The overwhelming bounty of it is intoxicating for many parents, insistent as we are on providing all the opportunities to all the things. We want our kids to have every chance in the world.

Good. Letting kids experience new things expands their horizons and puts them on the road to being well-rounded, empathetic people. They may find their passion or they may find that they haven’t found it yet—both are important. The hard part is pacing ourselves.

Through trial and error, we have decided (family meeting!) that our kids benefit from concentrating on one or two pursuits at a time, sandwiched on the schedule as they are between school, homework and family, not to mention sleep and whatever passes for a social life.

We have tried it both ways: a calendar covered in circles and itineraries, and evenings that fade slowly into a good book and a sinking pillow. The latter has proved the better option for our boys. Rather than spread themselves thin over countless pursuits they give their full attention to one extracurricular activity per quarter. Then they have the option of doing it again or moving on to something else. Sometimes the season makes the decision for them. We ebb with the dog days and flow with the fun. The upside is everywhere.

We are on the sidelines, and we are cheering loudly.

_{Photo: Whit Honea}