Balance with All Things

From Karate, to religious class, to tutors, to art class, to a drama program, or to a sports team,
children have more enrichment options today than ever before. And while all of these activities
seem like great options, they have seemingly taken away down time, filling it with exciting
options that are constantly keeping children stimulated. As a parent, you are either exhausted
from running your child around town to participate in all of these activities or you work and can’t
take them, and therefore fear them falling behind their peers. But is it good for them to have
this much to do? Is it good for you to not have some quite time with your child?

Take a few minutes to think about your child’s average day (twenty-four hours) and how they
spend it. In elementary school, there are generally eight categories that fill a child’s day: sleep,
school, extra-curricular activities, chores, screen/media time, homework, family time, and
unstructured time. Are you happy with the outcome of this exercise for your child?

What I hear from parents when doing this workshop is typically that they are sad with how much
screen time their child has and how little family time they have. Often the “chores” and
“unstructured time” categories remain empty too. Is this what you want for your child later in
life?

Perhaps sit down with your child before the school year and decide together on one or two
extra-curricular activities (depending how much time each takes), allowing for some down time
each week (If they are struggling because they don’t want to miss out on something, help them
to understand that we don’t always get to do everything that we want.) That down time becomes
an opportunity for your child to take on a chore around the house, to help cook dinner, to sit
down and read for fun, or to be creative and come up with something new (this should not be
filled with more screen time!).

A recent TIME article discussed that today’s children struggle in college with the unstructured
time, since they are only in class for 12-15 hours a week. Because they have learned to run from
one activity to the next, college students don’t know what to do when nothing is scheduled. Help
your child to learn valuable life skills by taking the time to teach them how to make these types
of important decisions. So by the time they get to college, they know how to make dinner and to
do their own laundry!