Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Over scheduled vs relaxed parenting style

I wanted to get a survey of gifted parenting styles. My parenting style with my 2 children is to provide them with as many extracurricular activities that interest them. Even if it means driving all over town, having a packed schedule, eating in the car, changing uniforms in the car, etc. I am guilty of not giving my kids enough unstructured downtime. Partly this stems from my own upbringing where I didn't have the opportunity to be involved in many activities, because we were struggling financially. And partly because I am a competitive person by nature, so I want to see my kids be good or at least exposed to many different things.
Speaking with other parents, I see a vast difference in parenting styles. Some parents are much worse than I am. Kids are involved in multiple activities per day, where they are so over scheduled, I have a hard time believing a child can do so many activities. Then I have friends that are so relaxed with their kids. The kids are always outside riding bikes, completely care free. The reason I bring up this topic is because my kids usually just go along with the flow. But recently my son has been complaining about being stressed out and having too full of a schedule. I feel bad now for cramming in all these "fun" activities. All he wants to do is just go home now. Has anyone's kids ever experience this kind of burn out? I'm going through my schedule and cutting out all the extraneous activities and just having some downtime together as a family. At least for the rest of the summer.....

Some might say my kids are over scheduled, while others might say I am too relaxed. My older two are now at the point where they set their own activities. more or less (18 and 20, entering freshman and senior year respectively). Middle kid, the 18 year old, played two varsity sports, played one as a travel sport (year-round for past six years), served on the board of a local non-profit, worked part-time and took five APs this past year. She also had time to watch Netflix.

Youngest, age 11, is my problem. She quits activities as soon as they become too hard, require practice or interfere with anything (even once) that she thinks is fun (watching YouTube, going to a friend's house). She will agree to an activity, can be excited about it, then wants to quit. The older two might have complained once in a while, but nothing like the youngest. More importantly, they did not quit - they at least gave an activity a fair try before moving on.

If you asked my older two now, I think they would say they had a decent balance of activities. They see the youngest as a quitter. Not sure how old your kids are, but my little one, as a rising 7th grader, needs to start focusing on some activities. Our approach has always been to try a lot of things in elementary, start figuring out the favorite activities in middle school, and be more focused in HS.

I wouldn't cram his schedule so full that he has no downtime, but I also would not allow the do nothing option. The kids need to develop some interests so they do stuff as they get older - you don't want the HS/college aged kid just being "relaxed" all of the time. Just my opinion...

In the summer, we use that period to have a lot of downtime and while I might occasionally plan an outing, for the most part I let the kids have the lead and try to plan things themselves.

In the school year, there are several activities and sometimes we do feel very busy. No one wants to quit anything yet, but we do keep at least some downtime. I have always thought that 1-2 activities at a time was enough and when we had 3, it seemed like just a little too much.

I also know kids who have 5 different activities a week. It seems like too much for my family, but it seems to work for others, so to each their own...

(1) Kids are different. What is good for one may be terrible for another. A schedule that an extrovert craves might demolish an introvert. A kid who comes up with tons of intellectual and artistic projects on her own, and wants to lead friends or cooperate with friends in pretend play and other games at her house may thrive, in every way, getting to do just this. I suppose it's possible that some kids aren't as naturally creative and would need a nudge from more structured activities (although I wonder if maybe some of these kids have just never had the chance). And certainly there are activities that require large numbers of kids to interact at once (e.g., big sports activities) that can't just be arranged on the fly, at least not in many areas of the country in this day, so there has to be a structured setting for these. And at different times in her life, a kid may need different things.

(2) What I did with my kids, who were the kind to come up with their own activities, was not allow them to spend huge amounts of time in activities that I thought were more "consumptive" or addictive - e.g., television, mindless internet surfing. Truthfully, when it comes to computers I'm not sure I drew the right line; I may have been too strict (typing stories on the computer was easy for me to categorize, but what about Minecraft?). But after occasional bouts of boredom, they always came up with fun things to do. If we had lived closer to friends and could have had the same kinds of last-minute-scheduled play sessions I had as a kid, I think it would have been even better.

(3) Here's an article you may find interesting:

https://aeon.co/essays/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play

This.

I think I'm in the middle of the road on this issue. Kids whom have no activities these days seem to be lonely and mostly on the computer IMO. If they were outside riding bikes & playing with other kids I wouldn't care. But in my neighborhood it's hard to find kids like that. Plus my kids never got enough exercise unless I pushed. Yet they do need downtime. Personality and issues like how much time they spent on homework affect it. Until H.S. when they scheduled their own activities I had both kids participating in one physical activity (dance, martial arts, swimming) & one other say a music lesson, theater or art class.

When my DD21 was in 3rd grade I accidentally overscheduled her for a few months. Vowed never to do that again. My DS17 requested that he not do many activities in junior high. But as a senior in H.S. is a busy teen. I think it pays to listen to your kids, choose a few activities the kids enjoy, and make priority to yourself that your don't need to spend all your time running the kids around.

My older son is involved in one year round sport (and participates in that sport for high school), two clubs (they meet during lunch at school with only occasional after school meetings), and volunteer work.

Younger son is in middle school. He has music lesson, Boy Scouts, and off and on participates in the same year round sport as older brother. He used to love it but doesn't now. Trying to find him a physical activity that he enjoys.

Eta younger son loves drama and would love to participate in theater stuff. Just haven't been able to get that for him.

This is a bit "to each his own," but one thing that I've found is that even the same child may have needs that change. That is, when DD (an extravert, by nature) was younger she was always asking to try every activity in sight. As she has matured and started receiving more homework, she seems to need more downtime. I have cut way back on her activities since she was small (and she has already tried so many). Also, she doesn't play the way she did when she was very young, but if I realized that if I do not provide her with downtime, she has no time to utilize her huge imagination (drawing, writing). She is now much happier having what looks like "downtime" (yet she is quite busy with her own imaginative agenda and seems absolutely recharged when she has this time).

DS, on the other hand, is more of an introvert. He has never wanted to try as many activities as DD. He'd much rather focus on a few and try to get better at them.

So, from my observation, it is partially what you and your child prefer, but keep in mind that your child's needs change as they grow. HTH!

At the moment ds9 does 2 sports and ds7 does music and one sport. That would be too much for me if I didn't trade transport duties so I only had to take them to the sport they share. Ds9 really needs to do stuff though.

Activities really are the main source of "learning" for DD so I hate to cut down but they are time-consuming and expensive.

Music comes very naturally to DD so she gets a lot of compliments and praise every time she performs, and I try not to let the positive feedback get to us one way or another but it's hard. When she started refusing to go to piano lessons, I have to admit, I started having thoughts like "But you are five and almost ready to play Chopin. How can you even think of giving that all up?" but I had to put my ego aside and determine why she suddenly was refusing to go to lessons when she still loves music. I thought she was feeling over-scheduled or things were getting "too hard" but it turns out she needed a different approach.

She is an over-scheduled child during school days. She is already exhausted by the end of school day but she has lessons after school three days a week plus Sunday. She also has to practice once she gets home so we make sure she has at least two hours of downtime everyday. Thankfully, her school doesn't give homework until fourth grade so we have several years before we have to worry about that even if we stay.

When my son is at home, he wants to be on the computer. The computer is the default mode for just about anything these days, from socializing and playing to drawing and writing.

If he's in after care at school or going to a wildlife or farm camp during the summer, he's running around outdoors, exploring, doing creative play and having deep, face-to-face conversations with other kids--the kinds of activities that were the default mode for kids two decades ago.

So, I often feel like his "scheduled" time is some of his best unstructured time. Like I am now paying for him to have the "boring" but incredibly important experiences that used to come for free.

When someone told me recently how good their kids have it because they have lots of time at home, I reflected on how lucky my son is that I pay for him to leave it.