Parents often ask the following questions: Is enrolling my child in extracurricular activities, in addition to school or camp, a good thing? How many activities are considered too many? What do I do if my child doesn’t like the activity, even though I know it is good for them? How do I choose the best activity for my child when there are so many different activities available?
Don’t let your child’s individuality get overlooked because you are keeping your child steadily overbooked. School, sports, after-school activities, birthday parties, and social commitments - all of these things compete for your child’s energy and attention on a daily basis. And now that kids are hopping on social media at increasingly younger ages, the pressure to participate can become fierce early on. All those images of friends playing sports, hanging out at a pool party, or posing together in a gleeful gaggle may cause your child to feel like their schedule doesn’t quite measure up to others.
The intense demands of schoolwork may cause you to hesitate when it comes to after-school time. Although you don’t want to overload your child’s schedule, the academic, social, and physical benefits of extracurricular programs are hard to ignore.
The Afterschool Alliance, an information clearinghouse and advocacy group, reports kids who participate in after-school programs have better school attendance, higher grades, and loftier aspirations about graduation and college attendance. They’re less likely to use drugs or get into trouble with police, and – because they log less screen time – kids in after-school programs are at lower risk of obesity. Kids also develop social and leadership skills in after-school programs as they interact with peers in cooperative roles and mentoring relationships. Now that’s an impressive list of benefits!
Every family is different and so are the kids within a family. Fear of a child missing out on key experiences and important learnings can lead parents to want to overschedule. COVID also introduced a comfort in not running around (or driving) to too many activities.
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