What is overscheduling, exactly?

There is a pervasive notion nowadays about  the dangers of overscheduling – but no guidelines as to what that means exactly. In a region like ours, with access to many high-quality classes and programs, how much is too much in terms of activities for children? Leave your comments here.

Take, for example, a child who is in preschool part-time – maybe 2 or 3 half days a week. Would 5 activities – one for each of the other days – be too much? Many parents would say it sounds like a lot – but is it?

With the winter looming, and fewer opportunities to go to the beach or the park, what are the alternatives? Staying inside, kids bouncing off the walls, snapping on the TV for a Dora marathon? There are only so many playgroups, and many moms end up isolated at home.

The guidelines from the medical community are vague. There are no clear-cut answers in this article, published earlier this year in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.The article acknowledges that research shows that activities benefit children, but that free play time must be protected.  It then steers clear of actual guidelines:

“It is clear that organized activities have a developmental benefit for children, especially in contrast to completely unsupervised time. Some research substantiates that for most children, benefits increase with higher levels of participation…It is less clear, however, at what point a young person may be “overscheduled” to their developmental detriment or emotional distress. Free child-driven play known to benefit children is decreased, and the downtime that allows parents and children some of the most productive time for interaction is at a premium when schedules become highly packed with adult-supervised or adult-driven activities.”

So – with many of us considering how to get through the long winter – how much is too much? Another study shows how activities benefit children – and the more the better –  and its findings suggest that overscheduling fears are perhaps overblown.

At what point is a child robbed of the benefits of free play? Is there a danger that some parents might take these vague warnings too much to heart, and do less with their children? Or that funding to after-school programs would be cut given controversies around kids being pushed too hard? Denying children of the benefits of “getting out there” and socializing with other children and learning news skills? Leaving them in front of the TV for long stretches instead?

Full disclosure: I’m a mom who may be considered by some to be an overscheduler. On the 4 days a week when my 3-year-old daughter does not go to nursery school, we do at least one activity a day, including swimming lessons, ice skating, gymnastics, dance and French classes. These take anywhere from 1-3 hours out of our day, and my daughter still has plenty of time at home, where she likes to do art projects, play with her dolls and cook dinner alongside Mommy.