<font color=DarkSalmon>WSJ article about "over scheduled" kids.
August 25, 2000
Kids and Parents Call Time Out;
Hyperscheduling Goes Too Far
Overscheduled Families Seize On
A New Solution: 'Just Say No'
By JUNE FLETCHER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the past few years, Marilyn Jackson has danced ballet, sung in the school
chorus, played basketball as well as softball and worked on her school
yearbook.
This fall, for an encore, the 16-year-old will do -- nothing.
"We were seeing the early warning signs of unraveling," says her stepfather,
William Ryan, a Birmingham, Ala., psychiatrist, adding that the logistics of
ferrying her and her athletic seven-year-old stepbrother around to various
rehearsals, performances and practices also put pressure on family life and even
his marriage. "My wife was always taking one kid to one thing, and I was
heading off with another. It was hard for us to see each other."
It's time to go back to school, and
extracurricular madness will begin
anew. For many kids, that means
goodbye to unstructured activities
like ant watching, bike riding and
hanging out with friends -- and
often to a good night's sleep and
steady meals -- and hello to
gymnastics and trumpet lessons.
For their parents, it means another
grinding round of car pools and
nagging guilt as busy kids
scramble to do their homework in the back seat.
But a growing number of parents think the hyperscheduling of kids has gone too
far. They are yanking their children out of activities that rob them of time to
study, eat family dinners and simply dawdle. One Wayzata, Minn., group,
FamilyLife1st, has even set up a Web site (www.FamilyLife1st.org) to
encourage parents to curb schedules. The group, thought to be the first of its
kind, has received "thousands" of inquiries since it began 18 months ago, says
co-founder Barbara Carlson.
A mother of four, Ms. Carlson says that while there's nothing wrong with a few
well-chosen after-school activities, "busy-ness has become a status symbol" that
has turned the lives of many families into an endless, stressful road trip. "Some
parents tell us the only time they have with their kids is when they change into
their uniforms at the McDonald's drive-through."
There's no question that children's lives have become overloaded. A University
of Michigan study done in 1998 found that free time for children under the age
of 13 has fallen 16% in a single generation -- to 51 from 63 hours a week. In
many schools, the Filofax culture has trickled downward: Spiral-bound day
planners are in evidence even at the elementary level. Franklin Covey Co., a
time-management firm in Provo, Utah, says 50 million student day planners will
be sold this year, up from less than a million a decade ago.
"Downtime is seen as anti-American," says Peter Simpson, whose eight-year-old
son, Matt, has participated in a junior wrestling team since kindergarten. But Mr.
Simpson won't let his son take part in weekend tournaments -- even though Mr.
Simpson is the team's coach. "I want to set aside weekends as special family
times, for movies, walks and church," says Mr. Simpson, a Fair Haven, N.J.,
financial-marketing consultant. Many of his neighbors, he says, just can't
understand why he'd want to do that.
It's all part of the "hurried-child" trend that Tufts University professor David
Elkind identified in his eponymous book a decade ago, mostly spurred by the
increasingly competitive college-admissions process. "Where once they were
looking for well-rounded students, now they're looking for specialists," he says.
And because affluent parents are starting their children's training at ever-earlier
ages, by the time college rolls around, the competition has become ferocious.
At Harvard University, for instance, the number of freshman students admitted
today is about the same as it was 25 years ago, but the "level of their
accomplishments and the quality of their performance" has improved
dramatically since then, according to Director of Admissions William
Fitzsimmons. Evidence of this can be found just in the number of
performing-arts groups that now exist on campus. In 1975, there were 16
drama groups, two orchestras, one a capella singing group and one dance
troupe. Now there are 66 drama groups, six orchestras, 11 a capella singing
groups and 17 student dance troupes.
Unlike previous generations of parents, who mainly left extracurricular training
to the schools, many have spent thousands for private lessons, uniforms or
costumes, travel, and tournament fees. John Agliato, who owns a soft-serve
ice-cream distributorship and coaches three different youth hockey teams on
Long Island, N.Y., says parents in his area easily spend about $5,000 a year
outfitting a child for hockey and traveling to games. With so much money and
time invested, he says it's not unusual to see tense parents clocking the amount
of time their youngsters are on the ice, or getting into fistfights in the stands.
Earlier Demands
Because their training is beginning earlier, by the time they reach their teenage
years, many kids are devoting huge chunks of time to just one or two activities.
Peter Rockwell, a Bellevue, Wash., salesman, has a keen appreciation of how
grueling current programs can be. When his daughter was 12, her demanding
ballet regiman had her practicing as many as four hours a day, and she dropped
from 90 to 70 pounds. "She was pained about it," Mr. Rockwell recalls. "The
price was so huge. Once a girl reaches age 14 or so, she's dancing six days a
week -- or she doesn't dance at all. There's no in-between." With his
encouragement, his exhausted daughter eventually dropped out of the program.
Some parents rely on their children to let them know they've reached their
limits, but because kids often clamor to do what their busy friends are doing,
that approach doesn't always work. Chuck Farkas, a Cambridge, Mass.,
consultant, overrules his four school-age children when their piano lessons or
soccer matches become too overwhelming emotionally or a logistical nightmare,
but still finds he can't just send them to the park for some free play. "All of the
fields around here are committed to organized teams practicing," he says.
Balancing activities is especially difficult for parents because the rules have
changed so dramatically in just a generation. Chicago corporate attorney John
McMorrow lettered in three sports in high school and played football at
Princeton University in the early 1970s. He'd like his 13-year-old son Jack, an
all-star in several sports, to follow in his footsteps. But he realizes that team
requirements are more crushing now than they used to be, when seasons for
winter and summer sports didn't overlap and coaches weren't as demanding.
Although he only played ice hockey for three or four months a year, his son
plays hockey for 50 weeks, and is benched if he misses a single practice.
During the school year, the practice schedule is so grueling, Jack gets up at 5:15
a.m. and returns home at 8:30 p.m. "It's hard to find family time, or even
schedule a vacation," Mr. McMorrow says.
'I Miss My Family'
Faced with the prospect of even more rigorous practice sessions in another year
or two, his son seems poised to pull back. "I don't want to play varsity," he
says. "I miss my family. I want to spend more time on homework and with my
friends."
Cindy Paradies's daughter reached a similar conclusion. Ms. Paradies, a
community-development officer in Wyckoff, N.J., had to "practically drag"
seven-year-old Brooke to ballet class last year, until the little girl sadly told her
that all she really wanted to do was to "come home from school, have a snack,
and not have to run off again." Ms. Paradies quickly withdrew her daughter
from the school: "I've become more gun-shy about starting new activities," she
says.
Indeed, overscheduled kids sometimes decide to quit themselves when they hit
their teens, says Andra Corvino, director of admissions for high-school students
of the Juilliard School, New York. "We see them all the time," Ms. Corvino
says. "They've been dragged here and there for so many years, they look fried."
Famous, rich young champions such as Tara Lipinski and Tiger Woods have
raised the standards, and the stakes, for all children. Prof. Elkind, the author of
several books on children's cognitive development, observes that society now
expects kids to achieve adult-level competencies at young ages, prompting
parents to buy tiny footballs and whip out flashcards before their heirs can walk
or talk.
Is it all necessary? If the goal is simply to get into a selective college, not really.
Mr. Fitzsimmons of Harvard says that out of a freshman class of about 1,650
students, about 650 are chosen because they are academic or extracurricular
prodigies -- a rate that has held steady since Mr. Fitzsimmons started his job 25
years ago. The rest are selected, he says, because they are "well-rounded and
well-grounded" and "open to new experiences in life." And if the 30-person
admissions committee is undecided about a highly trained applicant who seems
to be teetering on the edge of burnout, say in sports, they often apply the
"broken-leg test": "We ask 'What if his athletic career suddenly ends because his
leg breaks in five places?' Does he have other personal qualities that are
interesting?"
Back to the Books
That's one reason some parents are turning back to the well-rounded and
well-grounded ideal. "I am taken aback when parents consistently speak of
homework as a nuisance that has to be dashed off quickly so sports practices
and games can be gotten to," says Rosemary Heath, who sells and manufactures
audio-visual equipment. She encourages her daughter, Rachel, to stick to the
books rather than join time-gobbling teams. The seventh-grader, who attends a
Catholic school in Manhattan, spends her free time reading Jane Austen, visiting
museums and going to an old-fashioned YMCA summer camp rather than a
trendier theme camp with a singular emphasis, like tennis or computers. "I
wouldn't dream of interrupting her desire to investigate on her own," her mother
says.
Mary McKay, a retired West Lafayette, Ind., veterinarian, has planned nothing
more strenuous this fall than walks through the autumn leaves for her two
daughters, ages seven and four -- even if it does surprise her neighbors, who
brag about their kids' gymnastics ribbons and flashcard prowess. "Allowing
space for silence and contemplation is a basic ingredient for mental health," she
says. "I am always consciously putting on the brakes, trying to keep our family
from living too fast."
Write to June Fletcher at june.fletcher@wsj.com
Starting Times
What's the line between pushy and progressive? Here's what experts say is the minimum
amount of time a 10-year-old of average ability should spend weekly on an activity (including
lessons and practice time) to achieve excellent results, whether they're starting at a
beginning, intermediate or advanced level:
Music
Beginning: Four hours
Intermediate: Five hours
Advanced: 10 hours
Comments: McLean, Va., music instructor and composer Keith Winston says the amount of
time a student needs to practice -- on any instrument -- doesn't vary much. Composer Andrew
Thomas, director of the precollege division of New York's Juilliard School, says that age four
is not too early for a child to start piano, or scaled-down stringed instruments such as violin or
cello.
But training in most woodwinds and brasses, he says, should be delayed until age nine or 10.
Instruments that require advanced breath control, like French horn, tuba and oboe are usually
started at 11 or 12 years of age.
Chess
Beginning: One hour
Intermediate: Six hours
Advanced: 14 hours
Comments: Tom Brownscombe, director of scholastic programs for the U.S. Chess
Federation, New Windsor, N.Y., says that most children can't grasp the chess concepts until
they're between five and seven years old. Before then, he says, "they can't even sit still long
enough to play." By second grade, they're usually ready.
Dance
Beginning: Two hours
Intermediate: Three hours
Advanced: Five hours
Comments: McLean, Va., dance instructor Molly Vicks says students should learn ballet first
because it's the basis of all dance -- then add an hour of jazz or tap later. Andra Corvino, a
dance instructor and administrator at the Juilliard, says that instruction in ballet and modern
dance should be delayed until about age eight when a child becomes flexible and strong
enough to handle going on half-toe and can learn complicated routines. Tap can be started as
early as age four.
Sports
Beginning: Seven hours
Intermediate: 14 hours
Advanced: 21 hours
Comments: Adel Kebaish, a Falls Church, Va., sports medicine physician, says athletes
must practice a minimum of one hour, three times a week, to achieve excellence and avoid
injuries. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children not begin team sports
until age six, and suggests that late-developing teens should wait until they've passed through
puberty before beginning contact sports, because they don't have the muscle mass or
strength of opponents who have reached that milestone.
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