The Decibel - How many activities are too many for kids?

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

When it comes to enrolling your kids in extracurricular activities, how many is too many? Is there such a thing as over-scheduling your kids? Parenting experts say ‘yes,’ and that doing so can have long-term negative effects on your children.Amberly McAteer is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail who recently looked into what the research says about programming activities for your kids, how long we’ve been ignoring expert advice, and what it means for their well-being.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

It's the first Monday of January, which means we're back to the grind. And that grind might be particularly intense if you're a parent juggling a job, kids, and extracurricular activities, like Amberlee McAteer. So both of my young daughters do ballet and swimming every week, and we were in a really good groove with our schedule. Then one of her daughters found a new passion. Suddenly my oldest daughter Lucy started parkouring all over my living room. I couldn't find her.

Sometimes I'd be looking for her everywhere in the house and she'd be upside down, sort of crumpled up behind the couch asking me, is this a handstand, mama? Whatever was happening, I wanted to embrace her passion. So I signed them both up for gymnastics. But while that meant her daughter could learn how to do a proper handstand, it also meant that suddenly the family was rushing to get to three activities in a 24 hour period

between Friday and Saturday. The reality is, striking the right balance of enriching kids and overscheduling them is a real challenge. So Amberlee is on the show today. She's a contributing columnist for The Globe who writes about parenting issues. She'll share what she learned about the effect of over-scheduling your kids, and how you can find the right rhythm for your family. I'm Manika Ramen-Wilms,

and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Amberley, great to have you back here. Hey, thanks for having me back, Manika. So just to start here, Amberley, let's talk about what over-scheduling actually means, because I think it can be a bit subjective for different people. So how do you define it?

So it's actually kind of hard to define, because it's going to mean something different for every family. So you can't really count overscheduling, but you can feel overscheduling in your family. When your kids are stressed, when you're stressed, when you're launching snacks into the backseat as you're racing off to get to piano on time or soccer practice and then karate, and you feel like you just haven't had a spare second between school, dinner, and doing all the

things you've signed up for to enrich your kids' lives, that's overscheduling. Okay, so it's a feeling basically of being kind of stretched too thin. Stretched too thin. You, both parents and your kids are feeling like this is too much. So a Toronto mom that I spoke with told me that her five year old daughter was in five different things every week. Five. So it was a girl guide, jazz, swimming, soccer, ballet. Most activities they're driving to, you know, right after school after she's had a full day of school and she's in grade one. And her daughter actually came to her and said, you know, mom, I love ballet. I love the actual ballet, but I don't love the rushing. So I just can't do that anymore. Five years old.

I thought that was really self-aware and mature. That's quite insightful for a five-year-old man. Right? I thought, wow, it's good to know your own limits. The mom told me that she was overscheduled as a kid. And she needed to learn that downtime, which she said really isn't in her DNA, is important. And she said she's always feeling this, you know, like her kids need to be excelling at everything and learning all of these new important life skills. And then she told me that that feeling is a little bit toxic. She's realizing that.

Hmm. Toxic in what way then? Toxic in that the demand she's placing on her kids to do all these things because they need to know how to swim and they need to know, you know, all the lessons you can learn from Girl Guides and things and the pressure that she's putting on her kids and not having any like casual nights at home, like five days a week is a lot of nights. She's feeling like that is not good for anybody, that that's actually quite bad. So she was relieved to take ballet off the list. Yeah. So let's get into this a little bit more then and look at the drawbacks here because I mean beyond parents and kids both being exhausted from getting to activities, why is this such

a negative thing potentially? So imagine if you as an adult were doing all of these things after your workday. You know, my extracurriculars involve one Pilates class a week and one book club a month and that's about all I can handle. So imagine if you're learning like a new thing on top of your work day all of the time, and you're being corrected as you learn. So there's a lot of new data that's showing the connection between all of this over scheduling,

and actually like anxiety and depression and mental health effects later on in life. So there was actually this data that was published in early 2024 in the Economics of Education Review where three economists studied thousands of schedules of kids from kindergarten to high school. And they studied what's called enrichment hours. So they also included homework hours in that time, but also a load of extracurriculars. And they found that actually the effects of, you know, more enrichment activities equaled the worst

well-being score later. That's including things like anxiety and depression. And of course that's not a definitive cause and effect, right? I have to say. But psychologists have studied the findings, said that it's not a perfect causation, but it is still very concerning that you have this connection between kids that are doing all the things and then, you know, suffering. And another important thing, Manika, that the science shows is that not all curriculars are created equal. So the more the activity is based in socializing and in groups, the better. So a 2014 study that was published in the Journal of

Frontiers of Psychology showed the relationship between the time kids spend in less structured activities and more structured. So less instructed group activities are better for what they call long-term self-directed executive function. So that's, psychologists speak for something like, you know, flexibility, decision-making, the ability to plan and focus later in life. And they found that solo instructed activity, something like piano lessons, not to come for piano lessons if that's your thing. A solo instructed activity is less likely to lead to good, self-directed executive functioning later in life.

And something that's more group oriented, say outside, and that needs collaboration amongst your peers, that's more likely to lead towards that self-directed executive functioning like flexibility and decision making and all those things that you know you want your kid at the end of the day to develop. Okay. This is an interesting thing that we're kind of dissecting here and you talked earlier too Amberlee about like the fact that kids are learning and they're on for a lot of these activities so something like piano lessons you're not getting downtime necessarily

because you're focusing and being corrected in that time. So that's time where you don't necessarily get to relax. Absolutely. And think about how important it is for us to relax and just chill, you know, pre-kids, I used to have a lot more downtime, but I thought that it was really important to just, you know, do a puzzle or like sit and have a glass of wine

and just like not do nothing. But that's important. So we've just talked about some of the drawbacks then to this over scheduling. But I guess if that's the case, why do parents continue to do it? So I think you can't underestimate social media. You know, seeing kids on your phone that are excelling at softball or soccer or piano and you think, oh my god, my kid hasn't even started that thing. But it's also just in real life connections. I mean, if you run into a parent at the park like I did recently and they mention how their kid just graduated from level four at swimming and you think, oh my god, my kid is older

than your kid and they've been in level three forever. And you start to go down that path of comparison, which I think is so tempting for parents to do on so many levels right now. But we're not really listening to our intuition when it comes to what's really best for my kid and it's not necessarily doing all the things. So it's this idea of kind of keeping up and I guess making sure that you're giving your kids all the opportunities that you think they need. I mean what if your kid is an amazing pianist or an amazing gymnast and you just, you as a parent haven't tapped into that and you haven't given them that opportunity.

I think it's this worry that we're not doing enough when we're doing too much. We've talked about the cost on kids. Is there also a cost on parents? Well, there's an actual cost as in money. So there was this really interesting Ipsos poll of Canadian families done in 2018. It led with that seven in 10 parents agree that it's most important to keep children as busy as possible with organized activities. And I thought after doing this article and I was like, no, seven in ten parents are wrong. But then it gets into the actual cost and the actual

spending. And on average, Canadian families are spending almost $1,200 during the school year, so September to say June. And more than half the families said that they felt financially stretched by that amount of money. And a third of those families said that they're using debt to fund those costs. But they say that it's worth it.

So it feels like it's something they have to do. So it feels like you have to do this to invest in your child's future almost. I guess that's kind of the sentiment. Are you a good parent? How many things are your kids in is sort of an equation that I feel is adding to the stress of parenting, which is already a lot.

I wonder, could part of it also be that parents get a little break too while kids are in these programs, right? Because you know, 45 minutes while your kids are in swimming, that's downtime for parents too. Is this part of that? For sure. At least for me, it is. I mean, we have all this extra time now that you know, spending two hours in a park isn't really viable because it's cold and dark at four o'clock. So it is really nice for me as a mom to sit behind the glass and watch my girls swim for 30 minutes.

You know, it feels like a mini vacation. It's nice to have somebody else take care of them and me observe. So absolutely I think it is part of that, you know, until it's over and then you have to get the kids dry and get the kids changed and get them back in the car and then figure out dinner and figure out bedtime. And it's all of that is a task.

I guess I wonder, like, the idea of not over scheduling your kids. Some people might say, isn't a full schedule of in-person activities where they're learning things and maybe interacting with other friends, like, couldn't that be better than at-home time that, you know, might just be filled even with screens a lot of the time? You know, it was an interesting point that some of the commenters brought up on my column. You know, it's a question that I'm always sort of thinking about the technology side of parenting and the screen times. And you know, isn't going out and doing soccer and piano and ballet and all of these things

better than mindlessly watching YouTube videos? And for me, it's not as black and white as that. I mean, of course, there needs to be a balance, obviously. But I will say, for our family, screen time is not the devil. Especially if we don't use it as a babysitter. Sometimes my kids, especially my oldest, just want to chill on the couch together after we all get home from our day and yes, we watch a few episodes of Bluey and then we talk about it and we talk about the lessons Bandit learned and you know, and then because we're all

home and not doing all the things, maybe we do a puzzle and color together later, it's just a nice thing to do. I think the takeaway is that screens are not bad and extracurriculars are also not the devil, but it's all about balance. And I think that downtime in many forms is just as essential for your kid as it is for you as a parent. We'll be back after this message. So Amberlee, I'm trying to understand why we're seeing this overscheduling now. Like, has the pressure around signing up your kids for many different programs, has that ramped up since the pandemic? It's funny you ask in the context of the pandemic.

So my editors at every turn ask this question, and I think it's a good one, but I couldn't find any evidence of this idea of sort of trying to make up for lost time. It has actually been going on for well before COVID. OK, so when did we actually start to see this trend of parents loading kids up with activities?

So buckle up. I read books from the 90s and the early 2000s in my research and it's as if it could have been written today. There's this book called The Overscheduled Child. It was written in 1999. The authors flagged that because of the onset of the internet and sort of the 24-hour news cycle, parents were now more in tuned and wanting to do the very best and be the very best. And it became like a status symbol, sort of the early complain brag for how busy you and your kids are.

And I read this and I was like, are we sure this was written in 1999? Like it could be speaking to me right now 25 years later. Yeah, it seems like these are the same sentiments you were describing with like, you know, talking to other parents and the pressure these days. You just sub in the word of, you know, the onset of the internet for the onset of TikTok and Instagram, and it's the same thing.

It's this comparison trap that we're doing when we look to see what the right way of doing things is. Okay, so let's talk about what parents can do if they think this could be an issue in their family. So I guess the first question, Amberley, is how do parents identify that they've maybe overscheduled their kids? So again, if you're feeling that stress and if you're feeling like you don't have any downtime, you know, the solution really is to de-schedule,

to pull back, to see what's working and what's crucial for your kids to do and what's not. So for me, I realized that my kids doing ballet, swimming, and gymnastics, which all just happened to land in the same 24 hour period. So from Friday afternoon, gymnastics, to Saturday afternoon, swimming. We were doing this like all of their stuff in 24 hours.

And the actual activities would be great. You know, Lucy was beaming coming out of gymnastics. Evie was learning the balance beam. Then ballet Saturday morning and swim Saturday afternoon. I know it sounds insane, but it was all running quite smoothly. The actual activities were great. But then there was way more tension at home and in the car. And there was tantrums and there was fighting

and there was, you know, the whining. And I was in such a rush to unpack from gymnastics and then repack for ballet and then think about dinner. And for a few weeks, I know it sounds crazy now, but I couldn't understand why our groove as a family was so off, until I kind of looked like, what's changed here? And that's the gymnastics edition. And it really was like the tipping point for us. Again, that's only three things, but they were close together. And I think our family was just missing, you know, the togetherness time of like doing nothing.

So this is interesting to hear kind of about your family's example. When we look at, I guess, a little bit more broadly too, and we look at the research around this, how do experts kind of think about that? So one of the experts that I interviewed for the piece was Dr. Shimmy Kang. She's, you know, a very well-known UBC professor and an author of a book called The Dolphin Parent. And she teaches parents basically how to create self-motivated, successful kids in the world. And she said that we have to put non-negotiables in our schedule. So that's obviously school, every weekday, adequate sleep, adequate hygiene,

and a huge non-negotiable, Menaka, is family dinner. I think that's something that parents all generally in principle think about that's very important. But she said that the most robust finding in all of child development, what is the biggest indicator for success later in life is, did your family eat dinner together? She could not stress the importance of family dinners enough, you know, sort of this literal and figurative coming back together as a family unit around the table. And that can't happen if you're all off doing all of your things all of the time. So she said, you know, get back to the basics, strip it all down, put in your non-negotiables, and then add in the activities around those things. So whatever your kid has a passion for.

In my case, my kids love ballet so much. They're in their little tutus before I'm even awake on a Saturday morning. So for us, that's what I've added into like my non-negotiable. It's about finding what works for your family and also not thinking that dinner is a throw away. Fascinating. Okay, so find your non-negotiables, including family dinner.

I wonder, are there any models in other countries, maybe Amberlee, that we can turn to as an example? Like, I guess I'm just wondering if other cultures take a slightly different approach to this kind of scheduling for kids. Yeah, so it does seem to be an us problem. I mean, Dr. Kang pointed me toward the culture in Finland, where there is an extreme no pressure attitude toward young kids. They're in no rush.

I mean, not even like just in activities but also in education. Kids do not start a structured education there until age six. Before then it's all about free unstructured play outside and there's no pressure for kids to join all the things early in life. It's really just about playing and exploring the outdoors for those early years. So Dr. Kang, who by the way is a Harvard educated psychologist who never did a single extracurricular in her life, said that Finnish kids, you know, their math and science reading scores,

they're all great as teenagers. And when you compare other metrics to Finland, like how many Nobel Prize winners there are, or overall mental health and well-being, they're thriving. And no one is pressuring kids or parents to do all the things. So that's maybe despite that or maybe that's because of the no pressure laissez-faire attitude. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's like instead of kind of focusing on like the hard specific skills that you develop all these soft skills that you need for life it sounds like when you are you have that unscheduled free time as

a child. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's something that you're never going to get back, right? Young kids and and that time with young kids and I feel like it was a hard lesson for us to learn but it was like why am I doing all these things when when my kid is not going to be four for very long? Yeah. So just lastly here, Amberlee, you've talked about your routine and that crazy 24 hours

that you had scheduled at one point. I wonder what does your Friday and Saturday routine look like now? So it just became too much for us, right? I think you can guess that we became gymnastic school dropouts. And the night that I actually decided this, like the kids were just sort of feral in the back seat. And I literally just turned the car around and went home. And we all hilariously did these terrible handstands

in the backyard with, you know, the kids in their snow suits and up against the tree and then we're trying. And then I realized like it's really late and we should probably go in and have that family dinner. But it was like this connection moment for me and it was really this light bulb. So now our Friday night activity, so to speak, is just going on a winter walk together. And you know, obviously it's cold. So obviously we have to bundle up. But we just get outside.

We have some great conversations. I throw the kids in the wagon. So it's it is a scheduled activity, so to speak, but it's on our own schedule. And really, it's so great to talk to you. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.