Soccer, drama, piano, Algebra club, Boy Scouts, Girls in Action—the activities available to our children astounds. For many families the motto is, “sign up early and often” to expose children to as many opportunities as possible. While each opportunity is good, families can soon find ourselves drowning in our schedule. How do parents take advantage of all the good available to our children while protecting family time and ties? Consider these signs that your family may be in over its head.
Skipping family dinners. By every measure—eating dinner together improves family life. Lower depression rates, lower drug usage, lower risky sexual behavior, better grades, and increased family ties all characterize children who regularly eat dinner with family. Cutting out family dinners to accommodate extracurricular activities may be a sign the activities are out of balance.
Options —set aside two sacrosanct days per week to eat dinner together. When soccer teams or piano teachers ask for those nights, simply reply that those nights are already booked. In our over-scheduled culture, most coaches/teachers will accept this without further inquiry. Even if you get push-back, sticking to these nights teaches our children that family takes priority over extra activities—an important lesson in itself.
—eat when you can. Whether everyone converges on Wendy’s® prior to scattering for the night’s activities or eats together at ten o’clock—set dinner when everyone can be together. Again, the effort to find a time teaches that we will protect family in the midst of activity.
Wearing soccer gear to church. When extra-curricular activities cause us to skip or compromise those priorities we claim are more important, we may be treading deep water. When two events clash, the one we choose signals which matters most. If we’re dashing from church to make a game, we may be signaling that sports counts more than faith. If that’s true—no problem. If we wouldn’t say that’s true, we need to avoid sending the wrong signal by choosing the top priority over the lesser with our time. Healthy families keep top priorities top.
Option—create a family priority list. When deciding whether to add a new activity, pause to ask, “What happens if child succeeds? Will any part of this commitment cause us to compromise on higher priorities?” If so, it may be better to take a pass.
With the range of options available, there will be opportunities which support, rather than compete with, family values. When our family found every night of the week devoted to a different child’s soccer practice and two parents consistently working to be at three different soccer fields in three different towns at the same time, we looked for another option. We found a karate program where all children (and even parents) attended the same night at the same time. We still got our sports fix, and we gained four nights to be together at home.
Replacing family fun with family frustration. Activities are supposed to enrich our lives. When they are at a healthy level, families enjoy going to practices, performances, and the overall experience of being part of the group. If the family emotion has gone from pleasure to panic, the tone from encouraging to bickering, and the pace from calm to frenetic—call the life guard. Impatience and frustration characterize overloaded families. When frustration replaces fun, it’s time to pare down.
Option—each has different limits. Know thyself. Discern the number of hours of outside involvement which allows your family to participate while maintaining an atmosphere of patience, enjoyment, and a sense of control over events, then set this as a hard limit. A good rule of thumb for younger children is two hours per week, for middle and high school students about six hours per week. This allows involvement in activity while preserving time for homework, family, and general downtime.
We want the best for our children, so we take advantage of every opportunity to expose them to the good stuff of life. Yet, we need to remember—the best stuff of life is simply being together as family. Finding the balance between individual activity and healthy home life is a constant challenge. A little attention to common warning signs can help keep family as the central priority while we enjoy the range of opportunities waiting to enrich our children’s lives.
This month’s topic: What activities does your family enjoy? How do you set limits?
