"Hyper-parenting has become the prescribed way to
raise children in middle and upper class families,” according to
Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D. and Nicole Wise, authors of "The
Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap.”
“Hyper-parenting” is defined as the obsessive need to plan,
enrich, and raise your child the exact right way, and the belief
that planning the perfect blend of activities will create the
perfect child.
While there is nothing wrong with parents wanting their kids
to keep up with peers in sports and social activities, it can
definitely get out of hand. Below are some questions to ask
yourself to determine if you are a hyper-parent:
• Does your family have regular and frequent family time? Do you
as the parents have your own lives?
• Does your child have plenty of down time?
• Do extra activities affect your child’s grades? Is she able to
complete her homework?
•Does your child ask to quit his activities, or fight you about
going?
•Does your child get enough sleep? Is she unhappy and moody, or
upbeat most of the time? Does he get sick often?
•Does your family have expensive toys but no time to use them?
FAMILY TIME
“We invest our time and money on enriching activities and
entertainment, but we often fail to provide what children want
and need most to thrive: a strong sense of connection with mom
and dad,” says Vickie Falcone, author of “Buddha Never Raised
Kids and Jesus Didn’t Drive Carpool.”
“As parents, we may love our children, make sure they eat
healthy, enroll them in the finest schools, and yet never know
their souls,” Falcone continues. “Study after study has
concluded that a feeling of ‘connectedness’ is the single most
important factor in a child’s success and happiness.”
Over-scheduling takes away from the unplanned time it takes to
develop quality family relationships.
“Family time should be as important as education, athletics,
social activities and other outside commitments,” say Rosenfeld
and Wise.
Kids also need to see their parents enjoying time together.
“I have friends who never get a night out because they’re too
busy with their kids’ schedules,” said Deanne Orlando, Livonia
parent and teacher. “A kid is over-scheduled if the parents have
no lives of their own because of the running and money it costs
to have an involved child.”
DOWN TIME AND CREATIVITY
According to Rosenfeld and Wise, in hurrying and over-scheduling
kids, we are grooming them to be over-achieving workaholics who
believe that down time is wasted time.
“Often they go along achieving for years, get accepted into
the best college and even graduate, and then break down,” say
the authors. “The problem: for years they ignored the stress and
left no time to relax or enjoy themselves.”
Everyone needs unscheduled time. It is healthy to be
unproductive for part of your life, to just “be” and not
necessarily “do.” Your child and your life are meant to be
enjoyed, and the unhurried family activities are often the most
enjoyable.
Spontaneous family activities that build relationships
include playing board games, playing catch, hiking or watching
movies. The sky is the limit once you unlock the family’s
collective imagination.
“Hobbies and passions are great, but they are supposed to enrich
lives, not cause stress,” say Rosenfeld and Wise. “Empty hours
teach children how to create their own happiness - and that is
an important skill.”
Elaine Peterson, Ann Arbor mother, agrees. “Self-esteem and
confidence can come from skill building in music lessons, dance,
karate or sports,” she said. “Social skills are important, but
so are creative and imaginative thoughts from unscheduled time.”
In addition to alone time, kids also need time with friends
when no adults are micromanaging their activities. If an adult
is always coaching or organizing, the child is unable to fully
practice and learn the skills necessary for friendship and
relationship building.
EDUCATION
Education is another area that often gets short-changed if a
child is over-scheduled. “As a teacher, I think it’s really
important that education comes first, before extra activities,”
Orlando said. “It's the parents’ responsibility to recognize
over-scheduling, but often it’s the parent who creates it.”
Orlando gives the example of kids who wake up at 5:00 am to
get ice time for hockey or skating. After school, these same
children take religious education on top of two or more other
activities simultaneously.
“The kids with those schedules are usually the kids that
struggle to complete homework,” she said.
Many parents make the mistake of prioritizing sports before
education. Coaches will convince parents that if their child
practices enough, they might be part of the 1% that receives
college scholarships for sports, even though almost none of that
select group ever makes the pros.
“Their lives will depend on education, yet they spend so much
time practicing sports that in college, they often have to
choose between education and sports,” say Rosenfeld and Wise.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently warned parents
and doctors about the dangers of kids competing in demanding,
competitive sports. They strongly advised that children play
multiple sports, and specialize in only one sport after puberty.
Instead of putting so much emphasis on sports or other
activities, it’s important for parents to realize that childhood
is a preparation for adulthood, not a performance.
“Somewhere along the parenting ride, I realized that my
long-range job was to "catch' the moments from life in which my
child's eyes light up and head spins around,” said Kate
Anderson, Highland mother, grandmother and teacher.
"When I noticed this attraction, I could encourage them to
recognize and pursue their interests.” When teaching, Anderson
uses the same tactics, and believes that these magical moments
help children determine the purpose for their lives.
QUITTING
What if your child fights about going to a class or activity?
Should children be allowed to quit?
“When I was growing up, the rules were black and white.
Whatever you started, your stuck with,” said Carrie St. Michel
in Good Housekeeping Magazine. “Most parents tend to be more
flexible now.”
It’s important to teach a child to fulfill his commitments. For
example, she should stick to a team she has committed to for the
season, but there’s no reason to force him to take piano lessons
indefinitely.
"Parents need to give children a chance to experiment, to
find out what they like and don’t like,” says David Elkind,
Ph.D. author of “The Hurried Child.”
“Sometimes a child wants to quit an activity because she has
too much to do. “If that’s the case, dropping out can be a good
thing.”
Mary Burck, a Farmington Hills mother, agrees. “I think two
planned activities a week are plenty,” she said. “I make sure
that these are things my son really enjoys doing. If I notice
that’s it is becoming just another obligation, I don’t hesitate
to have him quit.”
MOODS, HEALTH AND SLEEP
The fact is most children do not get enough sleep. Growing
bodies need 9-10 hours of sleep per night, according to doctors
on www.webmd.com. Yet the total average sleep time for
school-aged children is around 7-8 hours.
"This is a much bigger problem than people think," says
Richard Simon, M.D., of the Kathryn Severyns Dement Sleep
Disorder Center. "They underestimate the problems of being
sleepy in the daytime and how it impairs mood and affects
performance."
In addition to affecting mood and performance, sleep
deprivation is not healthy. If your child gets sick more than
twice per year, it’s possible more sleep is needed.
To combat this sleep deprivation, many high schools now offer
later starting times. However, this may not solve the problem.
“The overall culture -- including the student's home life --
has to change,” says Amy Wolfson, Ph.D. of the National Sleep
Foundation.
"We live in a very fast-paced society….when we have
expectations about the homework teenagers do and the activities
they participate in, we need to take into account the fact that
they need time to take care of their bodies."
MATERIALISM
Don’t all good parents want to raise their children to be
productive and successful? The problem is that we keep raising
our expectations on how much money it will take to make us
happy.
“The materialism of our generation has led us to believe that
expensive educational toys and high priced extra-curricular
activities will help us to better raise our children,” Feldman
and Wise explain.
Burck disagrees with this materialism. “What do kids have to
look forward to if they’ve already been in a limo at age 7? To
me, these parents project onto their kids what they wish they
had when they were young.”
WHY DO WE HYPER PARENT?
In addition to trying to live our dreams through our children,
we are the oldest, most educated generation of parents ever.
However, according to Feldman and Wise, we have yet to realize
that “raising children is not like writing a dissertation, or
putting together a marketing plan…Childhood needn't be an
endless treadmill of productivity and self-improvement.”
Some people may hyper-parent because they came from large or
busy families and felt insignificant. Therefore, they make up
for this by giving their own children every possible
“opportunity.”
Technology also plays an important role in the parental
desire to over-schedule. We plan and follow our pregnancy in
detail. We check our children’s progress charts and compare them
to others to predict their success in life. We then measure our
success as parents based on our children's successes.
TRUST YOURSELF
Of course there is no one right way to parent. Every family is
unique and has its own characters, priorities, traditions and
interests.
Orlando believes that “Kids, like adults, are all obviously
different. Some thrive on busy schedules, other stress over
them. My two girls are a good example. If the two traded
schedules, neither would be pleased.”
When it comes to your family, you are the expert. In the
words of Dr. Benjamin Spock, "Trust yourself. You know more than
you think you know.”
In other words, don’t listen to others’ ideas about how many
activities your children should have. Instead, when weighing the
benefits of participation in a new activity against the costs,
include not only money but also time, energy, effort and stress.
“Essentially it all boils down to the fact that all the parts
of your life have to mesh,” Anderson philosophizes. She also
believes in advance planning.
Orlando agrees that planning and communication are essential.
“Every Sunday night, our family sits down with our planners,”
she explained. “We put each others’ plans on our own schedules
so we know everyone’s whereabouts and how we can support each
other.
“We have done this for the past few years and it does work
well,” she concluded. “The few weeks we skipped our family
meeting were more disorganized and stressful for all of us.”