If your kids need Dayplanners, maybe they're over-scheduled Too much

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 19, 2006 | by Candace Murphy

IT WAS THE STRICT daily agenda at the Kensington preschool that knocked some sense into Liz Gill.

Not that Gill is a stranger to structure. Far from it. She takes her daughter to play dates four times a week, a music class once a week, and has a babysitting exchange set up with a friend.

Structure, says Gill, is a savior for both daughter and mother.

But this Kensington preschool was out of control, she says. Or actually, way, way, way under control. Because that chart on the wall detailed the childrens' day down to the minute.

10:15 a.m. WASH HANDS

10:20 a.m. SNACK

10:40 a.m. POTTY

10:55 a.m. STORY TIME

11:05 a.m. QUIET TABLE GAMES...

By the time Gill's eyes had read down to the day's last activity, five minutes of "FREE CHOICE/GET READY TO GO HOME," she had scooped up her daughter and tabled the idea of super-scheduling her daughter's life at the ripe old age of 2.

"I'm against scheduling kids' time too much," says Gill, 33, who, just before being interviewed, had returned to her Albany home after a trying trip to the supermarket where her daughter had tested the physics, and limits, of a spool of plastic fruit and vegetable bags. "I was actually surprised people do that much, at this age. I didn't realize how different people's attitudes were about this."

Gill isn't the only one to question the scheduling -- and some say, over-scheduling -- of today's youngest generation. Just last month the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) spoke out against the harried schedules of the modern child and released a report in defense of free, unstructured play. A total of 19 pages, the AAP report says federal programs like the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and parents, push children too hard and put too much emphasis on schoolwork and adult-organized activities in lieu of good, old- fashioned, child-driven playtime.

Also to blame, says the AAP, are all the products, classes and

from Living 1

marketing directed at parents hoping to raise the next Baby Einstein. And that includes things like, well, the Baby Einstein Company's baby videos, toys, books and music.

"Parents are receiving carefully marketed messages that good parents expose their children to every opportunity to excel, buy a plethora of enrichment tools, and ensure their children participate in a wide variety of activities," says the AAP. "Many parents have grown to believe they are a requirement of good parenting and a necessity for appropriate development. As a result, much of parent- child time is spent arranging special activities or transporting children between those activities."

Parents get hard-sell

Julie Huck, who lives in Oakland's Maxwell Park and has a 4-year- old daughter and 5-month-old son, has experienced the hard-sell on young parents to buy, buy, buy and enroll, enroll, enroll, and is appalled. And she's a social worker with teens, so she understands the pitfalls of a lack of scheduled activities for older kids.

"I don't understand why parents of babies and toddlers think they need to take them to classes. I find the whole idea silly and a waste of money," says Huck. "If the parent and child genuinely enjoy an organized activity once in a while, great. But I've met parents who literally go to a class with their child every day, signing up for anything that comes along. I think that some of the more commercial, national programs hard-sell their classes to prey on parents' fears that their children somehow won't develop cognitively and socially without them."

Class-based confusion

Dr. Jill Sulka, an East Bay child psychologist who points out that the problem of over-scheduling may be largely class-based, since some parents can't afford such extras, adds that there may be some confusion as to who these activities are actually for: The child or the parent.

"There are certainly benefits of children being exposed to many different activities to find what resonates with them, but the cost is that parents may not be attuned to what their child's experience is with that heavy-duty scheduling," says Sulka. "Every child has a different threshold as to the kind of downtime they need. Parents can sometimes lose focus as to who's really wanting to do this."

The AAP report does have its critics. Foremost on that list would be Drs. Joseph Mahoney of Yale University, Angel Harris of the University of Texas at Austin and Jacquelynne Eccles of the University of Michigan. Those three experts have published a challenge to the belief that today's children are over-scheduled in the Social Policy Report, a peer-reviewed publication of the Society for Research in Child Development. In language much more austere, the experts essentially said over-scheduling was hogwash, fear of it is media-driven, and that kids thrive with structure.

But Mahoney and his colleagues' study has at its heart a focus on the benefits of organized activities. There is no discussion of the merits of unstructured, child-driven play. Instead, the report only separates organized activities from "free time," which includes passive television viewing and the playing of video games, which are not classically considered to be child-driven play activities.