Overscheduling

As the school year ramps up, overscheduling seems to be a popular blog topic on Raising 4 Boys and on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

I'm starting to realize that most parents don't want to overschedule. And as Tom and I see these examples and the future that lies ahead, I'm starting to see how it might possibly happen. Take the Silicon Valley mom for example. Her activites seemed varied enough: one athletic (soccer), one artistic/musical (ballet), one practical life skills (Girl Scouts), one cultural (Hebrew school).

I could potentially see us doing the same thing, especially since Tom would like to see our kids in sports and I'd like to continue the musical tradition. That could mean one sport, one musical (I think all 4 grandparents, plus me, might keel over if our kids didn't each learn an instrument...or two), Chinese school. You could possibly lop on something spiritual like Awana which some of our friends seem to be doing as well as Cub Scouts which I could see Tom getting into. What is that, like 8 days of the week?

Arguably I was overscheduled by the time I was in high school but I didn't feel like I was. And for the most part my weekends were still "free". But I grew up one sided. I did all musical stuff and my parents practically discouraged me to do any athletics (is it obvious?). Starting junior high or early high school, I did have something every night of the week just between lessons (2) and orchestra rehearsals (2). Youth group and Chinese school were on the weekend and my parents specifically did not join a weekday Bible study because it was a school night for us (I still find it weird that they've joined one now, even though we're not in school anymore!). The only night I didn't have something going on was Thursday night which worked well because that was NBC's original Must See TV (Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, L.A. Law). :-)

I guess the scary thing is that there's the potential to start our kids on this kind of schedule by the time they hit kindergarten. I will fight it with every ounce of sanity that I have left (not much!) but it seems to affect many reasonable people both that we know and don't know. Some friends of ours moved back to the midwest but report the same problem of all the kids being in activities that there's no one at the parks to play with their kids. An article/study that came out today gives me more evidence to hang on to, as I hang on to our free family time. But so much of our society leans towards overscheduling that I fear we will fall into it too.