Are we over-scheduling our children's lives?

Depends on the child surely

DC1 gets tired fairly easily, needs her downtime and plenty of unscheduled alone time to work on whatever “project” she has thought up (these are many and varied).

DC2 is a Duracell bunny/Tigger hybrid who needs lots of physical activity in order to sleep and wants constant social interaction. We don’t live in a “playing out” kind of neighbourhood (London).

DC2 has a very full schedule of mainly sports because otherwise she’d never sleep and would drive us all up the wall!! She wants to do them all, the rest of us are happy chilling at home but she would get restless and bored.

I agree it waxes and wanes and then they get older and it just wanes and wanes 😄. I don't know any kids who stuck to a rigid activity schedule for years on end - they tried out different things, sometimes those things were bunched together a bit because that's how it fell, with available groups/parent availability.

It comes in waves. I’ve had periods where I’ve thought we’ve been doing to much - some activities are simply ones they fancied trying, and some were ones that required a commitment to (dance/gym/football/swimming etc)
And then they wane off a bit and it’s nice. And then there’ll be a school production that grabs another evening from you, and then swimming lessons will no longer be necessary.

And when they get older their commitments begin to clash and they have to make choices as to what to carry on with and what to drop.

My opinion is that as long as they are not being pushed into anything, then go with it. I’ve always found it beneficial for mine to have different friendship groups outside of school and benefits their mental health enormously once they hit their teens.

My youngest is 7yo and plays outdoors when not doing scheduled classes. He is popular with other children who play in the streets. They are all different ages. But in primary school. It's lovely to hear in the summer months.

Ditto my last comment. So depressing why do junior school children need a bloody smartphone?!?

God that is so depressing.

I think it's more to do with what is considered good parenting these days.

There were fewer orgnaised clubs and activities, but things like swimming took place once a week all throughout junior school, so there was no need for outside lessons. There were also opportunities to learn a musical instrument, which isn't the case at my DC's school.

My primary school actually did loads of clubs, which was unusual looking back. I had an activity most nights (gymnastics, science club, choir, dancing) but I didn't take up any outside hobbies until senior school when all that stopped.

I don’t know how all you parents do it, never mind the children…I’d be wiped out 😆

Maybe they love cricket.
My DD does a ton of clubs including 3 dance classes. She loves them all and keeps her fit and active.

Too much

My kids have no activities during the week, just during weekend

I believe so, yes. Kids don't need to be constantly distracted and occupied by activities and clubs...it's exhausting for the kids and for the parents. My kids don't have over-booked calendars, and they are happy for it. As am I, as I don't have the desire to spend all of my time schlepping my kids from one place to another, day in, day out.

I think many children do have too little free time. As a child I would have hated it. I have always loved space to be imaginative, either with toys, reading or writing stories. Pretty much no classes for arts and creative writing. I did Brownies for a while but never enjoyed it.

My own children only did a few things they enjoyed. They did cubs for while while they enjoyed going and a sibling did gymnastics which they really loved for a few years. It was all child led though and not because I had to work or anything like that.

The net result of all the kids being scheduled to death is there's never anyone to play with outdoors, and those who are allowed a bit of freedom have phones so they can be tracked, so the kids spend their time on the phone instead of actually playing.

Childhood in the panopticon era...

It sounds a lot when you put it like that. But the reality is probably different - Id view the after school clubs run by school as just necessary childcare... and all stars only runs for about 2 months a year so not a huge impact. Taking those out i don't think it's too bad really. Depends on the kid. One of mine likes to chill out after school and doesnt do much aside from swimming whereas my eldest would do back to back clubs every night if I let them.

Its no different to my childhood in the 90s really - i did gymnastics, swimming and dance out of school, then after school netball and football clubs, so had something most days of the week and competitions at weekends. I loved it.

After school.clubs are fine. They're basically childcare.

The cricket and rugby - maybe the parents are hoping to send their children to schools where these sports are played?

Swimming - important skill.

It's a lot though.

You could only manage it if you had two DCs at most.

I think children vary.

My older child thrives on having a busy schedule - he does several activities but just likes being busy. I am the same - I simply don't need or want lots of down time.

My younger one really loves nothing better than pottering around the house and rejects most organised activities.

I wouldn’t say we’ve deliberately scheduled our DC lives but they are busy. We are waiting on an ASD assessment for DC2 and if left to his own devices he’d happily sit alone or with his brother and play Xbox games or watch YouTube so his clubs have been a bit more deliberate in order to get him to socialise.

DC are 10 and just about to turn 7 and we have:

Monday - DC1 football
Tuesday - DC2 football
Wednesday - both CrossFit, DC1 football & school athletics
Thursday - DC1 school football and running club
Friday - both swimming
Saturday - free 🎉
Sunday - both football & CrossFit

DH and I work FT but flexible and also fit our own gym/football in every day

Some screen time and social media platforms are not always harmful. Depends on what your children access. Mine use it for Maths, coding and following family friendly content.

Not quite 5 but I love amateur dramatics ( one weekday evening), am a member of the PCC so often a churchy thing another night, I run and do a yoga class ( sometimes run in the morning instead). Now my children are adults I am really enjoying having some hobbies again. Who wants to be stuck in front of a screen in the evening after doing that all day at work.

I’m not sure it’s that different from my own childhood in the 1980s. I did Brownies then Guides, a running club, swimming lesson, a weekly library visit and then a family swim at the weekend alongside occasional running competitions. I then took up a martial art in early secondary. There was also Sunday School for me.

My children have a swimming lesson, DD1 is in a running club, DD2 does tennis, they each have Scouts or Guides and they both do a martial art class. We also still visit the library weekly. My children prefer Messy Church to Sunday school so we don’t attend weekly.

I have a friend who is a child psychologist. She has always said that children need down time. There’s nothing wrong with the being bored and that scheduling their every waking moment isn’t good for them. They need to be allowed time to just ‘be’.

It does seem like a lot I found it tails off as they get older eldest has a sport and army cadets. Middle child two clubs at 12.

One of my children does one activity per week. The other does two in school, six out of school and is currently trying to persuade me to sign them up for a seventh. They’re different people with different needs and we do what suits them.

They both get plenty of downtime at home, have more screen time than I’d like, do their homework, get 10 hours of sleep per night and both get at least an hour of exercise a day (the one that doesn’t do organised activities does a lot of unstructured sport with his friends). Who cares if they do an hour of activities each day or not?! They still find me multiple times a day to tell me they’re bored…

@EggnogNoggin My Dad buggered up his A levels back in 1959 as he adored playing cricket & much preferred that to studying…

It's hard to find other people who allow this though. And those who do tend to be ones who let their dc have phones in order to do that. So all you see are 10 year olds sat on a bench hunched over a phone for an hour.