Say “No” to Overscheduling
Between classes, homework, extracurricular activities, and spending time with friends and family, your child may end up feeling overwhelmed or stressed.
While staying busy can help your child develop, being too busy could negatively affect her emotional and intellectual growth. Signs of an overscheduled child include:
- anxiety
- constant headache or stomachache
- change in school performance and sleep patterns
- irritability.
Edward Christophersen, PhD, clinical psychologist at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics and Professor of Pediatrics at the UMKC School of Medicine, offers these important tips to make sure your child isn’t overscheduled:
- Be a good role model. Set limits on your own activities, stay organized and practice good stress-management skills.
- Check the calendar. If your child has more than three appointments or activities in one day, look for ways to reschedule one or more of them.
- Make family time a priority. Your child’s free time should be spent with family first and extracurricular activities second.
- Set limits. What if your daughter wants to take dance class, sing in the choir and try out for softball? To keep your child from taking on too much, discuss which activity she would most like to try. If one doesn’t work out for her this year, there’s always next year to take up a different activity.
- Talk it out. Whether it’s at a family supper or when picking your daughter up from school, take a moment to check in. Ask your child if she is feeling overwhelmed, and let her know that you’re here to help. If you feel she’s involved in too many things, say “no” to new activities or talk about dropping one in favor of another one.
“The child may not want to forego an activity, and that’s a normal reaction,” Dr. Christophersen says. “This is a good learning experience because your child will go through the process of deciding what to do and then eliminate an activity. Then, she will see that she can really deal with this kind of decision making.”
Dr. Christophersen says all individuals—adults, teens and children—need some downtime. It’s important your child have time to enjoy being a kid. This should be time to not worry about school, work, sports or clubs.
