Extra-Curricular Activities; How much is Too Much

Posted by Lisa Russell Sep 19, 2008

How many extra curricular activities should a child be participating in?

There's a train of thought that says "If you keep them busy, they won't have time to get into trouble." A family that's very close to us kept their two children involved in several kinds of sports, and occasional dance classes, spending every evening and every weekend focused on the children's activities. It just never seemed balanced to me. The kids were in school all day and barely had time to think straight. They're in college now, I think the daughter might carry on with the busy lifestyle and I suspect their son will spend a few years partying before he finds his footing. I guess my main beef was the idea of both parents working full time and then spending every spare minute devoting every spare minute to the children's sports.

I always wondered, since these kids started their extracurricular activities in Kindergarten, I wonder if they really ever had a choice. Sure, they could have quit at any time, but without any exposure to the "real world" why would they?

There's one end of the spectrum.

The other end would be children who never get to do anything outside of school.

Adding homeschooling and unschooing to the mixture turn the whole mess into a multi-faceted prism, instead of a nice neat little rainbow.

In our house, for time management and financial reasons, each child chooses one extracurricular activity and they can have friends over as often as they want.

In our house, that's balance. My 11 year old chooses to operate several clubs, Last year she had a cooking club. When she was 6 she had a book club. This year, there's a "Twilight" club and, goodness, I forgot the second one.

We also participate in monthly co-ops.

So far it feels balanced, but this is only the second week in September.

How do you find balance?