Skip to main content

How Many Activities is Too Much for Your Child?





In a world of active lifestyles, where over scheduling seems the norm, how do you know when your kids are involved in too many sports, groups or clubs?

There are many more ways to tell whether or not your child is sick of running the rat race. And, it could also be a combination of other external things as well, but this list is a quick-check way of knowing that something is wrong.

6 Common Sense Signs of Kids Who are Over Scheduled:


  • Declining grades
  • Excessive tiredness
  • Inability to focus
  • Moping, sadness or lacking interest in activities all together (forgetting pieces to uniforms, dragging to get ready, very slow in getting started on the field)
  • Inability to achieve advanced level in current sport or activity (think Karate belt graduation or next level in piano playing)
  • Sudden sicknesses when practice/game day comes

Listen to your children, if they say they want to quit, don't take it personally, don't chastise, just talk it out with them. It could be a passing moment of being overwhelmed, a difficult stage of the sport, a big test coming up, a bully on the team, or they may actually be sick of 'running the rat race'. (Not all kids are the same; some kids need several extracurriculars while other's need more down time.

Find the balance and you will have happy kids.

Here are some additional resources on this topic:



How many extracurriculars does your child participate in?
Do you think it's too many, too few?
How many hours do you think is too many?
Please leave your comments below.

Popular posts from this blog

Green Punch Buggy....!!!!

Green Punch Buggy...No Punch Back! As I was writing this blog post, my son came to me showing off his Lego creation. And don't you know I got hit at least five times since on my computer screen was displaying at least five different punch buggies, of five different colors thanks to Google Images. (Bad timing I'm thinking...) How can we possibly have world peace with these silly cars in the world!? ;) Don't the owners of these cute-but-obnoxious-cars understand that driving these things around town promotes violence!? ;) Anyhow.... The original purpose of this blog was to ask parents everywhere this question: Do you find yourself saying 'PUNCH BUGGY *BLANK-COLOR*! '  to yourself, even when the kids are not in the car??? I do! Isn't it funny how those games we used to play as a child are still around? I bet our parents say the same thing.... HAPPY FRIIIIIIDAAAAYYYY! P.S. I got hit at least ten more times, since as my son stood beside

Back to School Anxiety: Bullying

Download “School Boy Being Stressed” by David Castillo Dominici via freedigitalphotos.net I recently wrote about how to help your child if they’re struggling with going back to school because they were bullied. My biggest most important tip was to listen, because I honestly could not write a ‘How-to-make-them-not-afraid’ column. Frankly I thought that was absurd. Fear is sometimes real. Anxiety is sometimes truly there, and for a good reason. Our job as parents isn’t to try to make it go away, it’s to try to find out the true source of those worrisome feelings. If you’d like to read more, click here. And if you’re child is struggling to find excitement about the new school year, don’t deny it, just accept it and move forward gently. Here’s some more on bullying: Family Matters Links: A Touching Story/Song Bullying: A thing of the past A Peace Poem By My Teenage Daughter A Deeper Insight into My Thoughts on People Who Bring Harm to Others Other Links: Stop Bul

Good Customer Service At Home

Over the years, my careers have mainly been customer service based. I started in a family business and then moved on up through the rungs from waitress, to hostess, to sales associate, manager and eventually the GM of a hotel. In all my years, my training taught me that you should always do your best to take your customer all the way to what they need, make them happy, and never leave them until they are done with you. I pride myself on my customer service abilities. Though the other day, I think I failed at customer service in my own home! I was getting ready to cut my daughter's hair and because of how long it had gotten (she's been growing it out for a year!) I felt this time it would be best  if instead of me spritzing it with water, she could wash and condition it real quick. She was fully clothed so I just suggested she run into the bathroom and wash her hair in the tub. She’s fourteen. I suppose I just assumed that she knew how to kneel over the tub and do it.