Overscheduled Kids:
Hyper-Parenting and the Loss of Family Time
By Kim Pleticha
Parent:Wise Magazine, August 2004
The advertisement leaps off the page of the parenting magazine: a new device scientifically proven to increase a baby’s learning ability while still in the womb. The ad admonishes parents not to miss the opportunity to provide their child with this “once-in-a-lifetime advantage” and encourages them to begin “lessons” at 18-to-28 weeks’ gestation.
This is not science fiction. In fact, you may even have bought one of these gadgets. If you did, you’re certainly not alone — in the hyper-parenting zone.
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It is an easy zone to fall into, given that parents are bombarded from the moment they conceive with advice and information from “experts” about what’s best for their children. Most follow it because they’re afraid not to.
“You have to because you’re being told ‘oh, you’re not doing that?’” says psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld. If you aren’t hyper-parenting, “you feel that you’re a hair’s breath short of child abuse.”
Dr. Rosenfeld literally wrote the book on hyper-parenting, Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child By Trying Too Hard? He defines “hyper-parents” as folks who over-schedule their children with enrichment activities, sports and academics in an effort to give the kids a leg-up on the competition—or simply to expose them to things the parents never participated in as children.
While a certain amount of enrichment activities, sports and extracurricular academics are important to a child’s development, many parents have gone overboard. A University of Michigan study found that, between 1981 and 1997, weekly play time dropped 25%, and free time dropped by 12 hours a week, for children ages 3 to 12. Instead, kids now spend an average of five hours each week doing structured sporting activities and more than three hours a week doing passive, spectator activities like watching their siblings play sports. (This latter number does not include watching TV or playing video games.)
The frenetic schedule many families follow to enrich their children also has cut into family time, slicing family dinners by a third, religious participation 40%, and household conversations a whopping 100%, according to the same Michigan study. Many parents are spending so much time rushing their kids from one activity to another, they simply don’t have time to spend together as a family.
“It’s damaging families,” says Dr. Rosenfeld. “It makes kids think accomplishments and activities are more important than character; it makes kids feel they’re not good enough.”
How did we get here?
Blame it on cats.
In the 1980s, scientists blindfolded the eyes of healthy cats to see what would happen to the cats’ brains. What they found was that, if the cats’ eyes were occluded, the cats would go blind—even if nothing previously was wrong with their eyes. The experiment proved that stimulation—or a lack thereof—seriously affected neurologic development. Myriad studies in the U.S. expanded on the theme, including one in 1993 by scientists at the University of California at Irvine. Their study, the results of which were later dubbed “The Mozart Effect,” suggested that listening to Mozart’s music increased brain synapses and, therefore, intelligence. While compelling, the study was done using college students, not babies, and has many scientific detractors.
Still, it was only a matter of time before American parents—and companies marketing to them—picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.
Suddenly parents were encouraged to enrich their babies, including those still in the womb. Special headphones for playing Mozart to fetuses appeared on the market, as did flashcards and educational videos for babies. Preschools began integrating academics, computers and foreign language into their curricula, and grammar schools started issuing homework to kindergarteners and first graders.
At about the same time, in 1990, Texas implemented the TAAS test to assess students’ academic achievement. Unlike the previous TEAMS test, which measured only basic competencies, the TAAS test assessed higher-order thinking skills. In 1999, the legislature upped the ante again, passing a bill that replaced TAAS with TAKS; children had to pass the TAKS in order matriculate to the next grade level.
Schools responded by increasing the time spent on academics related to the test. This, coupled with a tightening of the educational budget, caused some schools to limit enrichment-type activities or do away with them altogether. Concerned parents, especially those in middle- to upper-income schools, responded by paying out-of-pocket for foreign language or art teachers; others simply enrolled their children in after-school programs that provided such enrichment.
At the secondary level, competition for limited college slots skyrocketed. Between 1986 and 1996, many colleges saw the number of applications double; when they began accepting applications online, some saw an increase of 70%. This forced many students to polish their résumés with tougher classes, extra-curricular activities, and sports.
As if all of this weren’t enough, society’s support for and expectations of parenting also changed. Dual-earner couples became the norm, but work-life balance didn’t. Parents, faced with difficult decisions about how to care for their children—and often feeling guilty for not spending enough time with them—enrolled their kids in structured programs. In 1974, only 28% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in center-based preschool programs; by 1994, that number had jumped to 45%.
In 1984, Dr. David Elkind, a Tufts University professor of cognitive and social development of children and adolescents, attached a name to the growing trend of children being pushed to do activities—and even to think—beyond their years. He labeled the phenomenon “The Hurried Child Syndrome.” And he says it has only grown worse as the years have progressed and society has switched from protecting children to marketing to them.
“It is a very difficult time to be a parent,” Dr. Elkind asserts. “In effect, parents have lost a lot of control over their children’s lives…at least some of the over-scheduling and hurrying reflects parents’ efforts to exercise control in some areas of their children’s everyday lives.”
Parents Not the Villians
Dr. Elkind isn’t letting parents off the hook: he and other professionals assert that parents have, in some cases, become casualties of a society that values success over family.
“Our culture of competition and meritocracy have become the primary engine that can cause ‘hyper-parenting,” says Dr. George Holden, a psychology professor at UT-Austin.
Dr. Holden uses sports to illustrate his point: parents who want the best for their children, he says, often encourage sports at an early age. That’s because, unlike 40-years ago, children can’t expect to be “successful” in a sport, or win a scholarship to college with it, if they wait until junior high school to begin playing it. Dr. Holden points out, though, that 4-year-olds simply don’t have the cognitive ability to play soccer, despite the many teams devoted to it.
Indeed, many parents have come to view parenting as a competitive sport, says Austin-based family therapist Pat Louis. Author Faulkner Fox laments this very phenomenon in Dispatches from a Not So Perfect Life, her memoirs of her early parenting years in Austin. Fox describes mothers who chauffeur their children from activity to activity, and try to outdo each other with respect to their mothering abilities. It sounds surreal, but it’s common.
“There is less emphasis on the relationship and more emphasis on the performance of the child,” says Louis, a licensed clinical social worker. “Your role as a parent is the only definition of your worth.”
Generally, hyper-parents have the best intentions, says Dr. Holden. But he cautions that even the best intentions can go awry.
“Some parents may indeed get carried away with the idea that they can mold their young children into anything they want,” Dr. Holden says.
And that, it seems, is where many conscientious parents find themselves—sometimes unwittingly—to the detriment of their children.
“We are often taking away the sense of authorship a child has in his or her life, rather than letting the child write his or her own script,” says Dr. Rosenfeld. “We think we can scientifically design everything; we are ignoring biology.”
The Effect on Children…and Parents
That is no more evident than in the loss of playtime for children. Scientists have long known that play, especially the imaginative kind, is important to cognitive development. Dr. Jerome Singer, a psychology professor at Yale University, has spent his life researching this. He is adamant that preschool children must spend an ample amount of time engaged in imaginative play; doing so increases their vocabulary, empathy, and creativity, among other things.
“I’m not making this up,” Dr. Singer says. “We’ve studied this and observed hundreds of kids in various situations: there is a good deal of research to support that this imaginative play period is very important.”
The problem is, kids today spend nearly all of their time in structured activities that don’t encourage open, imaginative play. Some preschools, for instance, engage children in lesson after lesson and don’t leave room for unstructured playtime. The negative effects of such structure are now being seen at the college level.
“I find many of my college students don’t know how to organize their own time since it has always been organized for them,” says Dr. Elkind. The other professors interviewed for this article expressed the same concern.
As well, children who are over-scheduled tend to be more aggressive—and not in the positive sense. Research by scientists at Case Western University suggests that children who are allowed ample free play at ages 3 and 4 are less aggressive and less likely to get into fights than their structured counterparts seven years later; they also are more creative, more independent and happier.
Further, children who are over-scheduled tend to be more stressed. Parents might not notice this stress because kids often internalize it and instead exhibit what appear to be behavioral problems. Warning signs include moodiness or irritability; difficulty sleeping; overeating; complaining of stomachaches, headaches or other illnesses; needing excessive approval from authority figures; repeated “losing” of equipment just as they’re ready to walk out the door; or picking fights with siblings.
Clearly, even the most free-spirited, unstressed child can experience one or more of those behaviors; the key to recognizing it as stress is when a child experiences it often. Or when parents start experiencing it too.
“What I have seen a lot of are parents running around taking every child everywhere and they are feeling stressed,” says Joy V. Luther, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice here in Austin. “With parents there is a resentment that builds up with regard to the amount of time they are spending with their children’s activities and they don’t even realize this and this resentment can lead to depression.”
Luther says that’s usually when clients end-up in her office. They are later surprised—or perhaps not so surprised—to learn that their depression is a result of their hectic, over-scheduled family life.
Luther cautions parents to take a serious look at the number of activities the family is involved in, and whether all of those activities are enriching family life or destroying it.
“If you are finding yourself time and time again feeling resentful about going to wherever you’re taking your kids or complaining to other people about how little time you have…and you have signs of sleeping problems or getting angry pretty easily, then it is time to look and see what kind of boundaries you need to set regarding your schedule for your self and your family,” Luther says.
Therapist Pat Lewis is even more blunt.
“What they’re doing is not working,” Lewis says. “They have to stop and re-evaluate.”
Setting Boundaries
In some parts of the country, families have done exactly that. Minnesota, for instance, sports three separate organizations for parents who want to slow down: Take Back Your Family Time, Putting Family First, and Family Time First. All three organizations assist parents in limiting activities and strengthening family ties. Putting Family First even offers a free booklet detailing nearly every extra-curricular activity offered in its Minneapolis suburb, including the time required and the cost for each. The group’s web site also offers a step-by-step guide to create a similar organization in other locales.
Founder Barbara Carlson says Putting Family First is the result of parents frustrated that society doesn’t respect family time. She points to sporting events scheduled during holidays and the dinner hour, as well as pressure on children and parents to put outside activities before family.
“We are trying to build a community—and we have a long way to go—but we hope there will be a day when those extracurriculars will honor family meal time and important family events,” Carlson says. “When the whole community recognizes the importance of family connections.”
Putting Family First is not religious, nor does it require any formal membership. The group is more of a clearinghouse for information. Carlson says she fields a lot of outrageous calls, including one recently from a mother whose daughter refused to attend her grandmother’s funeral because doing so would cause the girl to miss a sporting competition, something the coach had deemed unacceptable. When the daughter felt more guilty about missing the game than she did about missing her grandmother’s funeral, her mother realized things had gone too far.
While the situation sounds extreme, Carlson says it’s not unusual. She likens modern parents to the proverbial frog in the science experiment: they’ve been thrown into a pot, with steadily increasing heat, but they don’t feel it until it’s too late. The frog, she points out, ends up dying even though it never realizes it’s in trouble.
“The definition of a good parent has changed: a good parent is [now] one who signs her child up for a lot of things and watches from the sidelines,” Carlson says. “But we can’t communicate our beliefs and values if we watch from the sidelines.”
The Bottom Line
That’s not to say that families should stop all sports or enrichment programs. On the contrary, children need physical and mental challenges to grow strong and confident, and some children even thrive on busy schedules. Additionally, enrichment activities can provide wonderful opportunities for family togetherness.
Still, the most important activity in which children should participate is one many families skip altogether: the family meal. Multiple research studies have shown that children who eat meals with their parents do better academically, have higher self esteem and engage in sex later—and this is when variables such as the parents’ socio-economic and education levels are factored out, says Carlson. Despite this, only one-third of families nationwide report eating meals together.
That has to change, says therapist Joy Luther. And it starts with parents learning to value family time in the same way they value activities for which they pay.
“You don’t let [family time] be interrupted,” Luther says. “just as you wouldn’t interrupt soccer practice.”
Parents also have to take a good, hard look at why they’re enrolling their kids in so many activities. The hardest question for many parents to answer honestly is whether they’re doing it for themselves or their children, says Dr. Elkind.
“I always ask: what are the happiest memories you have of your own childhood and would you like your child to have memories like that as well?” Dr. Elkind says.
Those memories usually are developed by doing things with your children, points out Joy Luther.
“Be it the arts or music or reading, parents need to model that,” Luther says. “They can spark the fire rather than rushing it to flame by forcing kids into many activities that may, indeed, extinguish that flame.”
They also need to understand—and accept—their children’s abilities, or lack thereof. Not all kids will read by age 4, not all siblings will play soccer or piano well, and not all will be star students. But all can have a happy family life.
“The crucial thing for a good life is a family in which everyone feels the deal is OK because everyone is doing something, and everyone is sacrificing something, and everyone is getting something,” says Dr. Rosenfeld.
But he admits it’s easier said than done.
“I myself say I am a recovering hyper parent,” he chuckles. “It’s so compelling—it’s endlessly compelling and we don’t know how to stop.”