The other day at my tutoring job I approached a little girl sitting in her chair doing nothing but giving a glazed-over expression at the computer monitor. I asked her, “Are you okay?” and she burst into tears.
After I managed to calm her down and let her have a bit of a break to settle her nerves, I tried to figure out what had happened. It turns out that the tutoring center was the last leg in a long itinerary of activities that day. In addition to school, she had chinese school, violin lessons, soccer, and finally tutoring. Her day started at 7 AM and ended at 8 PM; over twelve hours of activitiy for a six year old girl! :eek: No wonder she was a wreck! If I had to do all that now, I’d probably be in the same mental state and I’m 4x older than she is! Unfortunately we get quite a few kids like this- parents pack their days full of various activities; by the time they come to our center they are exhausted, cranky, upset, hungry, etc. It is hard for them to be productive when they have been through so much; all I hear them say is “I don’t have any time to play, any time to eat, any time to stop doing things.”
Some of my piano students are in a similar situation. This is kind of frustrating, because they don’t seem to have enough time to dedicate towards practicing. A lot of times they won’t even practice at all during the week, then practice 3 hours a day on the weekend, see me Monday and be completely clueless about the material they had a week to go over. I feel really torn about these students because obviously if they quit I make less money, but if they continue their crazy schedule they are just running around in circles and not really going anywhere skill-wise.
I get a lot of students who have the same problem - too much stuff to do, too little time to actually LEARN anything.
We have one in our musical theatre program right now who is so deeply involved in competitive dance that she has had to miss most dress rehearsals for the play she is in. Had we known this would have been a problem, we probably would have dropped her from our show earlier on.
I once had a student (with some learning disabilities) who was taking piano and voice (with me), going to hebrew school, soccer, gymnastics, tap, ballet, hip-hop, skiing, art and drama lessons.
She had awful marks in school, and couldn’t cope with the stress. Yikes.
That’s a very good question. The area I live is upper middle class/upper class (upper middle upper class? ) and most of the families are fairly wealthy with money to spend on extracurricular activitiy. I often wonder myself what proportion of children are simply there because their parents want them to be ‘ahead’ of other students. If I talk with parents I can usually figure it out pretty quickly- comments like, “Well, our Johnny was 3 grade levels ahead in Math last fall, and now he’s only 2 grade levels ahead. We feel he’s falling behind” :rolleyes: are fairly good indicators of the real purpose of their membership.
That poor baby. I have a six year old girl myself; I can’t imagine how a parent could do that to a little kid. Is there any chance you might be able to talk some sense into the parents? Personally, I’d be inclined to encourage a little riot and rebellion in the minor; I can just imagine what my daughter would say to me if I tried to put her through a day like that. “I’m NOT playing this stupid violin, I WANT to watch Ozzy and Drix!”
I urge everyone here, if you know parents like this…take them by the shoulders and SHAKE them. Then take their kids out for ice cream.
What about parents who don’t care about their kids’ schedules? I’ll bet you that my mom couldn’t even name 2 classes I’m in, and I’m not sure that my dad knows my major.
When working as an assistant stage manager at the Springer Opera House during our production of Cinderella a few years ago, the Springer Guild organized a tea party for children, following which they would be able to have their pictures taken with Cinderella and Prince Charming on the steps of the castle. While lining up the parents and kids for their turn, I couldn’t help but notice one lady who had herself and her (appox.) 3 year old daughter dressed in matching outfits. The closer they got to the head of the line the more upset the little girl got, until she was in tears. She had never been in the Springer (which is quite imposing), she didn’t know those two weirdly dressed strangers up there and she emphatically did not want to go up there. Her mother was so cruel! “You will quit that stupid crying RIGHT THIS SECOND or I will pull your pants down and spank you right here in front of everyone! Why are you acting like such an idiot?..” and so forth. I almost told that asshat if she wanted a picture so damn badly, get up there and we would take one of her!
I would ask when these kids have time to just play and be kids, but I’m afraid I already know that answer. These people have got to just ease the hell up already. Yeah it’s great to give your child opportunities and education, but it’s got to be in moderation, and it’s got to be fun. If it isn’t fun, what’s the point?
I can hear them saying, “Well, life isn’t fun.” Well, why not? Why shouldn’t life be fun? Even as an adult?
In my limited experience, kids go along with the pushing until 10-11th grade. Then they put the brakes on big time and refuse to play along.
Unfortunately, around my neck of the woods, there aren’t a lot of kids available that my kids could have unstructured play time with…everyone else is in all the activities. If that’s not bad enough, a large number of parents think letting their kids run around a neighborhood is the same as providing written invitations to kidnappers and serial killers. Many kids are supervised at all times because of that.
My cousin lives in such an area, and her daughter has been overscheduled, IMHO, at certain times. Theatre camp in the summer, girl scouts, cheerleading, CCD, and so on and so forth.
The parents in that area also seem to compete to see who can have the most elaborate birthday parties for their kids as well. I assume there’s a correlation.
Now, I remember swimming lessons in summer, but mostly I had a lot of time to play, read, and not have to be dragged all over the place by mom in the car.
Those were the days.
I moved into a similar neighborhood. My daughter is 3 and in dance class. I worried for the longest time that between day care and once a week dance that she was over-scheduled until I would hear the schedules for the Katelyns and Kennedis in her class. The way these Stepford wives talked, I was the neglectful parent. “What do you mean she is going to stay in pre-ballet another year. She’ll be so far behind.” “She isn’t playing an instrument yet?” “What other language are you teahing her? French or Spanish?” Their heads would explode if I told them the only art class she takes is when I strip her down before bathtime and let her fingerpaint.
Bingo, brother. I was shocked when I moved to the US to hear that, in my region, kids get 20 minutes of “recess” after lunch. That’s it. Back home, they get 15 minutes in the morning, in the afternoon and 40 minutes after lunch. They run, they play, they play calvin-ball. Here, even recess games are structured. Not only that, but at my Mother In Law’s school, it isn’t the whole school that goes out for recess - no, they do it by grade level.
<small aside> I was talking to my mother recently about homeschooling. She, being a teacher, said she didn’t really believe in it because of socialisation. She said, “There’s something to be said about unstructured play with peers in the schoolyard.” I pointed out to her that it just doesn’t happen here… and that the 0 tolerence idiocy that is taking over the school systems getting worse and worse. She paused and said, “Well, maybe homeschooling isn’t a bad idea after all.” </small aside>
As for playing at home, in my neighbourhood we’re kind of lucky - the kids do get to play and run and be kids without constant parental supervision. It seems that this is, however, not the norm. Parents are scared of leaving kids unattended for even more than 20 seconds… and sign them up for structured play (soccer, baseball, etc) instead.
My mom, to this day (i’m 26) always worried that I am overscheduling myself. She always asks me when I’ll be “done” with karate lessons, when bowling season is over, and if I REALLY want to be in community band. She hems and haws when I run off to the gym every day.
She must have read some sort of magical parenting book at some point. Very glad she didn’t over-extend me like some of the kids in this thread. Yeesh.
Yeah, I always said that the minute my school district gets rid of recess as some have done, we’re out. (That’s hypothetical, since my kids are little.) But homeschoolers mostly do have something similar, since they like to have park days and whatnot and are usually very big on the unstructured play thing.
Otherwise, this thread makes me so sad I can’t comment.
Both penned by Muffy Mead-Ferro. Though the adjective ‘Slacker’ has many negative connotations, the main point is to teach self reliance and the ability to slow down and enjoy life
