Scheduling Some Unscheduled Time In Your Child's Day

Families are busier than ever, and that includes the children, too. Between a full school schedule during the day and all the extracurricular activities after school, when does your child have time for some down time? It's important that children have interests outside of school, but how much is too much?

Having a busy life is great, but the potential for over-scheduling is a real concern. You lead a very busy life yourself with work, family, and household chores. Keeping your child busy may seem like the best thing to do, but there can be too much of a good thing. You need relaxation time, and so do your children.

Over-Scheduling and Stress

Participating in tons of activities is fun, but it can also be stressful. Homework, dinnertime, and fun with the family are important, as well. If everyone is running in different directions, there won't be any downtime. And, when there isn't any downtime, stress starts to bubble up and boil over. Parents and kids both feel stress.

When children are asked to be on the go 24/7, they get exhausted and stressed. This stress may even cause your kids to lose the motivation they once had for the activities they love.

Busy Family Schedules

On an average night, your family may not get home until well after 6 o'clock. Then you run around getting dinner ready and the kids are headed off to do their homework. By the time you're finished with dinner, you barely have time to relax before going to bed. Then, the alarm goes off and you are up and at it again. This crazy schedule, repeated day in and day out, is hard on you, and it's certainly hard on your children.

Whether your children go to public school, private school, or are home schooled, they are busy with their schoolwork and activities and you're busy with your work, week in and week out. But the weekend is coming, so you will all just relax, right? Wrong.

The weekend produces more chores and errands. Your children may even have more games and more activities to attend. You find yourself running all weekend just like you did all week. When is your downtime going to happen? From the looks of it, not any time soon.

Scheduling Slow Down Time

You're great at scheduling all your activities, right? Why not schedule in a bit of slow time for you and your kids, as well?