Busy kids do better than kids with too little to do, especially if they get involved in things where they are developing skills and mixing with positive peers and good adult role models. Early experience in a wide range of activities helps identify where a child is gifted and perhaps areas that need extra attention.
Younger kids may need to be nudged into things because of natural timidity; young teenagers may need your knee pushing them in the base of their spine because they fear that what they do might be considered ‘uncool’ by their peers.
But some kids can get too busy, sometimes because of parental pressure. Parents may have ‘super-child’ dreams – they want to hot-house multi-talented super-achievers – and part of that motivation may be to experience vicarious success through their children. Other times it might be because the kids themselves are keen to do everything and just over extend themselves.
When the pressure comes from the parents, they become stressed, learn to dislike the activities they are being pressured into, and become passive aggressive: pretending to be involved but really sabotaging things by being too slow, forgetting things and just failing to try.
For those kids who are super keen and want to do too many things – a good line is “I want you to do as much as you want to do, but if we notice you aren’t coping (getting sick, marks dropping) you have to decide which activity you are going to drop.”
Remember, a good childhood and a balanced education also involves plenty of ‘down time’; they also need unstructured play to socialise, develop creativity and a wide range of ‘non-curricular’ skills.
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