Speaking of busyness during this time of year reminds me that as a society we seem to be adding more to our children’s plates all the time and at an earlier and earlier age. Mt. Lebanon Children and Youth Consortium recently presented a program about the stresses that children in our community experience. High school students and professionals who work with children spoke, and I must say I left with a sense of frustration in terms of how to make it all better. The children who spoke were all high achievers involved in lots of extra-curricular activities, and their overall message was not one of happiness. They all felt overwhelmed and exhausted, and communicated that they felt compelled to excel in order to please their parents and pressured to get into certain colleges. 

I am certainly not opposed to children succeeding in life! But I think we need to ask ourselves first exactly what success is, and secondly at what price. As far as very young children in this community are concerned, the beginning of what potentially can become a very negative “fast track” is often an over involvement too early in too many extra-curricular activities.

Parents often ask me about appropriate extra-curricular activities for their children during the preschool years, and how much of it is a good thing. There are many considerations that we need to consider for preschoolers. First you should ask yourself what is the point to this activity? If you think it might overly stress your child or perhaps expose them to unnecessary competition you should probably skip it.

Parents may feel pressured to get their children into activities because their friends’ children are involved. Often parents believe that exceptional early achievement in many areas will enhance their children’s self esteem and give them a “leg up” on the competition in life. In reality studies show that involvement too early may do the opposite. Children may feel used, too stressed and pressured, only to avoid many activities later in life when the activities would be more appropriate and they should be self motivated to get involved. In reality we need to be aware that too much activity too soon can actually be harmful for our children.

David Elkind takes a fairly militant approach to extra-curricular activities during the preschool years. According to Elkind:

“There is no reason to enroll a preschool child in any program involving formal extra-curricular lessons. As far as I am concerned, all such programs miseducate young children. This is true because there is absolutely no evidence on any long term gain to be had from such lessons and because, at the same time, they put children at risk of physical injury for no purpose. Yes, I know there are a number of cases where children have started in ballet, ice skating, music or sports, and have gone on to become successful professionals. But they are the exception, not the rule. The number of young people who have started early and experienced failure, unhappiness, and/or physical injury is far, far greater than the number of children who started young and succeeded.”

Although I agree with Elkind, this may be a hard position to digest in a community such as ours where extra-curricular activities abound in every imaginable area for preschoolers. Perhaps a less extreme approach would be to use the guideline of asking yourself to really examine your motives. If you truly have your child’s best interests as your primary concern, you will probably do no harm. What is also important, is to listen to and observe your child and let their interests be your guide. If your own adult personal motives dominate you will probably push your child and do harm. No one likes to be used, and when children are pressured to achieve something under the guise of doing it for themselves, but really for the purpose of satisfying parental need, they will eventually realize the truth. And once this happens, as I said earlier, children often rebel and refuse to get involved in extra-curricular activities later at a more appropriate time.

Children also need unstructured stress-free time to simply “be.” If children are constantly involved in organized activities they cannot learn to play alone, develop creativity, or most important of all, learn how to communicate and interact with peers in an unstructured situation. It is very important for a child’s healthy social development that they not always depend on the presence of adults or structured activities in order to relate to peers.

Another thing that concerns me about extra-curricular activities on the preschool level is that the instructor may not have a clue about child development. They may be excellent artists, ice skaters, or soccer players, but they may not have any understanding about how to teach young children. As a result they may put competitive demands and stresses on young children that are entirely inappropriate and therefore harmful and upsetting to the child.

Other practical considerations are the cost of these activities as well as your time commitment. Constantly escorting little children to way too many activities while keeping up with all of your other commitments and demands can become yet another stress that you don’t need in your family’s life. So before choosing an extra-curricular activity remember that children are easily over stimulated, we all have demanding lives that should be balanced, and most important of all, we must NOT let our own adult needs and vicarious pleasures get in the way of doing what is best for our children.