Interests and Activities

Children need opportunities to develop interests in academic, physical, and other areas including the arts. Once they are in elementary school, exposing them to a wide variety of opportunities fuels their need for real accomplishments. In order to avoid activities overload, however, it may be a good idea to limit school-age children to two or three extra-curricular activities at a time. How can children and their parents choose from among all of the activities available to them these days? One idea is to pursue activities in series rather than simultaneously.

Physical activity is enjoyable to most young children, so the parent might enroll the child in gymnastics when he is in kindergarten. He might enjoy this for a year or two and then switch to swimming. If he enjoys music, he might begin piano lessons in second grade. In third grade, the parent might enroll the child in religious school. In fourth grade, band might be offered at school. At that point, the child might decide that he wants to stop piano lessons in favor of the trumpet. The school might have a Saturday art program for elementary-age children, and the child may enjoy that for a few weeks each year. In middle school, there may be an opportunity to write for the school newspaper and to play on the school basketball team.

By the end of middle school, the child has been exposed to many different activities, but there are never more than two or three pursued at any given time, so there is no activities overload.

Once the child reaches high school, it may be possible for him to pursue more than two or three things simultaneously. This should be, in large part, up to him. Knowing that he must keep up in his academic subjects, he can decide just how busy he’d like to be. Until he can get himself to his various activities on his own, however, parents have the right to some input.

One additional thing to consider is that while it’s tempting to see every young violinist who shows promise at age six as a future virtuoso, it’s not realistic. The important thing for the parent to do is to support the child in doing the things that he enjoys and to encourage him to persevere in the face of frustration. To a point, that is.

While it is admirable not to be a “quitter,” it is painful to watch a parent, who always wanted to be a gymnast, for example, force her child to stick with the sport long after it ceases to be fun for him. The rule of thumb in our family, and I think it was a good one, was that if you started something, you had to follow through with it until a logical stopping point. This might be a season in sports, it might be a “session” in another activity, or it might be a semester in something else. At the end of each session, I asked our children if they wanted me to sign them up for the next session, and if they said “yes,” they knew that they would have to stick with it at least until the end of the session. I believe that part of the reason they both developed a healthy degree of perseverance is that we encouraged them to persist even when the going got tough.