Balancing The Family Calendar

Any parent who has sat listening to other parents talk at events or gatherings has heard the proof of the never-ending busy and overflowing family calendar.  It almost is a badge of honor the parent feels when they recount their busy week so far and what is to come in the next few days.  This idea of filling every spare minute with an activity or place to be, is the crack in the family unit that over times leads to stressed out parents and over stimulated kids. 

In many families both parents work.  This is a large chunk of time that keeps everyone in the family apart.  Added to that is school, sports activities, clubs and classes that we sign our kids up for.  Traditional school was designed originally to bring education to the next generation, setting them up for future family opportunities.  As schools became institutionalized, it was designed to line up with the parents work schedule.  What once may have started out as providing the basic foundations of education for kids in shorter time requirements, has stretched into seven and eight hour days.  Ensuring the kids stay busy and directed while the parents work is why things like sports, clubs, and busy work was introduced to the school day.  To add to the crack dividing families even further apart, is homework.  Why would a child not be able to fit all of their learning into that seven-hour day?  This is like a parent working all day and then coming home with additional “homework” to complete before going back to work the next day.  That would be ridiculous. 

With the pressures of society, kids constantly want to be a part of more and more.  Sports, classes, events, etc.  To make things more difficult, many of the activities are only for one child or age group.  If a family has 3 kids, now each of them doing 2-3 activities after school and on the weekends is the type of scheduling that leads to chaos and overwhelm.  As we all know it is very easy to say yes to something, and very hard to then change our commitment level later. 

Many of the types of activities we choose will also depend on our financial ability.  Competitive gymnastics is a lot more expensive then recreational soccer.  Some sports, activities, or clubs require many days a week to participate, whereas others are a few times a month.  Families with lots and lots of kids have discovered careful selection out of necessity.  You will see them bring the whole family to things that they all can participate in, such as dancing lessons/events, art classes, music, 4-H, theater, martial arts, or co-ops.  The whole point of extra-curricular activities is to give our kids opportunities to try new things, build lifelong skills, challenge the mind and body through work habit, learn to work as a team, and grow perseverance. 

Since we are limited by our work schedule and school schedule, everything else has to fit around that.  Everything is a long list.  Chores, cooking meals, running errands, doctor appointments, grocery shopping, extended family gatherings, vacations, and so much more.  Not included in this never-ending list, is the necessary downtime we all need.  Time to unwind, relax, do a hobby at home, spend quality time with our spouse and kids.  Being able to have several nights a week that have nothing planned is like a weight being lifted off of the whole family’s shoulders. 

Kids need time to be able to self-entertain, be creative, be bored.  The caveat to this, is once we get our calendar cleared up and balanced, we need to make sure we are not filling that space with an excessive amount of screen time.  The point of doing the hard work of balancing our calendars is to be able to spend more quality time with our spouse and kids.  We don’t want to trade one bad rut with another.

Kids will always want to do more.  It is up to us as the parents to help regulate their day to allow enough time and energy to just be.  Just because they are interested in soccer doesn’t mean we need to sign them up for competing.  A recreational soccer that lasts for 3 months in the spring is great, then they can practice and play soccer with friends the rest of the year.  If they are interested in guitar, this doesn’t mean we need to get them a private tutor twice a week.  Youtube has a wealth of resources to get them started and see how serious they are about putting in the effort on their own. 

As parents we want to give our kids what we didn’t have in our own childhood.  But it very quickly can backfire when we start to put pressure on them to do competition level instead of recreational when we’ve invested 3 years of time and money into their sport and now they are burnt out.  Outside of going professional in sports, there is not a time limit that we are constrained to.  Our kids can try painting, lacrosse, dance, anything they can think of as young adults and even later in their years.  Sadly many of the sports we push our kids to high levels in, end up damaging their bodies through injuries.  Now they are starting their adulthood with a bad knee and a couple past surgeries.

Doing things as a family will always be more beneficial to their growth and connection.  Family bike rides, hikes, beach days, playing board games, or music together, all are free activities that just require our calendar to be less filled.  We spend a lot of time planning our meals for the week, our next big purchase, or our next vacation.  We need to spend even more time managing our calendar and what is allowed to take a place in it.  Your whole family will feel the stress melt away and the calm return.