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Post by preraph on Apr 27, 2011 19:12:25 GMT -5
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Post by cnu5000 on Apr 29, 2011 8:14:19 GMT -5
My nephew(by my husband) probably is an example of an overscheduled child. Both his parents work full time. At one, he was in day care(they called it school) from 8:00-6:00 where he was getting "report cards" and according to his parents being prepared for Harvard.
On the weekends, he had music and swimming lessons. Also they had some aspirations for him to be a baby model. So just think at one year old he had to juggle school, extra curricialr activites and work!!!
I heard from psychiatrist that what babies want to do at one year old is get a lot of sleep.
My nephew is five.
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Post by happy2bchildfree on Apr 29, 2011 11:23:16 GMT -5
IMO, kids need unstructured free time a lot more than they need one structured activity after another. I agree with the Dr. in the video clip that if kids are forced into all these activities, they are never going to figure out what they actually do like and want to do.
As much as I disliked being a child, the one GOOD thing I liked about it was having lots of unstructured free time to do what I wanted. Kids now won't be able to say the same thing.
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Post by cnu5000 on Apr 29, 2011 14:56:05 GMT -5
I agree with you Happy. These kids are going to feel stressed out. I am an adult-I need unstructured time. I was just talking with a woman I work with who works full time. Her daughter is about four. The daughter goes to preschool(since her mother works I am assuming it is a long day), soccer, dance and has lots of birthday parties to go to from all her activities.
Something like Michael Jackson will happen to some of these children(minus the allegations of child abuse) where he says since never had a childhood like childish things as an adult.
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Post by preraph on Apr 30, 2011 20:25:51 GMT -5
If you structure everything a kid does or only give them toys that do everything for them, they will never learn to have imagination or do anything on their own or be creative and will probably always have to have a mommy figure to be codependent on. Kids need to learn to daydream and entertain themselves and maybe read once in awhile.
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Post by cnu5000 on May 9, 2011 5:57:39 GMT -5
I think adults need it to!!!
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Post by happy2bchildfree on May 9, 2011 15:57:55 GMT -5
I know I need unstructured, unscheduled time to do whatever I want to do at the moment--or to do nothing if that's what I want. I would do very poorly without it.
I'm very, very good at entertaining myself and am only very rarely bored. I believe it is because I had lots of unstructured, unscheduled free time as a child and I figured out creative ways of entertaining myself.
I have a real issue with parents who force their kids into activities the kids don't want. I think extracurricular activities are fine--as long as the child actually WANTS to do them, and as long as these scheduled activities don't take up so much of the child's time that s/he has no "free" time.
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Post by cnu5000 on May 10, 2011 7:03:46 GMT -5
I agree. When I was growing upand I heard of a child/young person doing certain things I used to feel it was impressive because most of the time the child wanted to do it. However, now I heard of the child doing something similiar and I just feel sorry for the kid because I feel they are being pushed.
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Post by happy2bchildfree on May 10, 2011 16:20:40 GMT -5
True, although I do remember some kids being forced to take music lessons or do some other activity they didn't want to do. But that was the exception and not the rule. And back then kids didn't take on, and weren't pushed into, so many different extracurricular activities that it left them without any free time. It was only one or two activities that didn't take up every minute of every day. They still had plenty of free time.
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Post by cnu5000 on May 11, 2011 6:37:41 GMT -5
I would agree with you Happy-that if they were scheduled it was not constantly. I read of people growing up in the 1970s and all the creative things they did because they had free time. As an adult I often feel overscheduled.
My husband is not close to the my neice and nephews on his side of the family. However, I think the overscheduling is making it hard for adults to develope relationships with children who don't have children(the children have no free time).
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