[1461] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
NYTimes.com Article: Parents Schedule In a Little Dawdle Time
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Thu Sep 25 04:56:59 2003
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:34:50 -0400
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>.
---------------------------------
This is certainly kind of sick, but I guess it's helpful to
understand where the Millenial perspective comes from. Perhaps
the parents who don't send their kids to 8-practice/week sports
at age 4 will eventually win out?
--jhawk
---------------------------------
Parents Schedule In a Little Dawdle Time
September 25, 2003
By BRADFORD McKEE
ON Fridays after school, when the Fitzer and Magruder
children play soccer at North Main Rotary Park in
Greenville, S.C., the usual rules of the game apply, but
not the usual annoyances. Their parents decided to pass up
the local Y.M.C.A. league, along with the rush-hour drives
and the dinner delays it would entail, in favor of
old-fashioned pickup games. The players - mostly 4 to 7
years old - meet half a block from their elementary school.
There is no rush, no $50 fee and no pressure to join the
game.
"Whoever shows up shows up," said Heather Magruder, who
used to coach her 8-year-old son, Dylan, and 7-year-old
daughter, Corey, in the Y league. "If somebody's mom calls
them in to dinner, you just readjust the teams."
"We wanted our kids to have experiences closer to what we
had," Ms. Magruder said. "You picked sides, put a goal
down, and you played." Or you didn't. Today, however, "your
kid has to know how to do everything by age 8," she said,
adding, "It's more important for us to be a sane family and
not just spend our time running from here to there."
A generation ago, the latchkey child was the most forlorn
image in the parental universe. Now it is the overscheduled
child, who, whether driven by parental ambition or the
necessity for afternoon supervision, never stops moving.
Jumping from Spanish to karate, tap dancing to tennis -
with hours of homework waiting at home - the overscheduled
child is as busy as a new law firm associate.
But many parents have begun resisting the push to avail
their children of every planned activity that a retail
society can offer. These dissenters say they prefer to give
their children plenty of time just to be children, to spend
less time in car pools and more in sandboxes and
spontaneous dodge-ball games.
Many parents - if not their children - are simply ready to
slow down. Nancy Eisen Fitzer, who helped organize the
informal soccer league in Greenville that her son Isaac, 7,
and daughter, Shona, 4, play in, said that she and her
husband, Matthew Fitzer, wanted to "step off the
high-pressure merry-go-round" of youth achievement.
"When I talk to some of these parents whose kids are going
to swim practice eight times a week, and they say, `She
loves it - it's so much fun,' I wonder, How fun?" Ms.
Fitzer said. "Some kids thrive on that kind of schedule,
but my own child is very sensitive about not having down
time."
In her community, Ms. Fitzer said, there is an expectation
that children join organized sports at age 4.
"This starts so young," said Janet Chan, the editor in
chief of Parenting magazine. "We're talking now about
parents with babies who have them in tumble classes and
swim classes."
Of course, pulling back is rarely as easy as it sounds.
"How do you get a mother to say, `I don't feel like I'm a
chauffeur' for a change?" said Alvin Rosenfeld, a child
psychiatrist in Manhattan and an author of "The
Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap"
(Griffin, 2001). "When you try to cut back, there are
pressures from neighbors who say, `You're not taking Johnny
to soccer?' and you feel somewhat insecure, as people tend
to be, particularly about their parenting."
Such laments may be unfounded, according to one expert who
has studied children's schedules. "I don't believe in the
hurried child for a minute," said Sandra L. Hofferth, a
professor of family studies at the University of Maryland
who, with John F. Sandberg, conducted a study in 1997 on
the ways children use their time.
Their report, published in 2001 in The Journal of Marriage
and the Family, was based on interviews with 2,119 children
age 3 through 12 nationwide and compared their answers with
those from a nearly identical study in 1981. It showed
that, although children averaged 1 hour 10 minutes more
each week in 1997 than in 1981 on organized sports, 20
minutes more on studying, 2 hours 43 minutes more in day
care and 2 hours more in school, they still had time to
play for 12 hours and watch television for 13. "There is a
lot of time that could be used for other things," Ms.
Hofferth said.
Even so, family-life pundits and grass-roots support groups
are driving a scattered revolt against what they see as
overscheduling. Putting Family First, an organization based
in Wayzata, Minn., expects as many as 1,500 people to
attend parental education seminars and other events during
its "Take Back Your Family Time Week," Oct. 20 through 24.
"We're helping people with the problem of overscheduled
kids and underconnected families," said William Doherty, a
professor of family social science at the University of
Minnesota, who helped establish the group in 1999.
Last March in Ridgewood, N.J., 91 percent of all households
with grade-school children agreed to cancel all sports
games, evening events and homework for one day. Called
Ridgewood Family Night (motto: "Ready, Set, Relax!"), it
was organized by parents, school officials and religious
leaders with help from the Family Counseling Service, a
local nonprofit agency. "It was like a snow day without
snow," said Marcia Marra, the agency's manager of community
initiatives. "You could do whatever you wanted without
pressures."
When children do regain free time, it can leave their
parents worried that they are forfeiting the chance for a
competitive edge or a crucial bonding moment with a team or
a scout troop. Adrianne Bajtay of Vancouver, Wash., recalls
being troubled by an acquaintance's suggestion that if
children don't form relationships in teams when very young,
they may not form them at all. Her 6-year-old son, Mark,
spends a lot of time alone, drawing and assembling books of
his artworks, instead of playing indoor soccer, as he had
for two seasons. At Mark's age, Ms. Bajtay said, "the kids
weren't really interacting with each other." So she decided
to wait to sign him up again.
"We're just kind of fighting against the tide," she added.
"There's pressure always to join."
Indeed, adults feel as much peer pressure as the children
themselves, said Betsy Taylor, the author of "What Kids
Really Want That Money Can't Buy: Tips for Parenting in a
Commercial World" (Warner Books, 2003). "It takes guts,"
she said, "to pull back from that and ask, Is this really
healthy for my child?"
Much of the pressure is seasonal: parents are just now
bracing for the fall soccer season. Spring is even busier,
thanks to the lengthening of the days and the necessity to
prepare for standardized tests, said Renee Schlechter of
Allentown, Pa.
Ms. Schlechter's daughters, Brittney, 9, and Kelsey, 6,
juggle activities like soccer, field hockey, softball and
T-ball throughout the year, as well as piano and violin
lessons and Sunday school. "We had only the months of July
and August with no sport," Ms. Schlechter said.
For the moment, she said, life is relatively calm because
her younger daughter has soccer only one day and one night
a week. "She said, `I love Saturdays, because I don't have
a sport and I can play with my friends,' " Ms. Schlechter
recalled.
For some families, though, it's full speed ahead. "We're
not scaling back," said Alfred Tibbetts, a lawyer in
Darien, Conn. His wife, Gwynne Tibbetts, puts about 300
miles a week on their car shuttling their three children -
girls age 9 and 6 and a boy, 8 - to dance, piano and
soccer. School lets out at 4 p.m., and their other
commitments often keep them away from home until 7. "And
then on the weekends, they've got their games," Mr.
Tibbetts said. "Scaling back is something we always talk
about as a fantasy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/garden/25BACK.html?ex=1065478360&ei=1&en=10aab4912e04694c
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