Stress from Children’s Schedules, March 9, 2008

As we continue our survey of stress in our lives we have been talking about the stress of excess demands. We referenced a book by physician, Richard Swenson, called Margins in which he uses the metaphor of the margins of a page to describe the dilemma of the modern family. Swenson declares that the margins, the blank spaces, on the printed page are necessary if we are going to read the printed page. He suggests that it is very unpleasant to read a page that is filled from top to bottom, from left to right by print. Further, Swenson suggests that the same is true with our lives. If we fill our lives so fully that that there are no blank spaces, then we will experience our lives as stressful …even if all the content of our days is good. In the curriculum we find this quote:

People often eliminate the margins in their own lives and fill up their schedules from top to bottom and side to side. The result is active but exhausted individuals and busy families with multiple interests but little time for each other.

Our curriculum then reached into scripture to suggest three margins that we need to observe in our lives, margins that will reduce stress and return joy to our Christian living.

Margin 1: The Sabbath – Creating margins through rest and worship
Margin 2: Sharing responsibility – Creating margins through getting more help
Margin 3: Knowing when enough is enough –Creating margins through solitude

Last week we divided into three groups to discuss each of these “margins.” Today I want to talk about an issue that I overheard being discussed as I listened to the groups talking last week. Last week I heard several of you discuss the stress being introduced into your lives by new organized activities in which your children are involved. For example, Paul discussed some new activities that his daughter are pursuing in their karate class that take them out of town for a time. This started me thinking, and the following is the result:


Two of the most rapid sociological changes in the 50 years between my childhood and the childhoods of your children has been (a) the rapid increase in organized activities for children built around sports, performances and interests … (b) and increasingly early ages at which we begin to involve our children in those activities.

Back in the dark ages, when I was a child, the first opportunity to partidcipate in something that was organized came at about age 8 or 9, and that opportunity was Little league baseball. This was a one season sport that typically involved Saturdays for about eight weeks with all games played at a field in the neighborhood. A few children took piano lessons, more were in scouting and church based activities, but by far the most common activity was free play in neighbor’s yards, usually under the watch care of a stay at home mother. By middle school you could play on a school or league team in football or basketball or play in the school band, but again seasons were short and free play was a major part of most children’s days in the extended off-seasons.

By the time my children reached school age (when you were children), opportunities were much wider and occurred much earlier. My son Aaron was playing what could we might generously call soccer by age 5. [Actually, it was a swarm of 18 children following a ball, one child throwing rocks at the goalie and one child talking to his mother]. By age 7 Aaron was playing two soccer seasons a year, and soon sister, Jodi, got the soccer bug and was also playing two season soccer. Not only were there weekly practices for each child; in Wake County, North Carolina the teams played county-wide so that Claire and I each would typically drive 20 miles, in a different direction, on Sunday afternoon. Along the way both children took music lessons from age 5, and Jodi took gymnastics from age 8.

As I have watched the children of my faculty, it seems to be that the movement has accelerated. Indeed, the most recent phenomena seems to be “select teams” or selected individuals who compete perform not in a community context, but regionally or nationally. One close friend has a son in his early teens who plays a regional golf circuit much like the pro circuit with events all across the southeast, others play on city select teams for children that travel further and with longer seasons than my high school basketball team ever traveled. Similar structures exist for performance-oriented activities like music and dance. Almost every activity seems to have a non-local component.

There are several consequences of all this organized and planned activity, some good and some bad. [The class then brainstormed on two lists. I was not taking notes so what appears below are my recollections. I apologize for those that are missing.]

Good Consequences:
1. We give our children the opportunity to excel … helping them build self-confidence and poise that perhaps will help them through the difficult adolescent years
2. We can choose our children’s peer groups and know that their play is supervised. They learn discipline and teamwork and develop critical social skills.
3. Such activities give the children a place to be positively involved when school schedules and parent’s work schedules do not coincide
4. In some rare cases, our children may be talented enough so that with an early start they will be able to use their skill in their adult life … scholarship to college or performance for pay .we give them the chance to be the very best that they can be.

More Questionable Consequences:
1. Children have less down time …and there is some evidence that undirected play plays important role in childrens’ development.
2. Parents pay and enormous toll as they provide transportation and other support for organizations that produce the activity. Making it possible for our children to participate in these activities can contribute to the stress from overload that we feel.
3. Disruptive of family centered activities like evening meals together or family devotionals or simply family in the house at the same time doing different things.
4. Children may get a unwise message about what things are really important. As they see the entire family system turned upside down month after month to facilitate their participation on a select football team or their performance with a regional orchestra, they may draw a conclusion from that that the families do not intend.

My point here is that there is a balance to be struck … .and you will not get much help from your society in striking that balance. I do not know the answer to how much organized activity is the right amount of organized activity; that will depend on both the circumstances of the child and the family. However, it would be unwise to proceed on autopilot and do things just exactly like the other ten families in your neighborhood. I would like to tell you a story from my years as a parent and the place that I decided that balance had to be restored.


My story: As my son began to move from baby to child, I wanted very much for him to enjoy and excel in athletics. There were a couple of reasons for this.
· I had not only enjoyed playing sports, but it had been a crucial bridge for me during adolescents. It will not surprise you that I was a strange child [the child is the father of the man]. I was socially awkward, excelled in school and was serious member of my Christian community … none of which endeared me to my peers. Playing sports was how I connected to my peers. Since I suspected that Aaron might share some of my strangeness, I wanted him to have the same bridge available to him.
· It turned out that when Ed’s genes went head to head with Claire’s genes, Claire’s always won. Hence my son was a very small child. I felt that excelling in a sport would help this small child compensate for the biological fact (and the fact that his father was a hulking giant).

Consequently, when Aaron showed an interest in playing on a soccer team with his five year old friend Jay Thomas, I piled on. For the next seven years we built large parts of our schedule around soccer. There was a fall season, there was a spring season, there was summer soccer camp at North Carolina State University. Along the way Aaron developed some skills, enjoyed the play, and was usually one of the better six players on the team but certainly not the star. When we moved to Savannah, he had a bit of a head start, and was soon on a select team playing across the region. It was then that I finally made the determination that I had gotten things out of balance. We were on a weekend trip to Jacksonville with games on Saturday and then on Sunday. I got up on Sunday morning and realized, “We are not in church today. For years I have communicated to my child that soccer is more important than family life. Now I am communicating that soccer is more important that participation in a Christian community.” We played the Sunday afternoon game, and we quit the select team.

Surprisingly, Aaron’s life did not fall apart. Without me facilitating a week built around soccer, he developed a group of friends who began to work on Odyssey of the Mind projects and spent afternoons in garages building exotic machines. Even without select team preparation he made the high school soccer team and played three seasons on a one of the better teams in the city. But surprisingly, in his senior year in high school, when he would have started at center half back, he elected not to play on a team destined to win the region, and he did not play soccer, but rather spent his time on a rich set of non-sport activities. The father who believed that sports were necessary to secure his son’s future had been totally mistaken.

I don’t tell you this story to suggest that at any point I made the “right” choice. All my choices may have been off the mark. Perhaps I should have never started my son playing soccer, or perhaps I should have continued select team to the end of the season, or perhaps something in between. My only point is that there are decisions to be made … there is a balance to seek … and children will be remarkable resilient, however you proceed.

I want to leave you with three very practical suggestions made at the end of the lesson on Stress from Overload:

1. Create a margin by marking a weekly Sabbath Rest on your calendar and schedule around it.
2. When you are feeling overwhelmed, list and evaluate the activities in which you are involved. Pray about each activity on the list. Ask for wisdom to discern whether or not to eliminate that activity or ask for help in that activity. Note: When asking for help, ask a specific person to do a specific task for a specific time period.
3. Schedule time alone and time with family and friends.