Superkids

by Angela Scott

In her column, Parenting Solo, Angela Scott will share her journey of balancing parenting duties, work and downtime activities, while keeping up with her two daughters, Shani (8) and Samara (5). Parenting Solo will take you inside the home, mind, heart and soul of this working single mom who’s found the role as a single parent to be a rewarding mix of blessings and blues. “It’s an incredible blessing that calls for supernatural resources,” she says. Angela invites you to write to her at shaniadura@netzero.net.



I'm now in the midst of preparing my family's schedule for this upcoming school year. In the past, my girls and I enjoyed participating in lots of extracurricular activities. However, rushing to weekly violin lessons, choir and dance rehearsals, mid-week Bible study and American Sign Language classes became a bit much to bear. When time permitted, we rushed home to eat dinner and finish homework before setting off to Bible study and choir rehearsal. The girls ate in the car and my eldest finished homework on the road, while rushing to dance rehearsals, violin lessons and ASL classes.

Rush, rush, rush.

By the time the weekend came, my girls and I were pooped. Weekly, my mother and grandmother would say, "Angela, you and the girls are in the streets far too much." While I agreed with what my mothers were saying, I honestly did not know how to slow down. My girls were already in high gear like me, and abhorred the two days a week when we had free time. To Shani and Samara, free time meant busy time with activities other than just being couch potatoes, playing board games and coloring. Needless to say, when this past school year ended, I was burnt. I couldn't imagine going into another hectic school year ­ rushing to bed, rushing to rise, rushing to school, rushing to work, rushing home ­ rush, rush, rush. I felt like I had created my own "hurried children."

Author David Elkind first considered the consequences of over-scheduling children in his 1998 book, The Hurried Child. Despite his warnings, many parents continued to schedule their children in an overabundance of activities ­ all with the intention of creating success-driven superkids. Over the past few months, much dialogue has been dedicated to the "superkid" phenomena. Newsweek featured the article, "Busy Around the Clock," while other stories featured titles such as "Whatever Happened to Play?"and "Are You Over-Scheduling Your Kids?" Bookstore shelves are stocked with titles such as The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon by David Elkind, Ph.D, Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard by Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D., and Your Active Child: How to Boost Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Development through Age-Appropriate Activity by Rae Pica.

For most parents, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy of wanting to develop success-driven children. However, as single parents, we're more prone to "super-active" and success-driven behavior due to the amount of responsibility placed on us as primary parents. Not only do we want our kids to be happy, feel loved, be successful and involved in a myriad of activities, but we also glean towards active lives in order to fill the "gap" in single parent homes.

Admit it, unconsciously and consciously we attempt to keep our children busy in order to prevent their minds from thinking about the absent parent. I do it. We all have done it at one point or another. Unfortunately, what I've learned is that creating busy schedules also introduces children to unwarranted, kid-size stress. Remember all of the rushing that my kids and I experienced? My kids often became stressed out because of the rushing. Yet, they didn't want to drop any of the activities.

Child Movement Specialist and author Rae Pica offers timely advice in her book, Your Active Child: How to Boost Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Development through Age-Appropriate Activity (McGraw-Hill, 2003). Consider these fine points:

If children begin living like adults in childhood, what will there be left to look forward to? What's to ensure they won¹t be burned out from all the pushing and pressure before they¹ve even reached puberty?

Beyond the innate talents and interests that I'd like to cultivate in my children lay the issue of time and space. Am I creating pint-size "A-typical" adults? How much is too much? Are my kids begging to run track, take gymnastics, science and art classes, play violin, sing in the choir and dance on the praise? Or, are these enrichment activities "must do" goals in order to keep up with the Jones family? What about child prodigies? Such thoughts call for prayer and reflection on the ultimate purpose.


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