Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. You come out of swim class with your child, hair still wet, and head straight to Spanish. Snack gets eaten in the car. At home there's still homework, bath, and dinner, and they fall asleep on the sofa before you finish the story. And you wonder if it's all too much. Or the opposite: if you drop an activity, will they fall behind?
How many is too many?
There's no set number. A 2006 report from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), using US data on children and teens aged 5 to 18, found that they spent an average of about 5 hours a week on organized activities, counting those who did none. Only between 3 and 6% spent more than 20 hours (SRCD, on after-school activities).
The same report found that kids who did some activity tended to do better than those who did none. These figures show an association, and the sample goes up to age 18, so they say more about a teenager than about a 5-year-old. In that sample, most kids were far from overloaded. But free time can get used up in other ways: homework, travel time, screens. That's why the thing to look at is what the whole week takes away from your child: hours of sleep, free play, time doing nothing, and family time.
What if they fall behind?
The SRCD report also looked at the small group doing more than 20 hours: in general, they weren't doing worse than kids who did no activities at all, though some spent less time with their parents. It also notes that, with a very large number of hours, the benefits may stop increasing. No study we know of looks at anything as fine-grained as going from four activities to three for a 6-year-old, one way or the other.
It helps to separate the activities that are there for a specific reason from the ones that are there just in case. Learning to swim has to do with their safety, and some activities cover hours when you're at work: those aren't weighed the same way as the Spanish class that was added “so they don't fall behind.”
What gets lost when there's no breathing room
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) explains that the time children have for play has been shrinking for decades. Among the reasons, it cites highly structured family and school schedules, parents increasingly working outside the home, fewer safe places to play, and more screen use (AAP, on the power of play).
In a small study of 70 children aged 6 and 7, kids were asked to name all the animals they could think of in one minute, switching from one category to another on their own whenever they ran out. Those who spent more time in less structured activities did better; the more time organized by adults (classes, sports practice, and homework too), the worse they did. Less structured time included free play, reading, drawing, outings and visits to family and friends, and screen time too. These figures show an association: it could be that children who are already better at organizing themselves choose more free play, and the authors themselves say so (Barker and colleagues, 2014).
And then there's sleep. The AAP backs 11 to 14 hours a day for ages 1 to 2 and 10 to 13 for ages 3 to 5, naps included, and 9 to 12 for ages 6 to 12. Regularly getting too little sleep tends to bring irritability and trouble concentrating (AAP, on hours of sleep). If activities are cutting into their sleep, that's the first thing worth getting back; for children under 5, the nap is usually the first thing to go when the schedule gets tight.
Signs the pace isn't right for your child
They're clues, not a diagnosis:
- They're tired or irritable almost every day, or fall asleep as soon as they sit down.
- They protest before going to an activity they used to like. If it's only one, first look at what's going on there (another child, the instructor) before deciding it's too much.
- They have no time left to play without someone telling them what to play.
- They have a harder time falling asleep or sleep less than before. Younger ones drop their nap too early or nod off in the car at odd times.
- They're anxious about getting things wrong or afraid of disappointing you. In a study of 13- and 14-year-olds from well-off families, their distress had much more to do with feeling criticized by their parents than with the number of activities (Luthar and colleagues, 2006). It's a study of teenagers, but it offers a clue: how the schedule is experienced at home can matter more than how full it is.
And one sign that's more about the family than the child: afternoons are a race, and snack almost always gets eaten in the car.
How to find their pace
Look at the whole week. Write it all down on paper, including homework, travel time, and birthday parties. Sometimes the problem isn't one particular activity so much as having no free time left at all.
Find one afternoon with no plans, if you can. If activities cover your working hours, make at least one of those afternoons loosely structured: the park, the library, or an afternoon with Grandma, instead of another class. That time doesn't need to be filled (we talk about this in “Boredom isn't the enemy”).
Ask with concrete options. “On Thursday, would you rather go to swim class or to the park with Grandma?” works better than “Which one would you drop?” Ask more than once, and not when they're tired: at this age, preferences change from one day to the next.
There are in-between steps. It's not just a choice between sticking with it and quitting: you can go from two days to one, move something to the weekend, or alternate activities from term to term. If they love all of them but come home exhausted, try cutting days before dropping any.
Dropping one isn't forever. You can pause for a while and pick it up again later, or finish the term you've already paid for and not sign up for the next one. If they push back during a hard phase (moving up a level, a specific frustration), it may be worth waiting for it to pass; if they've gone weeks without ever enjoying it, that's a different matter.
If they love having lots and they're doing fine, there's no need to cut back. A busy pace suits some children. If they're enjoying it, getting the sleep they need, and still have free time, there's nothing to fix.
The whole family counts. The younger sibling who spends afternoons in the car and in the stands is living that schedule too. And all the driving back and forth between activities wears everyone out: your tiredness counts too.
When to bring it up with your pediatrician
If, after lightening the schedule for a few weeks, you still see them irritable or listless almost every day, it probably wasn't just the schedule. Mention it to the pediatrician and to their teacher, who sees them every day: it's worth looking at mood, anxiety, or sleep. In children, low mood often shows up as irritability more than as sadness.
Some things are worth getting checked without waiting to see if they improve. Losing interest in almost everything, not just activities, for two weeks or more, or big changes in sleep or appetite. Snoring, or what seem like pauses in breathing during sleep: it's more common than you'd think at these ages, often due to enlarged tonsils or adenoids, and it can explain daytime tiredness. And frequent stomachaches or headaches: have the pediatrician look at them first, and mention whether they mostly show up before a particular activity or before school.
If they ever say they want to hurt themselves or disappear, don't wait: talk to a professional that same day.
A hummingbird who visited everything
In The Turtle and the Hummingbird, a story for children aged 5 to 8, Serena, a turtle, and Ray, a hummingbird, go to the Flower Festival together. Ray flies from flower to flower all day, plays with other hummingbirds, and doesn't linger at any of them, because there's always a brighter one a little farther on. Serena stays beside a sunflower, asks him his name, and listens to his story.
Days later, when Serena asks him whether he's kept in touch with any of the flowers, Ray can barely remember anything from the festival: “I saw many flowers,” he admits, “but I don't know any of them.” He had visited a hundred flowers in one day and didn't have a single new friend.
The story doesn't turn hurrying into a flaw. At the end, Ray is still fast and loves to explore, “that's part of who he is,” but now he also knows how to stop. With a child's schedule, you're looking for something similar: that they keep what they love and still have time to enjoy it.
The guide that comes with the story in the app suggests a question that also works for reviewing the week: “What do you prefer: trying many new games or playing your favorite for a long time? Why?” The answer will give you a clue as to whether your child is more of a Ray or more of a Serena, and both are fine.
The Turtle and the Hummingbird
One festival, two ways to experience it
Serena the turtle and Ray the hummingbird are great friends who go together to the Golden Flower Festival. While Ray frantically tries to visit everything, Serena dedicates all her time to deeply getting to know just one flower, Pistil the sunflower. Days later, when Serena goes to visit her new friend, Ray realizes that although he saw many flowers, he doesn't clearly remember any of them and didn't make any new friends. This story teaches about the difference between quantity and quality, between superficial experiences and deep connections, and how to consciously choose where to invest our attention.
Read this children's story in the Semillita app
