Is Your Child Too Busy?

Parents should be well aware of their child's activities even at a young age. Being able to connect to them is one of the things that you should be doing simply because it will give you proper insight as to whether your child is being too busy or not. Try to see if your children are eventually having these signs:

• They feel tired, depressed or exhausted during the end of the day
• They are now not enjoying the activity that they once loved.
• They're complaining of body aches which may be due to stress
• They get lower grades in school
• Stomach pains are showing every now and then

If your child has quite an active schedule, he may not be enjoying his social life or even family life as much as he's supposed to. Whenever a child is too busy to take a break and hang around and play with some friends, his social life might just suffer. Simply put, being too involved in something will eventually take its toll on you. Here are some suggestions that you might want to look into if your child is indeed too busy:

Get into the habit of scheduling your child's activities in moderation. A good idea would be to start slow and then add an additional activity when you see that your kid is ready to juggle more than one activity.

Always have a family calendar near and visible so that you'll be able to stay organized. Members of the family as well as your kid can add their activities to that.

Set aside one day on the calendar as a family day. Make it a point that no one schedules any individual activities on that day so that you could do something together as a family.

As parents you may eventually need to say "No" to some of his requests.  If your kid asks you permission if he could add one more activity and you believe that it is going to overload him, then it's about time that you talk to about dropping an activity in order to add the new one.

The key to this is communication. Ask your child if he or she feels pressured regarding something. You should always allow your child to communicate why he or she thinks that doing certain activities is important. Finally, negotiate for fewer activities if it is burning him out too much. If his or her studies are affected, then it automatically qualifies for a reduction of an activity.