Cut Back on Your Child's Schedule and Cut Back on Your Stress

In any given household with children, mornings may be the most hectic time of the day, but the evening routine can come in a very close second. 

It’s supposed to be a time for winding down and spending quality time with your family. But once you figure in housework, homework, chores, cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up after dinner, bath time and bed time, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time – or energy – left for winding down, let alone quality interactions. Throw in whatever practice they had that evening, and you’re lucky just to get everyone in the right bed before midnight. 

Hectic nights pile into hectic weeks, and hectic weeks zip through hectic months, and then you look around at another new season and wonder what happened to your plans for the last one. What happened to long walks in the evening before winter set in? What happened to sitting around the fire with hot chocolate and a board game before winter was over? 

If, between hockey practice, piano lessons and dance rehearsals, your nights are being torn away from you and you’re left regretting missed opportunities for quiet bonding at home, it might be time for an adjustment. 

Take a look at your schedule. In any given week, how many of your evenings are spent at practice fields or dance studios? We tend to think that the more activities we sign our children up for, the better off they’ll be. And while raising a well-rounded child is an admirable goal, it doesn’t have to be done all at once. 

If your child is concurrently involved in more than two activities per season, you run the risk of stressing out not only her, but yourself. Every commitment she makes requires commitment from you, and not just driving back and forth. More than ever, teams and organizations are requiring volunteer hours and/or services from the parents of its players and members.