Helping Your Kids Lead a Balanced Life
Helping your child find a healthy balance between school, friends, and sports can be difficult. First of all, what is a healthy balance? Could your kid possibly be involved in too many activities? This blog will serve as the ultimate guide for parents and caregivers, providing answers to these questions and more!
What is School-Life Balance?
Just as your life as an adult and a parent needs balance between work, home-based responsibilities, parenting, personal development and relaxation, your kids need to have some balance between home, school and extra-curricular activities, whether they are drama kids or sports enthusiasts. School-life balance is basically your kid’s version of work-life balance.
Balance, when it comes to the life of a kid, is about tempering the amount of time and energy spent on activities with the time and energy spent at home, and at school. When balance is achieved, your kid should be able to excel at each activity, each school subject, and be a happy, well-adjusted kid at home. Symptoms of an unbalanced life include tiredness, low achievement and lack of interest. It’s important to talk to each of your kids about their schedules to see how they feel about each activity, subject, chore, etc.
Even if one kid has achieved balance between schoolwork, track and field, jazz dance lessons and helping to care for the family dog, that doesn’t mean the same schedule will work for her siblings. Take a unique approach to each child’s school-life balance to find what works, and keep in mind that as your kids grow and experience new things, the same interests won’t always remain. You may end up cancelling intramural baseball in favour of swimming lessons, or cutting down on the extracurriculars altogether so your kid has a chance to focus on their chemistry homework.
How Many Activities Should my Child Have?
This is a personal question! There is no magic formula to use to find out how many sports your child should play, or how much time they should spend playing video games. Like every parent, you’ll need to ask your child questions and monitor their progress to figure out what school-life balance works best. While it’s certainly a good idea to involve your children in extra-curricular activities to help develop their socialisation skills and personal interests, as Children’s Health puts it, it is possible for a child to be too busy.
To figure out your child’s schedule, start by letting them choose their own activities. Many kids will probably want to get involved in sports and clubs that their friends are interested in, and that’s a good place to start. Joining interest groups and activities with friends makes it easier to find the confidence to play the game or join in the conversation. Early choices based on friendships may or may not last, but they’re still a crucial part of social development.
Keep an eye on your children’s moods when participating in each activity, to gauge whether they are enjoying themselves and relaxing, or simply experiencing stress. It’s possible they won’t tell you when they don’t like an activity, or stick to it in fear that if they quit, they’ll be forced to join another, less likable, activity group. It might help to ask your kids once a year, before the next year’s registration, what extracurriculars they’d like to sign up for, or renew. The question will make it clear that they do have some choice in the matter, and it might spark their interest in pursuing other talents.
Remember that kids need some down time for relaxation, entertainment and free play. Free play is what kids engage in when there are no rules—be it digging a hole in the backyard or learning how to create a warcraft character in an online game. Family coach Janis Meredith suggests sitting down as a family to establish your shared goals and values for everyone and establishing your shared schedules from there. Then, go through everything once more to ensure there are enough breaks, family activities and overall balance to keep everyone satisfied and not overstretched.
Does School take Priority over Sports & Activities?
Great question, and a highly controversial one, too! Many parents, teachers and experts argue that as long as a kid finds time to complete their homework, school-life balance has been achieved. This is a fair way to assess the situation, as it happens, but you can go a bit further. Instead of only checking in on your child’s homework and school grades, take a look at how well they’re doing in their other projects. Is dance class going well but your kid has been benched on the basketball team and hasn’t managed to read the last book assigned in English class? It might be time for a reshuffle of responsibilities.
While a variety of subject matter and hands-on learning is generally agreed to be good for children, the importance put on school subjects versus out-of-school subjects by each parent and family group can vary dramatically. For some, sports are seen as the key to subsidised college degrees and future well-paid jobs in the industry. For others, top grades in all school subjects are deemed the most important for a child’s future. There is no right answer, obviously, and as long as you ensure your child’s continued participation and engagement in school, you can focus their talents on whatever sporting direction you choose. Just remember that most kids will not be offered a sports scholarship, and very few will be chosen to be a top athlete. A well-rounded schedule is normally the best option.
Balance & Children’s Health
It won’t surprise you to hear that a good school-life balance is not only essential for your kids’ physical health, but their mental health as well. Doing too much is a common cause of youth burnout and physical injuries, while not being engaged enough in various pursuits (algebra, soccer, social studies, etc.) could stilt your children’s potential before it can even reveal itself. What’s a parent to do?
Pediatric experts at Nationwide Children’s suggest helping your kids try to focus on each activity one at a time, to increase learning and reduce stress. Encourage them to focus on math while in math class, history while in history class, baseball while at baseball practice, etc. When with family, you can all focus on being together as a family.
Be Adaptive to Achieve Balance
The best plan of action when helping your kid achieve a good school-life balance is to ask questions, try things out, and be flexible. No one is the same, and no one remains the same. Encourage your kid to figure out what works best for them! Whatever sports your family members enjoy, we can help you find the best-fitting, most durable supplies. Get in touch to find what you need today!