Hyper-Parenting
Is America over-scheduling our kids?
By Ray Mernagh

During a typical weekend my brother Jim will call me while chauffeuring his kids around Kansas in his Dodge Caravan. He always asks one of two questions: "What's the score of the Kansas Jayhawks game?" if it happens to be basketball season, or, "What's the score of the Notre Dame game?" if it's football season.

I supply the score like any good brother before asking him what's keeping him from watching his favorite team after working a week full of 16-hour days?

"I had to drop Kylee Rose (12-years-old) off at the gym for basketball at 8 this morning," he says, "then I took Grace (age 7) and dropped her at cheerleading before dropping Austin (10) off at his indoor soccer game, now I'm headed back to watch Kylee play her second game before I have to pick Austin up and take him to his basketball tournament."

I don't know about you but I'm tired just from writing that.

My sister Geri recalls a time when a youth soccer coach intimated that her son Connor might have a hard time making the high school team if he didn't join the coach's travel team.

"Almost all the high school team played travel for me," the coach told her. "You don't want him falling behind, do you?"

My nephew was 11 at the time.

A friend relayed a story about a family cutting short their vacation so they could get back to town in time so their 8-year-old son wouldn't miss his playoff game.

All of this leads to the question: are kids over-scheduled?

Of course they are, but the deeper issue might lie in that travel team coach's message that the parents would be shortchanging their children's future-even shirking their duties as parents-by letting him play with his neighborhood friends. The alternative being two to four hours of travel each way to play a more "competitive" brand of soccer, plus a steep fee to join the elite team.

Parents are afraid of denying their kids opportunities, and according to Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, that fear has led to a phenomenon called "hyper-parenting." Rosenfeld is world-renown as a board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist. He co-authored the book "Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child By Trying Too Hard?" with journalist Nicole Wise.

So what is hyper-parenting and how does it manifest itself?

"Hyper-parenting is a social pressure that parents feel pushing them when they speak to neighbors and friends," Rosenfeld said. "They read parenting advice that tells them how to raise successful children, which is truly an oxymoron. This hyper-parenting pressure says that children need to be enrolled in numerous, intense activities so they can excel at academics, athletics or quirky specialties."

Rosenfeld says the earlier example of the travel team coach is common.

"Particularly in affluent communities," he said. "Each high-pressure activity is said to be an essential step: Make all the right moves and your child gets into Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Duke and M.I.T., which guarantees them successful lives. Deprive your kids of these activities and their only acceptance letters will be to Southeast Tennessee State Junior College's night extension program. They will have miserable lives, and you will have only yourself to blame. It manifests every time you feel pressured to sign 9-year-old Johnny up for travel soccer even though he feels he would like to take the season off, or when some parent tells you that you have to sign 9-year-old Janie up for premier basketball because the 'good schools' are giving girls basketball scholarships. This focus on achievement, on results being the only important thing, has not only changed the whole dynamic of childhood, it's stunted a child from figuring things out.

When many of us were younger, say 8-10 years-old, there were neighborhood groups that would play ball together in the school yard. Kids would argue calls, negotiate crisis such as what team got Mikey (the neighborhood star) that day, whether the score was 9-8 or 9-7, and so on. More important than learning the games they were playing, they were learning how to lose, how to win, and just how to act, really.

And a majority of the time the kids ended up going home having settled any issues after lengthy breaks in the action for heated debates. When the next day came, they did it again - all without the help of any adults!

According to Rosenfeld, this is a crucial piece that's missing for kids today.

"Other than in video games," Rosenfeld said, "adults have colonized what was once a child's after school world. Kids still want to play sports, have fun, enhance self esteem if they're good athletes, all the things that can benefit them for the rest of their lives. But today's kids' sports have been professionalized. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly advises that kids play multiple sports and only specialize in one, if they must, after puberty. But we're in a time when competitive pressure has insinuated itself even into soccer leagues for four-year-olds."

And the fallout is severe.

Kids get injured. Eleven-year-old baseball and basketball players play 90 games a season, pitchers have shoulder or elbow surgeries at 12. Orthopedic surgeons report between 2.2 and 3.5 million recreation-linked bone fractures, dislocations and muscle injuries annually among 5-14 year olds.

Perhaps more said than anything, since many kids hate the pressure or don't get much playing time, by age 13, 73 percent drop out of sports. Ironically, the resulting lack of exercise may be contributing to America's obesity epidemic. Rosenfeld's recommendation for parents and kids anxious or stressed out from all the activity is simple: Take a break.

"There's nothing wrong with cutting back and spending some down time together as a family," Rosenfeld said. "In fact, it's healthy."

I think I need to call my brother.