“When it comes to extracurricular activities, many children are getting too much of a good thing.” Carl Honore, best-selling author and journalist.
I spent my youth in a modest New Jersey suburb in the 1980s, and if perspective and the passage of time have taught me anything, a great deal has changed since then.
At 49 years old, when I compare my formative years to those of children today, I feel like a relic, a dinosaur, an old-timer. Here are a few examples of why.
- Our phones were hanging on kitchen walls, not buried in our pockets, with a curly cord that cleverly uncoiled, though easily tangled, so you could walk around the house to talk.
- Cable television was becoming a thing, and to change the channel, you had to get up off the couch and navigate through a series of buttons.
- Microwaves were not only costly to purchase but were pretty much the size of your average television set.
- Homes didn’t have internet and Wi-Fi, and the World Wide Web and Google didn’t exist. Owning a personal computer was something only more affluent individuals could afford.
- Our music was stored on records and cassette tapes, requiring homes to devote floor space to shelving units and storage systems for the players and to store all the albums you wound up accruing.
- Newspapers used to be delivered to your house and were typically one of the primary sources of news and information.
- Cameras used film and often required a week before the prints were ready to view.
- Catalogs arrived in your physical mailbox in early September, so there would be plenty of time for deliveries to arrive before Christmas.
Today’s generation would undoubtedly assume my childhood was antiquated and lacking the modern conveniences they believe we can’t live without. But honestly, it was truly a wonderful childhood, and I wouldn’t change it for anyone or anything.
From my perspective, one of the primary distinctions between the 1980s and the present day revolves around the evolution of extracurricular activities, which now serve as markers of social status, perpetuate unhealthy competition, and fuel personal anxieties in our children.
Extracurricular activities certainly existed in the 1980s, and my sister and I participated in some interesting and available activities.
However, there were several notable differences in neighborhoods and communities back then, especially compared to the abundance of extracurricular activities available today, which I believe is essential to highlight.
- Extensive, commitment-driven extracurricular activities, requiring many hours after school and on weekends, didn’t really begin until a child was a teenager in high school (ninth through twelfth grade). Yes, dance classes and sporting games were available through community programs, but they were understated and often more for enjoyment than intense competition.
- Neighborhoods were always filled with activity. After school and homework, kids of all ages and genders would gather to socialize and interact with each other while playing unstructured and unsupervised games and activities. Parents often sat out on their front porches after dinner, chatting with one another while their children continued to enjoy a world of imagination, fostering invaluable friendships. In essence, neighborhoods themselves were like extracurricular activities.
- On weekends, families would come together to share a meal, have conversations, and catch up on each other’s lives, which helped maintain strong bonds. It was a time for adults to rejuvenate from a hectic work week and for kids to take a break from schoolwork. Weekends provided a much-needed respite from busyness and stress, allowing everyone to regain a sense of purpose and connection with friends and family who deserve our attention.
But at some point, everything changed, and suddenly, entrepreneurs and organizations started offering extracurricular activities for young children known as professionalized clubs, charging thousands of dollars for the privilege while reaping all the financial benefits.
In her book, “How to be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute,” KJ Dell’Antonia writes, “Many of us sense this stuff is different than it was when we were children, and we are actually right. It was not this complicated or intense. It’s different, it’s harder, and it’s designed to suck you in.”
And suck you in it does. The marketing experts started promoting these professionalized extracurricular activities directly to parents using enticing keyword phrases such as “exclusive club,” “for winners only,” and “the best experience for your kids.”
As more families embraced the idea of superiority in achievements, possessions, and even personality traits, they naturally looked for activities that made them and their children feel superior.
In a CNN article titled “Why Extracurriculars Make Parents Miserable,” Elissa Strauss writes, “It’s not just the time commitment that has grown. Extracurriculars tend to feel higher stakes today, with the rise of professionalized club sports teams and elaborate dance competitions and music recitals. As a result, children – and, inevitably, their parents – have become more emotionally bound up in these activities, and their performance in them becomes a measure of their self-worth.”
I thought this was worth repeating. “Their performance in them becomes a measure of their self-worth.”
Parents are often so focused on ensuring their children come out on top that they overlook the potential adverse effects on their children’s mental well-being, especially when their children may not be fully able to understand and process their emotions. Such impacts include:
- Excessive pressure to perform, to be the best,
- Anxiety, leading to sleep deprivation and low self-esteem,
- And the fear of failure, leading to an inability to cope when they underperform.
In her book “Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture,” Hillary Friedman explains why some parents support and invest in competitive youth activities.
In summary, many parents believe intense competition is an excellent way to prepare young children for adulthood. One parent after another admitted that we live in a highly competitive, materialistic society and that success requires a competitive attitude. This attitude includes a strong desire to win, a focus on winning, and working hard to ensure victory, even if it requires personal sacrifices in other areas of one’s life.
Extracurricular Activities Shouldn’t Mean “Extra” Stress
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by Friedman’s findings, especially given that we all inhabit a highly competitive, materialistic society where adults still struggle with a need to win and feel superior enough to measure their own success.
There is no one definition for measuring success, but this one is definitive in my book: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston S. Churchill. That’s an invaluable lesson we should not only teach our children but also adopt for ourselves.
American physician, philosopher, and author Dr. Debasish Mridha once said, “A busy life is filled with tremendous emptiness.” Think about that for a moment.
Once vibrant neighborhoods and communities now stand eerily quiet, resembling ghost towns. They are void of the usual liveliness from curious children, chatty teenagers, and adults who once found value in engaging with other families on their street, even those who might be different from them.
The chairs around the family dinner table now sit empty. Weekends are no longer reserved for relaxation and spending time with family. Instead, they are dedicated to fostering a competitive spirit, believing that winning and being the best is the only path to personal success.
Such a misguided belief has become ingrained in the minds of young, impressionable individuals.
This overwhelming feeling of emptiness stems from an unsustainable culture of competitiveness, not only among children pressured into stressful extracurricular activities but also among parents who base their self-worth on their children’s achievements compared to others.
Suzie Pileggi Pawelski, MAPP, and James Pawelski, Ph.D., once said, “Moderation in all things, including our strengths, is key. Remember too much of a good thing can definitely be too much.”
When Hillary Friedman finally spoke to the children of the parents she had been interviewing for her book, she discovered something quite surprising.
During her interviews with these children, Friedman noted that their focus was less on winning (unlike their parents) and more on the opportunity to make new friends outside of their usual social circles.
Many even empathized with their peers, feeling guilty if they outperformed them. What struck Friedman the most was that the children seldom mentioned the activity itself.
Sadly, many of these children did not participate in these extracurricular activities because they wanted to but because their parents persuaded them that it was an excellent opportunity.
The purpose of your children is not to bring you fame, security, and status in a highly competitive, materialistic, and judgmental society.
Instead, they seek your acceptance and encouragement to be true to themselves, to explore ideas and activities outside their comfort zone, and to be free from the pressures and anxieties of a hypercompetitive society.
But in order for that to happen, parents need to be comfortable with themselves first.
On Psychology Today, Peter Gray, Ph.D., writes, “In my experience, the truly successful people in life—the people who are happy in their own skin, who enjoy their career and family, who are valued as friends and colleagues, who contribute more to the world than they take—are people far more oriented toward cooperation than competition. Nobody truly succeeds alone. If we succeed, we do so because others help us along the way, and they help us because they like us, and they like us because we like them and aren’t trying to beat them.”
Imagine how different the world would be if we spent more time cooperating and collaborating rather than always treating every situation as a competition to measure success and self-worth.
Perhaps then we would realize how much more we could accomplish together without competing to boost our insecurities.
