As both a parent and a teacher for 30 years, I suggest that the two sides debating whether children are getting too stressed out from too many organized activities in their lives are missing the point.
On one side, the American Academy of Pediatrics has published a study warning that too many activities such as chess, music lessons, drama, scouting, soccer, swimming and baseball are a threat to children's physical and mental health. They recommend kids get more downtime, and more occasions to slow down, relax and shed stress.
On the other side, the Society for Research in Child Development concluded that a frenzy of planned activities is good for kids, with the claim that up to 20 hours of organized activities per week make children happier, more likely to do well in school and go on to college, and less likely to abuse drugs or end up in prison.
When I read of the dueling studies, my first reaction was to muse about the childhood schedules of certain celebrated personages. I imagined, for example, that President Bush, who never misses his annual monthlong vacation, had plenty of downtime as a youngster. I see him as a mellow, happy kid with hours aplenty for hanging out with buddies, poking fun at passers-by. In fact, maybe he enjoyed a few too many idle hours and would have done himself and the world greater good had he signed up for, say, drama or debate, or the CB Radio Rangers (a big deal back then), or even Pen Pals Overseas -- something, anything, that would have made him a better speaker and a better listener.
In the opposite kid camp, I envision somebody like little Jeffrey Skilling. I have to imagine that the former Enron CEO's after-school hours were maxed out, judging by his promotion to the position of production manager for a cable TV station at the tender age of 13. Boy Scouts or even Indian Trail Guides alone were likely not enough to sate his juvenile ambitions. And, predictably, in adulthood he enjoyed the multiple positive outcomes cited by the Society for Research in Child Development, at least if you don't count the prison thing.
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Getting back on track, I believe both studies are diametrically flawed. To the American Academy of Pediatrics, I declare that kids should have tons of activities. To the Society for Research in Child Development, I declare that the activities should not be of the organized variety.
When I grew up in the medieval 1960s, there were no soccer teams, no mathletes, no junior stock traders, no day care. When the school bell rang at 3 p.m., we were not chauffeured home, but instead we stampeded to vacant lots where we fashioned makeshift gridirons or ball diamonds with flagstones for bases. There were no bleachers, no concession stands, no audience and, most importantly, no parents.
In fact, my surest memory of childhood is that it was an era when we spent every waking moment trying to avoid adults. It's not that we disliked grown-up folks. It's just that they were, well, too organized. Too many rules, too much advice, too much approval.
On a rainy day, when we couldn't escape outdoors, we'd head for the basement, the place farthest from anyone over 5 feet tall, to play nine hours nonstop with tiny plastic cavalry men guarding Fort Apache. The following day, we'd pack baloney sandwiches with yellow mustard and glass milk jugs filled with water, so as not to have to interrupt an endless day of Tonka trucks and mud puddles with a lunchtime check-in.
In the years since, I've seen way too many of my students with stifled imaginations and fractured initiatives. Smart kids, beautiful kids, but kids who never learned to create, to decide, to think critically, or even to ask a question. They were waiting for a prompt, a cue or a plan from me, or from the coach, or from some other adult. Because they did not learn to play on their own, their imagination, sense of adventure and curiosity -- the tools for learning -- were frozen with rust.
It's important to keep kids safe and supervised without micro-managing their lives. It's important to let them be kids.
David McGrath of Hayward is an English professor emeritus and the author of the novel, "Siege at Ojibwa."
