ModernMom: How Busy is Too Busy?

Here’s the dilemma as I see it: my children are in school all week, highly programmed from dawn to dusk. It seems to me that weekends ought to provide a respite from the rigorous structure of the school week. The kids want to spend two hours building a fort (which they’ll undoubtedly knock down in 2 minutes)? So be it. If they want to take a detour from our walk to sit and watch the ants scurrying in and out of their ant hole for 15 minutes, who am I to stand in their way?

And yet, I have friends whose kids play soccer and take swimming classes on the weekend. One friend sends her daughter to hip-hop class and another’s 3-year-old is taking violin lessons. I want my kids to know how to swim and play soccer, too. Violin and hip hop…why not? I know that these kinds of activities help build self esteem, teamwork skills, and healthy habits, not to mention the friendships they encourage and the talents they uncover.

I just don’t want my kids to feel like they’re constantly being pulled this way and that. I want them to have time to smell the roses (and not just when they’re running to get an out-of-bounds soccer ball). I want them to be able to use their imaginations to come up with their own activities and diversions, to be able to take it easy some of the time. Are those desires mutually exclusive from a weekend packed with extracurriculars? What’s the right balance?