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For Some Busy Kids, It's All Good
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Mahoney's research was published the same year as a work by Columbia University's Suniya Luthar, who led a 2006 study of eighth-graders in an upper-middle-class suburb and found children reacted negatively to pressure for achievement, not to busy schedules.
"Overscheduling really had nothing to do with their upset," Luthar said. "Their upset was much more strongly associated with feelings of being criticized by significant adults in their lives."
She recalled parents who questioned children about sitting on the bench during sports games or failing to land spots in youth orchestras. "The activities stop being a source of enjoyment," she said. "They become a source of pressure."
Another Columbia study, published this year, showed that students who participated in more hours of high school activities for at least two years did better after graduation than those with less or no involvement.
Co-author Jodie Roth, a senior research scientist, said that, in combination, the string of recent studies show the benefits of involvement and that "overscheduling may be an issue for a small percentage of students but even for those students, it is not detrimental compared to no participation."
For many children, activities start out as a chance to play with friends.
That is how Cort Williams explains much of his fall schedule at age 8. It includes football practice twice a week, with a Saturday game. Swim practice three times a week, with the occasional meet. Five days of school. Four nights of homework. Piano lessons.
Cort said he likes his free time, too. Still, he asked his mother recently: "What about lacrosse?"
Helen Williams glanced at the wall calendar in her Kensington home, she said, with its color-coded notations for each member of the family.
Not this season, she said. There was no more room.
