Thank you for writing about this! My baby is only three months old and while I'm 100% on board with this philosophy, I'm already stressed about the external pressure I'll feel from peers to over-schedule our lives. I do think there's still much allure in the myth of the childhood passion-turned-superpower (see: King Richard), but those stories almost always involve a secretly unhappy or at least pressured adult child and a super ambitious parent figure. And now we have courageous athletes and artists like Naomi Osaka telling us that it all can be too much.
But here's another problem I can see surfacing: why has this country decided that (pre)school (and in the summer, camps and other courses) are our child care options?! It's hard to be a working parent and keep sanity when our schedules are dependent upon intricate systems that can be expensive and are always changing.
I’m 1000% for waiting til your children ask, nay beg, for extracurriculars. I think reading Peter Gray and Kim John Payne put me on that train and I’ve never looked back. My oldest is 10.5; he loves guitar with a passion and that’s the only lesson he takes. My almost 9yo plays the electric bass to jam with his brother. They, and my 6yo all have tons of unstructured, self-directed time to play, create, whatever. I believe they get more from their slapdash games on our neighborhood field than in organized team sports. They all love being in nature, drawing, reading (6yo doesn’t read yet), playing games, making up games, and Lego have been their main toy for the past 6 years. I can’t imagine they’re missing much from not doing extracurriculars.
Thank you for writing about this! My baby is only three months old and while I'm 100% on board with this philosophy, I'm already stressed about the external pressure I'll feel from peers to over-schedule our lives. I do think there's still much allure in the myth of the childhood passion-turned-superpower (see: King Richard), but those stories almost always involve a secretly unhappy or at least pressured adult child and a super ambitious parent figure. And now we have courageous athletes and artists like Naomi Osaka telling us that it all can be too much.
But here's another problem I can see surfacing: why has this country decided that (pre)school (and in the summer, camps and other courses) are our child care options?! It's hard to be a working parent and keep sanity when our schedules are dependent upon intricate systems that can be expensive and are always changing.
I’m 1000% for waiting til your children ask, nay beg, for extracurriculars. I think reading Peter Gray and Kim John Payne put me on that train and I’ve never looked back. My oldest is 10.5; he loves guitar with a passion and that’s the only lesson he takes. My almost 9yo plays the electric bass to jam with his brother. They, and my 6yo all have tons of unstructured, self-directed time to play, create, whatever. I believe they get more from their slapdash games on our neighborhood field than in organized team sports. They all love being in nature, drawing, reading (6yo doesn’t read yet), playing games, making up games, and Lego have been their main toy for the past 6 years. I can’t imagine they’re missing much from not doing extracurriculars.