No one would accuse Erika DeBenedictis of having a light schedule. Ms. DeBenedictis, 17, recently finished her junior year at the Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico, where she took A.P. Physics, A.P. Chemistry and a multivariable calculus class simultaneously. When she wasn’t doing homework, she worked on computer-programming projects for science fairs, entering several over the course of the year. She practiced the piano for 30 minutes most days and got up early to sing in a choir, too.
In other words, she could be the poster girl for the “overscheduled child” phenomenon that parents and educators like to work themselves into a stew about every time the calendar flips to September. Kids feel so much pressure to build a college-worthy résumé, the story goes, that they’re sleep-deprived and anxious””or as psychiatrist Gail Saltz put it at a lunch I attended recently: “You might have a child who really wants to learn Mandarin . . . but if they are pushed too hard, you will likely wind up with a child who speaks perfect Chinese . . . on Xanax!”
So is Ms. DeBenedictis facing a nervous breakdown as she enters her senior year? Hardly. “I’m very happy when I’m busy,” she tells me. It’s when she doesn’t have enough to do that she starts “moping around.”
She’s onto something worth pondering in this back-to-school season….
I don’t know what Erika is planning to do with her piano playing skills, but she is not going to get very far only practicing 30 minutes a day “most” days. Maybe she is just using it to gain skill in reading music for her singing activities.
This may be Mme DeBenedictus’s and Vanderkam’s opinions, but I would not ascribe them to every school-aged child. I know the temperament and strength/sleep/relaxation needs of my own adolescent daughter, and those of her friends. Two AP classes and two extracurricular activities are plenty for my daughter – but for other children, it might be too many – or too few. Some kids need more “down” time than others, just as some adults need more interaction with other people (extraverts) and some less (introverts). What use is stacking a child up with activities, and controlling their every waking minute if the result is an unhappy child?
I didn’t look too closely to see; the article may or may not have pointed out that the Albuquerque Academy is not your average public school but a private one. Expected to have the kind of go-getters other schools may not always have.