Too Much at One Time

Little League Baseball Sign ups were this last weekend in my hometown. I missed them because my wife and I were running brackets at a local wrestling tournament. When I went by the sporting goods store to drop the boy's applications off I ran into another "wrestling parent".

"Signing up for baseball?" she asked.

"Yeah, you?"

"No, we've got club wrestling until July, and it's just to much to do both. We tried one year, and it was too hard".

Smart woman.

We want our kids to be happy, healthy, and successful. We try to afford them every opportunity, and all too often convince ourselves that means that we need to schedule their lives as much as we schedule ours.

We're not doing them any favors. Twelve year-olds should not be "burning out"!

I absolutely advocate keeping kids busy. My oldest daughter has dance year-round so she does pretty well, but those few days between sports see my boys climbing the walls, too much sugar and energy to burn just at school and scouts. So every season we require that they sign up for something, anything. However, parents who have their kids in music and karate and swing dancing and soccer and baseball and track and science club all at the same time need to turn off the "living vicariously" button for a while; give your child some opportunities to be a kid. The memories we have of our prowess in one sport or another, our "hoop dreams" of ultimate success, while great for us, may not be the best choice for our children. Pick something that works for them, for their talents and skills. That may mean more than one thing a year, but try to not let it mean "many things at the same time". We need to not let our sentimentality overdrive the decisions for our children.

In these slow economic times, are we over-scheduling ourselves? Particularly with things that aren't that important?

We need to work hard and stay focused on our priorities (I know one father who misses an awful lot of work because his children's activities come before his job). It's tempting to diversify to try and capture a larger market share, something I wholeheartedly endorse, but make sure that the new markets you try and the new business ideas you have fit in with the overall play UNLESS you're ready to dump the old business plan and move on. Closing a bad business is a good idea, but if you're going to do it, do it now. Don't let sentimentality drag on the inevitable until it becomes too late.