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Overscheduling Extracurricular Activities

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Overscheduling Extracurricular Activities
Yuanxiao Zheng
COMM 2367: Persuasive Communication
Kristie L. Sigler
March 30, 2018

Extracurricular activities have been very common nowadays for youth. In the past 20 years, families and schools have seen an increase in the time children and adolescents spend in structured activities outside of the regular school day (Shari Melman, Steven G. Little, K. Angeleque Akin-Little, 2007). In the United States, nearly all high schools provide some type of extracurricular activities like different sports, art or music lessons and academic clubs (National Center for Education Statistics, 1995), and fifty-seven percent of children who are between age 6 and 17 participate in at least one extracurricular …show more content…

(Shari Melman, Steven G. Little, K. Angeleque Akin-Little, 2007). The amount of attention increasingly given to the topic of overscheduling in the media, newspapers, and magazines indicates the growing concern of many (Fletcher, Gilbert, Morse, 2000).
Contrary to regularly structured extracurricular activities, overscheduling will cause negative impacts to children, which cannot be ignored. Anxiety and stress are typical effects that resulted from the overscheduling. Dr. Stephen Kuwent, a Westwood-based child psychologist, said that “Overscheduling becomes a detriment when a child can’t handle it, and you’ll know because they’ll start showing a negative attitude toward their activities,” he said. They may also begin having meltdowns and develop anxiety. “You’ll see them having fits or crying more, and that’s a sign they need a break.”
Overscheduled children will have many things to be stressed about. First, busy will bring children stress, because those overscheduled children are consumed by many structured activities thus have less unstructured leisure time to play, they will feel that they are packed with things and be tired and stressful. KidsHealth polled 882 kids ages 9 to 13 and found that having too much to do is a significant source of stress for many kids: 41 percent of those surveyed said that they feel stressed most of the time or always because they have too much to do. In addition, 78 percent wished that they had more free time (Business Wire,

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