Are you over-scheduling kids?

As a mom to two young girls I know what goes into putting together and managing your child’s schedule.  (It’s a lot!)   A question I often ask myself is how do I make sure I balance my children’s schedules so amongst school and extra-curricular activities they also have enough time to just “be” - oftentimes it’s the unscheduled moments where a child’s creativity can thrive and they learn what their interests are.

With school ending at 3PM and activities starting anywhere as early as 4PM the afternoons where we have an activity can feel like rush hour.  Get home - wash hands - have snack - complete homework- off to activity - come home - eat dinner -bath- relax-off to bed and then start the cycle over again.  It is not a pace of life I wish to instill for my girls or myself for that matter!

My girls are 8 and 5 and their interests vary.  What’s worked for us is to limit their activities to 2 weekday activities and then piano lessons on the weekends. (The teacher comes to our home which makes it easy!)  Once the two activities are chosen that is it for season,    Even if the other kids are playing soccer or trying a cooking class and we have a little FOMO we stick with what we chose and don’t add more to the schedule.  We also all agreed that when we start something we finish it out for the semester and if we don’t want to continue we take what we learned and move on from it.

I believe the open space we leave in our child’s schedule allows them time to decompress,  daydream, and relax, which is so important.  Even if I get the occasional “I’m bored”  I always remind my girls  that boredom breeds creativity. (Ha, that sounds like such a mom thing to say!)  By finding balance between the doing and just being  we teach our children that life isn’t about rushing or doing what everyone else is doing - rather some of the best moments come from the unscheduled and unstructured spaces in our day.

Protecting youth mental health

Every child’s path to adulthood—reaching developmental and emotional milestones, learning healthy social skills, and dealing with problems—is different and difficult. Many face added challenges along the way, often beyond their control. There’s no map, and the road is never straight.

Fun moves for focus

Yoga is a mind-body-heart practice so it makes sense that different Yoga Asana’s (Poses) have different effects on our body.  Balancing poses are a great way to foster focus and concentration and also help us tune into any imbalances we may have in our bodies.  For instance, when doing Tree Pose most people will notice that there is one side of their body that feels more steady. 

A simple activity to help kids feel centered and balanced is below.  I call it Moving Mountains

Start in Tadasana or Mountain Pose.  To make it fun and easy to remember I tell children that Mountains have 4 S’s.  They are stable, straight, silent and still. (The silent and still is usually the trickiest for them!) Ask them to place their feet like train tracks (parallel) and feel their feet rooted to the earth.

From here you can explore shifting the gaze upward or closing the eyes and seeing if you can feel balance in your body.  You can begin to place with balancing postures by lifting one foot off the ground and then the other. (Everything we do in yoga on one side we do one the other!)  Ask them to notice, without any judgement, how each side felt in their body and if any thoughts came up in their  mind.   Practicing balancing postures is a good lesson in Yoga is a practice not a perfect as well as help us tune into our own Mind-body connection.

Kids yoga benefits

The purpose of this review is to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of yoga for the reduction of symptoms of anxiety and depression in youth.