While most kids today enjoy their endless whirl of lessons, games and practices, a growing number are finding that the hyper-scheduled life of the modern American student is more than they can handle. The activities meant to enrich their lives can leave them feeling burned out–or dangerously overloaded. Some kids, like Andrea Galambos, take the radical step of dropping out. Others stay the course, while fretting openly about their chances of success in a competitive world. Still others, experts warn, worry and suffer in silence, afraid to share their anxiety with their parents, who may be pushing them too hard. Such stress can take a physical and emotional toll.
Often the most tal-ented kids feel the most pressure, a lot of it self-induced. Elizabeth Poirier, a 15-year-old sophomore at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Ga., plays on the varsity soccer team and a traveling soccer team, sings in the school chorus and plays flute in the concert band while taking mostly honors classes. She regularly stays up past midnight doing homework, but is struggling to keep her 4.0 average this year. “I’m smart enough to get A’s, but I never have enough time,” she says. “I never go to bed with the satisfaction that I have everything done.” She’s not completely happy with her soccer performance, either. And though she’s not getting enough sleep and her social life is suffering, she’s not planning to quit anything. “You just have to believe in yourself,” she says, “and keep your eye on the ball.”
Parents can’t tell if a child is maxed out by looking at a list of the child’s activities–they have to look at the child. Kids under stress exhibit a wide range of symptoms from headaches to asthma attacks to nail-biting and sleeping problems. Experts note that different kids have different thresholds for stress, and that what is too much activity for one kid may not be enough for another. Nan Evangelista believes her three kids benefit a lot from their busy schedules. “Sports teach them how to deal with different personalities,” says the Cedar Grove, N.J., mom, who has a basketball court, a soccer goal, a batting cage and a football goal post in her backyard. But when her daughter Sara wanted to quit swimming, Nan didn’t stand in her way. “It got to the point where it just wasn’t fun for her anymore,” she says.
Burnout often kicks in when kids reach their teens, after years of piano, karate, gymnastics, whatever. “When you talk to the kids, they say, ‘The bottom line is, I’m just sick of it’,” says Mark Kuranz, president of the American School Counselor Association. “They say, ‘I’m tired of it. I’m tired of not having any time to just sit, or just do nothing’.” Kuranz, who works at J.I. Case High School in Racine, Wis., has seen how years of resume building can backfire when talented kids, often to their parents’ horror, just walk away from soccer or put down their violins and refuse to play. Junior year, with college looming and the SATs on the agenda, can be especially pressure-packed. “Kids become overwhelmed, and they shut down,” he says. “They can no longer keep up the pace.” That can put them at increased risk for drug and alcohol problems, he notes, and can even lead to the worst-case scenario–suicide.
Last summer, after three Atlanta-area soccer players–a girl, 15, and two boys, 15 and 16–had committed suicide within two years, two rival soccer leagues joined forces to launch a suicide-prevention campaign. “We don’t know why these deaths occurred, but we do know that stress is part of it,” says Eric Ritter, recreational director for United Quest Soccer Club. “Most teens are walking around with a certain amount of stress, and some may not have developed the coping skills to handle it. We don’t want soccer to add another level of stress to their lives that could push them over the edge.”
Sometimes heading off stress is just a matter of parents’ listening to their kids. When Max Peterschmidt’s mom went to him last spring with his soccer sign-up form, the Plymouth, Minn., 12-year-old told her he wanted to take the summer off. No soccer, no baseball, no Boy Scouts, no trumpet, no violin, no nothing. He just wanted to relax. So, as a family experiment, Max and his sister, Betsy, 9, didn’t sign up for a single thing. Max liked it so much he stuck to his new routine when school started. Last year, when he was a sixth grader, his after-school schedule would sometimes keep him out as late as 9 p.m. This year his only extra activities are violin and an accelerated math course. “It’s nice to come home and be able to hang out and do whatever you want,” he says. Like, for instance, just being a kid.
