Having an Overscheduled Middle School Child
Middle school parents, this is for you. If you are a middle schooler watching this, press the buzz button, keep back on the site, I made something especially for you. Middle school parents though, same topic, just a different perspective. The topic is “How do you know if you or your family is getting a bit too busy?” It’s easy to do because this is the beginning of the school year. Middle school in particular is like showing up at a dessert buffet, right? You remember that, it all looks good. But you also know what happens if you start sampling from every plate. Pretty soon, you’re overwhelmed. Not good.
So, a couple of things to keep in mind; number one, if your child does not have any unstructured time spending with friends, this is not good. Going to see a movie is not the same as sitting in the classroom or be in other practice. Those are structured activities. They need unstructured time. Social thing is very important. So, you got to carve out a couple of hours each week out of the busy schedule to make sure that happens.
Number two, if the majority of your conversation with your child is over the backseat of the car, or over text message or over the cell phone, it’s not what they call it, right? Quality time. So, you got to change that. Carve out some time again as a family that you can spend some time together. That may only be ten minutes of breakfast. That may only be another ten or twenty minutes of dinner, maybe an hour if you get a chance to go out and have some time together at the restaurant, but you have to have the face time.
Idea number three, if the grades are beginning to slip, and I’m not talking about one test or one missed assignment. Rightly, you log on, you see your child’s grades online and you notice over the course of two weeks, that things are on a downhill slide. That is not good. That’s a trend, and that should be a red flag to you that things may be getting a little out of control, little busy at the house.
Finally, if your child is having trouble every single day getting out of bed, again, look for a trend. It’s not once in while. I don’t know any middle schooler who loves jumping of bed. That’s real rare. But over the course of a week to two weeks, if every morning it’s like, “Yeah, I got to fight to get this kid out of bed”, that’s a sign, getting to be too busy, staying up until midnight, getting homework done and then waking up the next morning at seven AM, that’s not going to go for too long before your child is just completely overwhelmed. And then, all the time and effort that they’re spending trying to meet the expectations not only at school but in their after school activities, it’s going to all start to decline because they can’t meet that many expectations. It simply comes to a point where you’re going to have to say “Something has got to go” and it’s not going to be the family. It’s not going to be the school. So, what does that leave? So, my advice to the middle schoolers was ‘make a list.’
Activity number one, all the way down to activity, whatever is the last one in the list, the last one in the list of --. That’s the first one to go. If it looks like you’re getting overwhelmed, keep this in mind parents, you got to think to the long-term and the long-term is not tomorrow. The long-term is a year, two, three, or four years from now. When your child is thinking about what they’re going to continue to do after they get done with school, they got to leave them with a healthy feeling which is you got to take care of yourself, make sure that you’re healthy so that you can give the best to other people.
All right, enjoy your weekend and I will see you soon. Take care!
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