Is your child “missing” activities because you can’t afford them, or don’t have time to take him, or the schedule interferes with his father’s visitation? Stop worrying. You may be doing your child a big favor. Less can actually be more.

Here is the fourth article for FWW by Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of “The Over-Scheduled Child.”

Contemporary parents know that self-esteem is intimately tied to happiness. Yet focusing on activities, rather than on the child as an individual, often makes him or her feel, “I must not be very good at all or I wouldn’t need constant self-improvement.”

Furthermore, the child becomes convinced that Mom values them for what they can accomplish and achieve, not for who they are. So much for unconditional love!

Parental scrutiny and over-scheduling can also create a self-fulfilling prophecy: the child resents the parents’ lack of faith in him or her and, to get even, may live down to that expectation!

How does the stress manifest itself? Kids complain of stomachaches, headaches, and exhaustion. I think that the pressure to accomplish — rather than to develop who you are and to discover what you yourself value — is why so many teenagers have these symptoms.

Some kids become rebellious, taking alcohol as a way to relieve emotional distress, or illicit substances to escape into drug-induced daydreams. Luthar and Becker (2002) found that teen-age drug use was likely associated with an “overemphasis on achievement.”

As one depressed, substance-abusing patient told me, “In my family it is Harvard, Yale or nothing and I just can’t measure up.”

Another wondered why he couldn’t just play sports to have fun.

Anxiety is also a concern. Close to 9 percent of affluent teenagers suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, overanxious disorder, excessive shyness, panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders.

Does hyper-parenting give kids the good life? Some empirical evidence suggests that “winning is everything” emphasizes values that may result in the opposite. For over a quarter of a century, Vaillant (2002) has been conducting longitudinal studies of people’s lives. Two variables that seem to predict a good life include meaningful relationships and enjoying playing without goals.

Vaillant’s findings parallel what I see in clinical practice and what is most critical for divorced Moms to remember. First, relationships make all the difference.

Acceptance brings out the best in everyone; anxiety the worst. If someone loves and trusts you, and you have a capacity to love and trust them back, your whole life is better.

But over-scheduling introduces stresses into family life that can compromise intimacy.

In no way am I suggesting that this should translate into “anything goes.” Devoted parents need to push their kids some. But within the context of a supportive relationship, it is the children — not their parents — who have to do the hard work of figuring out what they hope to become.

There is great value in that! That way kids feel like the authors of their lives, rather than marionettes in someone else’s play.

“The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper Parenting Trap,” by Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise, can be purchased in paperback through Amazon.

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