You’re under tremendous pressure these days to give your children every opportunity and advantage. Whether piano lessons at age four or being a part of a traveling soccer team at age eight, you feel compelled by popular culture to get your kids on the fast track as soon as possible, otherwise they’re going to be left behind and you will permanently stunt their development. Unfortunately, being seduced by these messages only makes everyone in your family miserable. You feel like you’ve lost control of your family. Both you and your kids are overscheduled and stressed out. You feel terrible because you’re not being the “perfect parent.” And your family has no time to enjoy each other.

Despite feeling like your life is out of control, you actually can stop that train if you want. Your challenge is to recognize how this runaway train called family life is hurting your family. You need to examine and reconnect with your values (or change them!). You must then make deliberate choices about the kind of family life you want to have (even if popular culture is telling you otherwise).

Regain Perspective

There are so many examples of parents losing perspective with their children, most notably in sports.

• The tragic and fatal beating of a hockey father by another father in Massachusetts.
• In Houston, parents of a young baseball player sued his school district because his coaches weren’t playing him enough to give him a chance at a college scholarship.
• And just so you don’t think that women are immune, two mothers assaulted another mother after a youth baseball game in Salt Lake City.

The first step to stopping the runaway train is to not buy into popular culture’s messages of fame and fortune through your children’s achievements and maintain perspective on why your children are involved in sports and the arts. Despite the Lindsay Lohans and LeBron Jameses out there, I would encourage you to go under the following assumption: Your children will never be superstars in anything! They won’t be the next Tiger Woods, Sarah Chang, or Stephen Hawking.

Here’s are some interesting statistics. Only one in 10,000 kids get college athletic scholarships. I don’t mean just major-college scholarships that are stepping stones to the pros; I mean Division II, III, and junior college. Of those athletes, only six in 10,000 make it to the pros. That means that your children have a six in 1,000,000 chance of becoming professional athletes. And the average career span of a professional athlete is only three to four years. All of a sudden, pursuit of such lofty dreams doesn’t seem so attractive, does it? Here’s another painful statistic. Between the ages of seven and thirteen, 70% of children drop out of organized sports. The main reason: It’s no longer fun.

Your expectations for your children with regard to their achievement activities should include:

• Having fun;
• Fostering their healthy development;
• Love of a lifetime activity;
• Appreciation for physical health (if it’s a physical activity);
• The development of life skills that will benefit them later in life.

Everything else—a place on their high-school varsity team, a scholarship, or a professional sports career—is icing on the cake. If you accept only these expectations, your children will be as successful as they can be and they will also likely be happy. And that doesn’t mean that your children can’t become superstars—someone has to win the Olympic gold medals, perform at Carnegie Hall, or go to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize. Yet, paradoxically, if you lift the weight of the expectation of superstardom off your children’s shoulders and they have the inborn talent and the desire, then they’re more likely to achieve greatness.

Clarify Your Family Values and Priorities

Now is the time to look closely at the values that guide your family and see if you’re living your daily lives in accordance with them. Here’s a helpful exercise. On one side of a piece of paper, list some of the activities that are consistent with your family values. They might include shared family activities, travel, religious or cultural experiences, or being outdoors. Then on the other side of the sheet of paper, list your actual weekly schedule. If yours is like most families’ schedules these days, you will be amazed—and troubled—by how out of sync they are.

Though I can’t tell you what priorities you should have as you organize your family life, I can offer you some food for thought on areas you will want to consider as you decide how you want to emphasize the value of family in your family.

Physical Health

Studies have found that about one in five American children are overweight, more than double the number from twenty years ago. And 70 percent of overweight children become overweight adults, creating even more health problems. Because of this threat, your children’s physical health should be a priority in your family. Popular culture hurts your children’s health, with fattening foods, candy, and soft drinks, and TV and video games that keep them sedentary. Your children’s lives should never interfere with them eating three healthy meals a day. They should have regular opportunities for exercise. Your children should always be able to get a good night’s sleep (research indicates that children who get less than eight hours do less well in school).

Education

Education is another value that should take precedence in your children’s lives. Considerable research has demonstrated the value of education in children’s lives. Children whose families value education have fewer emotional problems, are less likely to drink alcohol or take drugs, and have lower rates of sexual activity, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. As adults, they have better-paying jobs, fewer health problems, and lower rates of divorce.

You should give your children whatever support and resources are necessary for them to do their best in school. Your children should always have time to complete all of their homework assignments as thoroughly as they can and social and extracurricular activities (whether, for example, sports or video games) should never get in the way.

Play

Play is becoming a dinosaur in the lives of today’s children. According to studies, school-age children’s playtime decreased by 25 percent and older children’s playtime by 45 percent between 1981 and 1997. Children are just too busy to play these days and many seem to have lost the ability to play. Instead, too often children’s play involves sitting in front of a video-game console, television, or computer, which isn’t play at all.

Parents have also lost sight of the value of play, seeing it as a distraction from their children’s efforts in school. They don’t understand how playtime can help their children do better in school and get into the college. Play fosters initiative, independence, and creativity. Children also learn to play and cooperate with others. Active play develops motor coordination, enhances fitness, and fights obesity. And don’t forget the main reason children should have plenty of playtime: It’s fun!

Family Dinner

A recent study reported a significant relationship between regular family meals and higher school performance, better mental health, reduced drug use, and lower rates of early sexual behavior among teenagers. You don’t have to have dinners together every night—that’s probably not realistic—but reserving several nights is reasonable—and necessary.

Family First

Perhaps the greatest casualty of this runaway train is family time. Set a time each week when your family does nothing—yes, you heard me, nothing. So at least once a week just hang out around the house, go to the park, play games, whatever.

Limit Your Child’s Activities

Now things get more challenging. Its one thing to say that you want to make family a priority. It’s an entirely more difficult thing to tell your children that they can’t do something that they want to do or to limit their participation. You must decide what activities your children participate in, how many at one time, and the depth of their involvement. Setting limits on the number and frequency of activities in which you allow your children to participate is essential to stopping your family’s runaway train. I recommend that you restrict your children to a maximum of two activities per season or semester and no more than one extracurricular activity per day. In general, be sure that your children are involved for the right reasons (because they enjoy it), their participation is consistent with your family values, and their involvement doesn’t interfere with your family as the priority.

Maintain Balance

Balance is one of the first values that is lost when your family’s life turns into a runaway train. You want to encourage your children in their activities, but you also want to maintain your family’s sanity. Your ability to make deliberate choices that strike a balance will determine whether your family is able to maintain control of the train that is your life.

Ironically, making healthy choices will create a family life that will not only make everyone in your family happier, but it will also make the Joneses jealous! While the Jones parents are driving their children all over town to practices and lessons, stopping at fast-food on the way (that doesn’t count as family dinner!), you’ll be at home sitting down to dinner with your family, reading to, playing with, and talking to your children. While the Jones parents are driving five hours on a Friday night to take their soccer-playing child to a tournament (and dragging their less-fortunate children along kicking and screaming), your family will have a picnic at the park, your children can play pick-up soccer with other kids in the neighborhood, and you can go to a movie together. Gosh, which weekend plans would you rather to have?