By: JENG-TYNG HONG and LISA STARK, ABCnews.com
Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Professor Jacque Eccles on ABCnews.com video feature.

Overscheduled Kids: What Does the Research Show?

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A Nation of Overscheduled Kids? Maybe Not

Studies at Odds Over Whether American Kids Need More Unstructured Time

From the article:

Dec. 4, 2006 — On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Nicko Corriveau, 11, goes directly from school to two soccer practices. It is usually 7:30 p.m. before he begins the trek home.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it's hockey. If transportation is smooth, he gets home at 9 o'clock and sits down for dinner at 9:30 p.m.

But his activities do not stop there. He also has drum lessons on Tuesdays. Nicko is a busy kid. He is constantly running from one item on his list of scheduled activities to the next. But is he doing too much?

A pair of studies are at odds on the question — with one saying kids need more time to let their minds dream, and another saying a busy schedule can correspond with success....

The new study released by the Society of Research in Child Development argues that organized activities are good for the kids.

The group went into schools and asked children to report their previous 24-hour day. This time-use diary provided a minute-by-minute account of what kids were doing, where they were, and who they were with.

"In general, American children are not overscheduled. Our research suggests that … on any given day, 50 percent of the American youth are engaged in no scheduled activities whatsoever," says Jacquelynne Eccles, one of the co-writers of the report. "The majority of time is spent on what we call personal time."

That personal time involves eating, sleeping and grooming. The next most common amount of time is time spent in school, followed by leisure-time activities — television and hanging out.

Annalise Corriveau, 13, Nicko's sister, agrees that busy is better.

I think I'm much more efficient with my work, and I'm much more organized," she says.

When asked what she would do with her free time, she says, "I'd probably be kind of lazy, just sitting around doing nothing."

Both studies however, agree on one thing: Parents must listen to their children. Each child is different. Some might thrive on busy schedules. Others will not. And researchers say children should be taking part in activities that they want to do, not something parents are pushing them to do....

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To read the entire article, see the ABCnews website at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WNT/story?id=2700060&page=1.