|
Time-crunched teens
Jobs and activities can teach valuable lessons, but teens may lack the maturity to recognize when enough becomes too much
By LAURA UNGAR
Staff reporter
07/03/2001
Seventeen-year-old Carlyn Casalvera is busier than most hypercharged adults.
She's a member of Future Educators of America, the National Honor Society, the Spanish Club, two school bands, a group that fights tobacco use and another that supports respectful dating. She plays soccer for three teams, field hockey in two leagues. She participates in her church youth group and ushers for school plays. And if that's not enough, she has a part-time job at a hair and nail salon.
"It sounds like a lot of stuff," says the Elsmere teen-ager. "But everything I do, I love."
Carlyn is one of a growing number of middle-class teens whose to-do lists leave virtually no time for hanging around and goofing off before they enter the adult world.
"In middle-class neighborhoods, there are a lot of kids going from one activity to the next, and the parents can't keep up," says Todd Bartko, a senior research associate at the University of Michigan who has studied this phenomenon.
Some of these teens have been on the go since infancy, and have grown accustomed to the pace. Others became joiners as teens -- for personal reasons, to pad college résumés, or because they felt pressure from peers or parents. Some, in fact, are following their busy parents' examples.
Some experts say these superteens do better in school and are more likely to stay out of trouble than their uninvolved peers.
"These kids are engaging in activities that give them a sense of competence," Bartko says.
But others say over-scheduling at the expense of free time is a bad idea for children of any age, and ultimately will stifle innovation.
"In the free time is when you create. It's when you muse," says Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author of "The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap." "When you're constantly scheduled, you're losing that."
Diminishing free time
Researchers and the media have focused on the loss of play among young children.
Time and Woman's Day magazines both ran stories on over-scheduled youngsters this year. And Rosenfeld recently talked about his book on "Oprah."
Less has been said about scheduled teens. But some of the same social dynamics are at play. The numbers of busy elementary-school kids and teens has been rising as more mothers have entered the workplace and more activities have become available in the suburbs and in affluent urban areas.
Rosenfeld says the two trends are part of the same tendency for middle- and upper middle-class families -- who have more access to activities -- to "hyper-parent" from birth to adulthood.
"Many parents take it as their sacred responsibility to provide their children with every enrichment opportunity -- in the hope that it will help to assure admission to a good college, often seen as the child's ultimate goal and the measure of excellent parenting," Rosenfeld wrote.
With small children, parents play a pivotal role in getting their kids involved -- signing them up, motivating them and keeping their schedules. But when children reach their teen years, many choose activities on their own -- without any pushing from parents.
Carlyn says she was busy as a little girl, spending hours in a home day care, taking swimming lessons, joining a Brownie troop and accompanying her busy mother to many church activities. Still, she always found time to play.
As a preteen, she decided to get involved in sports. She grew to love organized activities and the friends she made through them, and kept joining more and more groups. Free time grew scarce.
"Now, if I do have free time, I don't know what to do with myself," she says.
Although Carlyn joins activities because she likes them, she also knows they will look good on college applications.
"College is kind of my reward," she says.
Her mother sometimes worries about her daughter.
"Overall, I'm very happy that she's busy," Sarah Casalvera says. But "now, she wants to join the swim team. I say, 'Don't.' Enough is enough."
Kendra Patterson, 18, of New Castle is almost as busy as Carlyn. She's a full-time, paid intern at MBNA Corp., volunteers for AIDS Delaware and participates in a book club. During the school year, she worked part time in a shoe store, served as president of the Honor Society and edited the school newspaper.
Like Carlyn, Kendra says she used to have free playtime as a young child and decided to become a joiner as a teen.
At one point, she was writing a high school report for The News Journal's Crossroads section, holding down two jobs and maintaining a 3.8 grade-point average. She would come home from work at 10 p.m., exhausted.
"Since I was 14, I've always wanted to work. I like having my own money. I think it's an independence thing," Kendra says. "Also, I feel like 'Why not help the community?' Everyone who is able to help someone should."
Kendra's parents, Brian and Regina, support their daughter.
"[The involvement] makes her really well-rounded and exposes her to different aspects of life," Brian Patterson says. "I don't worry about it too much. As long as she's handling it well, it's fine."
Too busy for trouble?
Some experts say teens such as Carlyn and Kendra thrive.
In a presentation to the Society for Research in Child Development, Bartko and his colleague, Jacquelynne Eccles, outlined their research on 1,500 families with teens in and around Washington.
The involved teens reported the highest grade-point averages and resilience and the lowest problem behaviors, while the uninvolved teens reported just the opposite.
Other studies have reached similar conclusions. One showed that teens involved in adult-endorsed activities are less likely to take drugs. Several researchers, meanwhile, have linked involvement in sports to lower dropout rates and higher college attendance.
Carlyn understands why.
"Being busy keeps me out of a lot of stuff other teens get into," she says. "I don't have time to get into bad things."
Teens also say being involved teaches them how to manage their time and be responsible -- traits that will serve them well in later life.
"I figure this is just practice for when I'm in the real world," Kendra says.
But some experts warn that there are drawbacks to being a superteen.
Stress is one.
When asked if she ever feels stressed out, Carlyn answered: "Yes, yes, yes."
Sixteen-year-old Dan Becker of New Castle gets physically exhausted from his nonstop schedule. He has a full-time summer job as a custodian, trains for football, baby-sits his brother and splits his time between his divorced mom and dad.
"I started taking naps again," he says. "It gets hectic sometimes. You've got to plan for free time or you'll go crazy."
Often, teens become too stressed because they don't know when to say no to another activity. Some may become irritable, get sick more often or see their grades drop.
"Teens are not mature enough to make a lot of those judgments," says Christy Buchanan, associate professor of psychology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "Parents should get involved."
Sometimes, Rosenfeld adds, teens who can't handle the stress develop anxiety disorders or rebel by drinking, taking drugs or having sex. This is especially true for kids who have been pushed by their parents for many years.
"I think we're doing grave damage to our children in an attempt to give them every advantage," Rosenfeld says.
To prevent such problems, teens need free time to let off steam, be creative and grow into themselves, he says. They may even do better in college interviews, he adds, because they won't appear burned out and will seem more like self-motivated individuals.
Activities are great, Buchanan says, but not so many that a teen feels out of control. Moderation is key.
"There's a balance that's best," she says. "There needs to be time for both playing on your own and being involved."
Reach Laura Ungar at 324-2547 or send an e-mail.
|
