Benefits and risks of extramural activities | Integrated Learning Therapy

There are many extramural activities available to school children. We know that these activities help youngsters in many ways, but how many would be too many?

Marissa Nivison and Sheri Madigan, writing for ‘The Conversation’, offer some suggestions to help parents make informed decisions. We should try to find a balance that aligns with our family values while meeting the individual needs of our children.

Benefits of extramural activities

Research shows that children involved in activities are more likely to have better friendships and fewer mental health problems.

Participating in multiple activities can also provide structure and a routine for children, which helps them feel in control of their environment and predict what is coming next.

Having a lot of scheduled activities can also help your child learn valued time-management skills, like how to complete their homework because they have soccer practice later that evening.

Friendships, belonging

Extramural activities are also great opportunities for children to develop and nurture their own interests while forming meaningful friendships. Participating in extracurricular activities can help them find a sense of belonging. Some activities may be specifically relevant to your child’s culture, community or your own family concerns.

Extracurricular opportunities also allow children to explore new skills and to discover new strengths. Potentially, they learn routes to feeling accomplished that don’t depend on academic performance. When they participate and succeed at an activity they enjoy, this can help boost their self-confidence.

Finally, participating in extracurricular activities can keep kids away from screens. A lot of research has shown the dangers of too much screen time.

Negative aspects of too many extramurals

The bad side of overscheduling kids is that it can have adverse effects for some children and families. When kids are overscheduled, they often don’t have time for other critically important parts of life.

Overscheduling kids may get in the way of unstructured playtime, which research has shown is extremely valuable for children’s development. Unstructured free play has been shown to bolster children’s creativity, increase their problem solving skills and allow children to demonstrate their own individuality

Additionally it is important for children to have downtime as it gives children a chance to pause, reflect and relax.

Overscheduling kids may also quickly overwhelm children as they are balancing multiple activities on top of their schoolwork—and may leave kids prone to stress, physical complaints and self-reported anxiety and depression.

Importance of family time

When kids are overbooked there may be less quality family time. Something as simple as eating a family meal together may become increasingly difficult for families with scheduling conflicts. Connecting as a family is important. Research has shown that when a family eats meals together, the children do better academically, and are less likely to suffer from mental health problems.

How can parents and caregivers find a balance between structured and unstructured time?

Tips for parents and caregivers

Listen to your child: Encourage their interests and preferences. Monitor your child’s level of engagement. For example, are they excited to share what they learned or motivated to practice on their own? Are they withdrawn, moody or resistant to communicating about their activities? Consider whether your child enjoys the activity they are doing or how it suits their abilities.

Take some time to discuss which activities are most important and why. Variables might include: Which activities align with your family’s values? Which activities align most with your child’s interests or help nurture belonging or competence? Which activities suit your schedule? Use these discussions to establish priorities.

Quality over quantity: Focus on the quality of experiences. Think about whether your child is getting something out of the experience like learning a valuable skill, building important relationships or habits or even simply enjoying themselves. Think about whether the activity is valuable enough that it’s worth the time it might take away from other important things like family time.

Family time: Dedicate time for family interactions. You can do something as simple as prioritizing eating meals together—it doesn’t have to be only dinner, maybe family breakfast or family lunch depending on that day’s schedule.

Stay flexible: Adjust schedules as interests evolve. It’s OK for kids to change their interests! If they find the activity they used to love is just not that interesting to them anymore it’s OK to shake things up. Overcommitting your child to an activity that they are no longer interested in increases the likelihood of burnout.

Stress & time management: Teach important life skills. Help your kids understand how to manage their schedules. This could include having a planner or agenda so they can lay out all their activities on top of any school commitments. Teach them how to balance their commitments so they have enough time to dedicate to schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

You can create a family schedule that’s visible to everyone to help keep track of family plans.

Provided by The Conversation

Image provided by Freepix

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.