Don’t overload children with co-curricular activities

While it is the obligation of parents to discover and enable children’s multiple intelligences, they also have a duty of care to ensure that children don’t experience stress and anxiety while managing crammed schedules of co-curricular and sports activities, writes Ramiya Sakthivel, Cynthia John & Mini P. The maximum learning loss that children experienced during the prolonged lockdown of schools during the past two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, was in co-curricular and sports education. While academic learning switched to the online mode, most co-curricular, sports and outdoor activities came to a standstill. Now with the pandemic having receded to the point of having become a bad dream, parents are going all out to make up for this loss by enrolling children in a host of co-curricular and sports education classes. From theatre, dance, music, public speaking and robotics to tennis, swimming, badminton and life skills classes, parents countrywide are signing children for an array of co-curricular and extra-curricular programmes. Yet, although well-intentioned, cramming children’s schedules already full with school and tuition, can compound the disruptive stress that they experienced during the pandemic, warn child counsellors. The case of Dhruv Chand, a 13-year-old teen living in New Delhi, is instructive. “I enrolled Dhruv in coaching classes of three different sports to make up for two years of sports deficit during the pandemic. But after just one month he started burning out, unable to cope with full-day classes and after-school sports coaching. His grades began to fall and he revealed that he was always tired and had no energy to study. Since then, he has dropped out of one sport and spaced out the coaching of the other two. This has helped him balance his daily schedule better,” says Vineeta Chand, an IT engineer and Dhruv’s mother. Among educators and childcare professionals it’s received wisdom that concurrent co-curricular, sports and life skills education is the essence of holistic development. A recent study (2018) conducted by researchers at the College of Electrical & Mechanical Engineering, Pakistan, and published in ResearchGate.com (2018) indicates that students who engage in beyond classroom activities record higher scores in tests and exams, better school attendance and are resistant to substance abuse. But for children to derive the full advantage and benefits of co-curricular and sports education, parents need to bear several important factors in mind. First, they need to candidly assess their child’s capability to balance academics with co-curricular and sports education. While it is the obligation of parents to discover and enable children’s multiple intelligences, they also have a duty of care to ensure that children don’t experience stress and anxiety while managing crammed schedules of activities. “Learning a co-curricular skill and sport is invaluable for children’s balanced growth and development. It develops their self-confidence and communication skills, and teaches them patience, tolerance and empathy. Moreover to succeed in today’s fast-changing VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, children need to develop talents beyond academics. But simultaneously it’s important that parents don’t overload children with too…