Read the
Family Night a Month/
National Family Night
Mission Statement

Talk to Parents
Harvard, Soccer,
Over-Scheduled Families
March 30, 2005

Read Creativity and Children's Museums - A keynote address

~ Photos by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD ~

As thoughtful parents, we love our children deeply, want to do the best we can to give them a start in good life. But today's world pressures us to shuttle our children from activity to activity, leaving little to no free time to just be a family that enjoys the pleasure of spending time together. The pressure to over-schedule is very hard to resist when it seems that every kid on the block is being groomed for success. But it is misleading:

1. No scientific evidence exists that doing so many classes and extra-curricular activities produces better, let alone superior, children who are destined to be high achievers. In fact, studies conducted in the 1940's and repeated in the 1980's show that the variable that most predicted a good life was one good relationship.

2. Recent research has actually connected this over-scheduled, pressured, stressful life to childhood and teen-aged substance abuse.

3. People in Wayzata, Minnesota, Ridgewood, New Jersey, and a host of other communities are discovering that The Over-Scheduled Child made a crucial, accurate argument, and that parents can give children back their childhoods and families back their lives. Parents and communities can take control and stop the hyper-parenting madness.

And you too can opt out of the cycle of overscheduled children and overstressed parents. You can do it alone with your family. But many parents find that difficult to do. So "National Family Night" and "Family Night a Month" want to bolster your efforts by organizing politicians, civic, educational, business, and entertainment leaders to give national support for the idea that all American communities set aside one national night annually for families to spend time together without the intrusion of organized activities or excessive homework. How would you spend a night like that? You might decide to have a family dinner, play a game, take a walk, watch a movie, fish, shoot hoops, worship, or spend the time any way you find meaningful and rewarding. Families that find the night valuable may then choose to make it a monthly event or find other ways to make family life more involving and meaningful, and to diminish the stress that over-scheduling is insinuating into our lives. That makes life truly rich!

To find out more, read our mission statement.