Save your money on organised activities, and let the children roam, Maggie Dent says. Photo: 123RF
Sport, music, dance, learning another language - there are plenty of options. But how much is too much? And how can parents judge that?
Maggie Dent is known as the "Queen of Commonsense Parenting". She is a former high school teacher, counsellor, mother of four sons, grandmother of seven, author of numerous books and the host of the ABC podcast Parental as Anything.
Dent said the right mix took into account the child's temperament, age, and time of year.
She told RNZ's Nine to Noon her first tip for parents was to not be swept up by what everyone else is doing.
"Just because they're starting to play soccer or rugby or cricket at 3-and-a-half to 4, [that does not mean] that that's the time you should start.
"I actually think it's way too early ... that is the age they're meant to be using their body in autonomous ways with great freedom and being a bit feral and free and not being organised by grown-ups, because there's plenty of that that's going to happen at school."
She said unsupervised play was vital in a child's first five years.
"We have a perception that to grow a smart kid, you need to make sure they're learning stuff, when, in actual fact, the brain in the first five years needs enormous amounts of discovery, where they figure things out for themselves, and it means they stretch and grow.
"They're meant to fall out of trees, they're meant to be curious about bugs. They're meant to be absorbed in things that look as boring as bat poo to us."
That free movement was how the body worked out two important senses, she said.
"That's proprioceptive awareness, so where does my body finish? And vestibular, which has a little bit to do with balance.
"Without all that, they come into our classrooms with less capacity to concentrate, to sit in a chair, and less fine and gross motor skills with which to navigate things like writing."
Save your money on organised activities, and let the children roam, she said.
"Get your coffee head to the park, head to the beach, head to a creek, head to a paddock, head to anything, and just allow them to do what is biologically wired in them, and especially if it's multi-age, children of all genders, in an environment where there's a grown-up within a safe distance, but not one that's hovering.
"That's exactly how Mother Nature intended our children to learn, because younger children model and learn off older children, and older children are biologically wired to watch out for younger children if there's not a grown up around."
She also believed children were being channelled too narrowly at too young an age.
"We never know what are the hidden strengths and skills within our kids until they've sampled a whole lot of things.
"We're finding in Australia at the moment that by the time you're eight, if you're playing netball, you're starting to be graded, and you get graded into teams. And I'm going, holy heck, they're eight. God, can't they play netball and have fun for a few more years? Why are we in this competitive mode?"
Not only did all this organised after school activity take away a child's agency, but it was also a financial and time burden on parents, she said.
"Weekends used to be when parents played sport, and the kids hung around the tennis court, the golf course, the footie ground, and they all played. Now, no parent has weekend sport, they're all at the sport.
"So, your whole week is filled up with scheduling stuff, and I think we've got to look at that and go, heck, is that good for our family? And can we be the outlier? We be the one that does it differently?"
Do not be afraid to push back and have fun with children that is "not structured and organised by organisations," she said.
"The less autonomy children have, especially up to the tween years, the more likely they are to be pushing the boundaries in the tween and teen years, because they've never had a lot of choices, there's always grown-ups telling them how to be.
"We've got to be mindful of do they have some choices in amongst it. But also, there are times that you as a parent need to be the parent for the well-being of your family."
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