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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's important for tweens and teens to socialize (in person) with friends.  If your tween/teen has so many structured activities that they don't have time to hang out and socialize with friends, then, yeah, they are probably overscheduled.

But folks seems to be suggesting that teens/tweens should also have swaths of time where they are alone with nowhere to go and have to come up with things to do.  And, I'm telling you, what tweens/teens do in that scenario -- if given the choice -- is text on group chats.  Vapid, ridiculous, eye-roll-level drama filled group chats.  [/quote]

For a lot of kids their friend group is in the structured activities with them. My DS plays on sports teams with friends and then even when they don’t have practices they want to get together and play pickup games and throw a ball around. My kid gets really bummed when a practice or game is rained out because he looks forward to playing his sport. He and his friends play sports at recess and talk about their play off games at school. Being on a team is social.

I’ve never really signed my kid up for activities that don’t involve friends. Even stuff like summer camps I generally organize with friends’ parents. [/quote]

ITA.  So much of the unstructured socializing my DD engages in has come from making friends through a structured activity.  I'm sure I will get flamed, but I think a lot of folks blasting structured activities and coming up with all this lofty talk about the merits of being bored, blah blah blah are just too lazy or don't have the bandwidth for whatever reason to sign their kid up for activities.  They don't seem to understand how these activities work, or appreciate things like this -- that they lead to friendships and hang outs -- or do not seem to have any concept of how many hours are in a week or when upper ES and MS kids go to bed, etc.  [/quote]

I don't think it's lazy, I think it's parents putting out realistic boundaries. Also, it seems like there is so much backlash to an more free unstructured childhood. Did that many ppl here have bad experiences?[/quote]

It's not backlash to a free unstructured childhood that didn't go well.  It's that most of us grew up doing plenty of structured activities, enjoyed them a lot, see how they benefited us and enriched our lives, and want the same for our kids.

I'm 43, so grew up in the 80's and 90's.  I lived in an UMC suburb and went to public schools.  I, and my friends, were "middle of the pack" kind of kids.  And we all did lots of activities.  We did a sport pretty much every season, and were also on select and travel teams.  I had friends who did competitive dance.  We had private weekly instrument lessons.  We did extra miscellaneous activities too like scouts and religious school.  We went to many weeks of day and specialty camps in the summer, even those of us with SAHMs.  My DD and her friends have a similar schedule.  I had plenty of unstructured time, and so does my DD.  I don't think that structured activities are what is different today.  What's different is the phones, and tablets, and group chats, and social media.  And parents are more wary about giving their kids the same kind of freedom during the unstructured/down time.  But the activities have been there.  [/quote]

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