After-school activities are a good opportunity to develop the child's potentiality, skills and motivations, but sometimes they point to too many things, spend many hours in guided activities (after several hours at school), and balance is important, according to Anna Serra, psychopedagoga, in Criar.cat, to end the stress of children who spend a lot of time in directed activities may not end up with the stress of children. It is important to reserve a daily free time to play, to internalize what has been done in the day, for creativity, to do things at home…

Sometimes, says Serra, we fill our children's agendas to deal with agendas full of adults, for conciliation. It is not a good starting point. On other occasions, the parents do not know the management of conflicts and situations they have with the child, they have insecurity and instead of seeking resources for follow-up, they lead the children to activities to avoid it: “I love you, but I don’t know how to communicate with you and I’m going to pay you a lot of after-school activities to compensate for it.”

The activities chosen by the child or parents?

The number of questions is accompanied by the choice of activity. The answer seems logical: the one the child wants and wants. Well, be careful, because sometimes we project the desires of adults in the selection, consciously or unconsciously, says the psychopedagogue. You have to talk to the child and help him/her choose taking into account his/her tastes and abilities, he/she can also do a test, “but without jumping from one act to another, because with the least frustration the child can constantly decide to leave actions and take new ones without commitment to start and finish things.”

In addition to taste, it is also advisable to choose the activities that may be necessary for the child, but as we counted in the blog, there is often competition behind several selections, in the race for being our son the fastest in school.

And as far as the choice is concerned, it should be stressed that many families cannot choose because the economic conditions of the home prevent many children from participating in such activities. Extracurricular activities are proven to be a source of economic imbalance and should be the subject of an in-depth debate on how and to what extent the public administration should ensure that imbalance.