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Studies have shown that children benefit from participation in extracurricular activities in various ways. Extracurricular activities can offer a boost to children's self-esteem, assist them with maintaining good grades, teach children to play on a team, help form discipline and to accept disappointment. So now that your child(ren) has joined an extra-curricular activity, how do you keep the burn-out at bay?

Limit your child's activities. While your children are young, take advantage of the preschool sports to allow your children exposure to different activities. These types of sports from team-sports such as soccer to dance are offered in short sessions throughout the year. These types of activities teach the basics and allow children to develop a sense of their own style and preferences. As they grow older, begin to limit what activities they do to ones they truly love. The older they get the more school-work they will have, don't allow them to become overburdened with activities and homework, too much of either can lead to a downfall in the other. For overly enthusiastic children, allow them to do an activity per season, football in the fall, basketball in winter and baseball in spring.

Know your own boundaries. Don't sign your 5th grader up for dance on Wednesday night, if you know you will have to work late those nights. This can allow for disappointment in the child if they have to miss and frustration and stress on your behalf for disappointing your child.

Get to know the parent's of your child's teammates. Knowing the parent's of other children on the team can be hugely valuable especially is you have more than one child in an extracurricular activity. By getting to know the other parents and their schedules, you can work out car-pooling routines that will free up both of your schedules and allow some downtime during the week or allow you the time to be there for another child who may have an activity at the same time, but in a different place.

Ask family for help. Transportation can be one of the most burdensome jobs involved in extracurricular activities. Don't be afraid or ashamed to ask family members outside of your home with help in transporting your child to practices. If you don't have family members that are available to help with transportation, take advantage of what they may have to offer. If a family member offers to make dinner, accept it, this will take a lot of stress off you when the activities run late. Grandparents are often more than happy to help and be involved, anyway they can, they just need to be asked.

Use Time-Management tools. Time-Management is a must when you have children in multiple activities or multiple children in activities. Use a calendar, organizer or some form of tracking methods to keep track of what your child(ren) are doing and when. This will help tremendously in determining how much help you may need, after all unless you are Superman and able to leap tall buildings it is next to impossible to be uptown at 6:00 and downtown at 6:00.

Pick one day of the week for non-extracurricular activities. Try to find a day each week in which no one participates in any type of extracurricular activity. This allows for time to rest and for the family to be united as one. Admittedly this is a tough goal to achieve, but when mastered, does help keep burnout at bay.

Allowing your children the benefit of extra-curricular activities is one of the greatest gifts you will ever give them, managing the activities and enlisting help to avoid burn-out is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

Learn more about this author, Stephanie Epplett.
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