The unhealthy trend I see in my students is over-programming -- they try to "do it all." (I teach music privately and at a university, so my students are from age 8 to adult.) Parents will call to ask about lessons and then tell me their kids are taking soccer, ballet, karate, French lessons, and in Girl Scouts, and they now want to add music lessons to the mix. (I don't take those kids as students -- it's not fair to them to expect them to be Superkids.)

By the time they reach university, they're either burned out, OR they're so overprogrammed that they try to take 18 credits, work a part-time job, do an internship, and join three clubs, all in the same semester. Some get by on four hours of sleep.

By their junior year, they start to go a little nuts as a result.

But the irony is that by this point they are used to juggling so many things that it's hard to concentrate on just one or two priorities--because their attention spans haven't been developing all along.

I'm not really critical of my students, who don't know any better. It's their parents, who let them do so many activities when they're younger, who get my criticism. And the irony is that the parents are doing this (usually) because they want the BEST for their kids.

Luckily, some of my students' parents are resisting this trend. In one family, for example, each kid can pick one art activity (such as music) and one sport. No more. I think it's a very healthy way to live, and those kids seem to be a lot happier -- and a lot more like KIDS.