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Baseball practice, piano practice, dance class, after school activities, homework, family night, church activities – are our kids doing too much? It’s an epidemic that is sweeping through our homes. It’s about giving our kids what we never had growing up, but too much can be a bad thing.

While children are in school, it should be their primary focus. When we add too many activities during the evening, we are limiting the time they can spend doing homework or reading. Plus, you are talking away what little family time is available when kids are in school.

If you want your child to participate in other activities, try limiting the number of extracurricular classes they take. You can try different classes in different years, allowing your child to find the activities that they enjoy best and are good at. Let them take dance or soccer one year, and piano or softball the following year.

Limiting our evening activities will also help our children. If they come home and you are stressed out, trying to get too many things done in the evening, that is going to roll down to your children and cause them more stress. Make your evenings a quiet and peaceful time, where you can help your children with their homework and spend some time together.

Every parent wants the best for their child, but realizing now that giving them everything may not be best will help your child do better in school and have a stress free childhood. Giving them limitations will help them learn self-control and they will be more balanced as adults. In our fast paced society, it’s a good idea to teach your child about what is most important – family and learning.

The one thing that virtually all baby boomers have in common is the stress of living in this modern age. So much has changed for baby boomers since they first enjoyed those days of youth culture when hairstyle and rock music seemed like the most important things in the world. But, like all generations before them and to come, baby boomers had to grow up and take on the responsibilities of raising a family, making a living and figuring out their place in this big complicated world.

Stress comes from a lot of sources. Obviously, we get it from work. We think of the work place as a source of stress because it is a place where making a living is paramount and there are daily demands, deadlines and schedules to be met. In addition, most of us have to deal with at least some difficult people during our workdays, which only compounds the stress.

But stresses don’t end when we walk out of our workplace. Traffic itself can be a stress. Then the joys of raising children and marriage can also bring some trials with them as well. It is common to return home from a difficult day only to face serious problems at home. In this situation, it seems that the stress and anxiety just keep mounting up.

This is not the adult life most baby boomers envisioned in their youth days when they were idealistic and the world was their oyster. But nobody told us that the reason the oyster is so beautiful is because it creates stress on the clam who copes with it by covering it with the smooth oyster material. So stress can build us up and make something beautiful. But it can also tear us down and lead to serious medical and mental problems if we don’t develop some coping techniques to deal with it.

Some good coping mechanisms that many baby boomers have found helpful to defray the stress in their lives include…

. Get away from it. To put the cares of the world in perspective, we have to get away from them for a while. If nothing else, just soaking in a hot bathtub with a good magazine and some happy music can wash away the cares of the world and let them swirl down the drain with the bubbles. But look for chances to relax and put those worries aside for a little bit. It will help you calm your mind, rest your system and be ready to deal with those issues without so much anxiety, which doesn’t do anybody any good.

. Partner with your family. Your spouse and children don’t want to see you stressed out. But sometimes they don’t know how much they add to the problems when they throw the problems of the day at you as soon as you walk through the door. It’s good for them to see the world through your eyes. But remember that they are stressed with school or issues of work and relationships too. So partner together to have a little time to just be family and love away that anxiety. Everybody will be better for it.

. Take time for health. Its strange but our diet and rest are the things we need the most to cope with stress and yet those are the areas of life that are most damaged if we let stress wear us down. So go back to basics and make sure you get good meals, good rest and take care of yourself. It will make you a better worker and stronger for your family as well.

Seeing stress as a serious enemy to your lifestyle above and beyond the causes of stress is a big step forward to not letting this enemy continue to damage your ability to be a good worker and family member. But if you take action to keep stress from dominating your life, you are doing something very good for yourself and making yourself more able to attack problems and solve them with the creativity and intelligence people know you for.