MIND MOVES: "Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear, full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air" - Thomas Gray.
Each new opportunity is a new possibility. Talents may go undiscovered if given no medium. Inspiration and implements are necessary. By not encouraging children to try new activities, gifts that might later be enjoyed by the world, may be missed: gems of genius buried forever. Think of young Mozart without a piano, Picasso without his paints. Art requires expression. Nature needs to be nurtured.
It is for this reason, to ensure that their children achieve their potential, that parents provide as many learning opportunities and implements as possible. They purchase paper and pens, the chemistry set, telescope, calculator, computer, dancing shoes, football boots, violin, tennis racket, ice skates and skateboards. They know the possibilities in a packet of seeds and a patch of earth on which to grow them.
Parents know what pallet, brush and paints may produce: that the etching of today may be the edifice of tomorrow and that what a child sculpts in clay today may influence forever the adult artist that child may become. They know that each activity may unlock a lifelong interest or career for children. You cannot cross the ocean if you never see the sea.
Autobiographies often reflect the importance of early intervention; the writers whose homes held tomes of literary magic to captivate and enthral a child's imagination; the musicians whose lullabies were melodious notes practised, played or sung in homes effused with tune. Wimbledon women's champion, Venus Williams, in whose baby hands a tennis racket was placed, could not have succeeded without her parents' sacrifices. Opportunities matter.
But in the wish to unlock potential through activity, there is also the danger of locking away one of the most important lifelong skills: that is, the capacity for solitude, for silence, the ability to be still. This is not just the chance "to do" but "to be". If activities become all-consuming, there is insufficient time to process information, practise what has been learned and concentrate on preferred occupations.
There is merit in spending time that is not adult organised, in activities not goal oriented, in occupations that are not competitive and in unscheduled time alone or in the company of friends. Too much parenting is hyperparenting.
So prevalent is the practice of ferrying offspring by car from one learning context to the next that it has acquired the title hyperparenting. Hyperparenting is parenting that privileges constant activity: intensely competitive sport; simultaneous engagement with diverse skills; additional academic tuition; or endless extra-curricular classes.
Too many activities may thwart that which parents originally set out to achieve and convey negative messages to children whose childhood memories may be of car drives observing the back of their parents' heads.
Hyperparenting may begin at birth with overzealous provision of developmental aids. Hyperparenting may imply to children that they are valued for their achievements more than for themselves and the mentality that only measurably productive time has merit. Since few children can excel equally at everything, there are inevitable experiences of failure and activities for which a child has neither inclination nor ability.
There may be conflict between ballet and karate, calculus and cookery, between football and flower arranging that may strain body and brain with dissonant demands.
Hyperparenting can overwhelm children educationally, socially and emotionally. Children who are timetabled are unable to structure their time.
Childhood is not for the creation of CVs or wide social networks. Children need time to form good friendships first with a small circle of friends. Being competent with clusters of children may make one socially skilled but emotionally superficial.
The capacities to be still, to amuse oneself, to observe, discover, process and reflect are crucial. They are not taught. They are not contrived. They are allowed. They happen. The child who, in addition to some educational opportunities, has time to "stop and stare", to daydream and to imagine, is truly fortunate.
Moments of invention often occur in solitude. Newton had time to sit under a tree, look up at the sky and down on the earth, time to see an apple fall and to question as it fell down, why that should be. Solutions find space during stress-free times, as Archimedes discovered relaxing in his bath.
Summer schedules can enrich the education of children and there are wonderful activities of which they can avail. But gentle time with a parent is also important and is often what is recalled in adult life.
It is significant that among the memories of poet Seamus Heaney in Clearances is a time he shared as a child with his mother "when all the others were away at Mass" and he was "all hers" as they peeled potatoes. This is the time he recalls at her deathbed as one during which they were "never closer the whole rest of our lives".
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin.