Mom A plops down on the bleachers next to Mom B and heaves a huge sigh.

"Whew!" she says. "All I do is run the kids around to school and their lessons and their games and to choir and to play dates. It's just madness."

Mom B nods knowingly.

"I hear you," she says. "My kids are running me ragged."

Something's wrong with this picture.

If you get tired trotting your children around to all their activities, if you feel like all your kids' commitments are stretching you to the breaking point, stop and think for a moment how your kids feel. Your children have far less physical and emotional stamina than you do. If you're tired from it all, your kids are probably exhausted.

As kids go back to school, this is the time to consider which extracurricular activities are essential to enhance your child's growth and development and which are unnecessary.

"Making choices is key," says Charlotte Shoup Olsen, Kansas State University Research and Extension family systems specialist. "If parents and children are overcommitted to a seemingly endless line of activities, the family — and each of its members — will suffer from the stress.

Exhaustion isn't conducive to learning, Olsen says. Neither is having a mother or father who is frazzled.

On its Web site, Family Fun magazine advises parents to examine their motives for getting children involved in extracurricular activities.

Writer Jan Faull issues a warning about starting kids too early in activities: "If you start a child in extracurriculars too early — before his body is developed to perform the skills required, before his mind is able to understand the strategy of a game or a musical concept, before his emotions can manage the pressure of competition and performance or before he acquires the social skills to understand sportsmanship and the discipline of practice — you will turn him off to the activity instead of providing the benefits you might wish."

Texas A&M University psychologist Rob Heffer says: "While exposing a child to a wide variety of experiences is important, this needs to be balanced with a realization of the importance of free, unstructured time for the child. A child who is constantly involved in all types of structured activities may not have the time to engage in important developmental activities such as self-reflection and self-evaluation."

Heffer says free time gives children the opportunity to build relationships with family and friends and learn about social interactions.

"An overscheduled child may not be as socially skilled as the next kid because less time exists for forming relationships through informal, unstructured leisure time."

On the Web: www.oznet.ksu.edu (click on "Home, Family and Youth"), www.tamu.edu, www.familyfun.go.com