How to Choose the Right Extracurricular Activities for Your Child

posted on Jan 07, 2026

Gurukul The School, recognised as the best school in Ghaziabad, would like to warn parents against this approach. Using urgency as a compass to choose an extracurricular activity for your child is a poor choice.

Whether your child is in primary or secondary grades, you might have found yourself in a situation that most other parents also face. You see other kids your child’s age participating in three different extracurricular activities. Someone is learning Mandarin, while another child just made it into a competitive swim squad. Seeing this, it’s natural for parents to suddenly want to enrol their kids in similar extracurricular activities.

However, we at Gurukul The School, recognised as the best school in Ghaziabad, would like to warn parents against this approach. Using urgency as a compass to choose an extracurricular activity for your child is a poor choice. This is because making such rash decisions may lead you to choosing the wrong activity for your child, which not only wastes your money but also makes your child lose enthusiasm for that activity. Today, we’ve created this blog post to help parents avoid this trap.

So, let’s begin by exploring the tips shared below that can help you choose the right extracurricular activity for your child.

• Start with Your Child, Not the Activity

The biggest mistake parents make is focusing more on activities than on what their child is genuinely interested in. It may also happen that your child might say ‘I don’t know’ when asked about their preference. Hence, we recommend spending a week simply observing your child.

Observe and identify what activities they do when no one’s directing them. Do they hum and use available objects as musical instruments, or do they build things out of whatever they find? These cues will help you identify your child’s interests, which can guide you to extracurricular activities that naturally align with them.

Aligning extracurricular activities with your child’s interests is crucial. It ensures that your child willingly engages with the activity, progresses more naturally, and actually enjoys the process.

• Match the Activity to Their Age and Readiness

Some people believe that it’s beneficial to enrol young kids in highly competitive extracurricular activities from an early age. However, we at Gurukul The School have an entirely different opinion on it. We believe that even the right activity at the wrong developmental stage can do more harm than good.

For instance, enrolling a 5-year-old in a highly competitive football league, just because one of their cousins is good at football, can never be about giving your child an advantage. It’s actually setting them up for feeling inadequate. Young children are still developing basic motor coordination, emotional regulation, and the ability to follow instructions. Hence, activities at this stage should be low-pressure and playful.

So, start exploring extracurricular activities that are a good fit for your kid’s age and readiness. It will help them build real skills and confidence. Avoid pushing children into something too advanced, too early, as it can crush their spirit and motivation.

• Let Them Try Before You Commit

The best part about the extracurricular activities available today is that most trainers and institutes provide trial classes. You can explore if any open sessions or short-term beginner sessions are being offered in your child’s area of interest.

Always use these trial sessions before you commit to a long-term enrolment. It will help your kids actually experience what the activity looks, sounds, and feels like in practice. After trial sessions end, observe your child’s response. If they start talking about that activity with enthusiasm and ask you to recreate similar activities at home, it’s a positive sign.

But if your child becomes quiet after these sessions, acts reluctant, and asks if they have to go again, take it as a sign that this activity is not for them. Every parent should use trial sessions to make informed decisions rather than costly attempts.

• Be Honest About Your Family’s Bandwidth

According to us at Gurukul The School, it’s the most crucial yet ignored step in the entire process. If an activity works on paper but wrecks your child’s entire week in practice, then it isn’t the right activity. Hence, before signing up for any activity, map out your child’s week plan honestly.

Factor in the travel time, session frequency, equipment costs (if any), and what gets pushed aside to make room for this activity. Most parents realise it much later that one activity done well, with enough room to breathe around it, is far more valuable than three activities done resentfully.

If you overschedule your kids, it may lead to persistent moodiness and resistance to doing things they once enjoyed. It can also degrade their academic performance. Hence, be careful when deciding on the activities for them.

Conclusion

Choosing an extracurricular activity for your child is something that shouldn’t be random or influenced by what other children are doing. It should be intentional and fully aligned with your child’s natural interests.

At Gurukul The School, regarded as the one of the top schools in Ghaziabad, we firmly believe that expecting children to excel at every single thing, including academics and all sorts of extracurricular activities, is basically a mistake that many people commit. What children really need is the right kind of opportunities and parental support to identify which activity matches their strengths.

Ideally, academics and extracurricular learning must work together in perfect harmony. When that happens, children don’t just develop skills but also confidence and self-awareness that help them grow holistically. Parents who follow this approach can see their kids develop real-life skills while enjoying the activities they choose.