Question: My son is a 16-year-old sophomore at an excellent all-male Catholic high school. He maintains a 3.5 GPA, is on the cross country and track teams, and sings in two choral groups. Practices overlap, meets or performances are out of town with time commitments, and schoolwork piles up. He's increasingly overwhelmed by his efforts at doing his best at everything. He's disappointed with his performance in track and his grades, which would be even better if he had more time.

He loves his extracurriculars, and benefits from the tutelage and mentoring of the fine men who coach his sports and conduct the choir. Is it better to lose the experience of one of the extracurriculars than to accept grades that are less than what he'd like? Counselors and coaches don't seem to have the answer. Please help me to help him.

Answer: While your son's grades should be first priority, balance is important. Developing his interests also builds confidence and social skills. You should question whether your son would truly put more time into his studies if he gave up some of his extracurricular activities. Sometimes kids rationalise and blame their activities as an excuse for disappointing grades.

Although your son's grades are excellent, it is true that some highly competitive colleges will not consider them high enough. If his goal is to attend such a college, it may be more realistic to drop one activity to open up some study time. You and your son may want to review how he's using his time. If watching TV, communicating via e-mail and MySpace, or surfing the web are the real time-consumers, dropping activities won't help his grades. If he's truly using his time efficiently, but there just isn't enough of it, dropping an academic course to allow for a study hall might be a better answer than dropping sports or music. Taking challenging courses, rather than the most courses, tends to be valued by colleges.

We do know that busy, active kids are less likely to get into high-risk behaviours like alcohol, drugs or promiscuous sex. So if he's busy and fairly balanced, perhaps your son only requires reassurance about his excellent average so he can continue to feel good about himself without needing to be the best.

As to your son's disappointment in his track performance, you can explain that running track will make him healthier, both mentally and physically, but while running faster could make him happier temporarily, it's unlikely to make a difference for the rest of his life.

Setting perfectionist goals for being the best at things will only cause him to feel bad about himself, and will actually interfere with his performance.

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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and paediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimmsylviarimm.com.