Music lessons, gymnastics, horseback riding, tutoring, summer-long residential camps, sports teams — the list goes on and on. At what cost?

Some parents feel such pressure to enrol their kids in many activities, they literally beg, borrow and steal, running up credit cards for experiences they believe their kids can't afford to miss.

While learning to play a musical instrument may bring a child lifelong joy, don't count on it to reveal hidden genius, warn psychologists and economists.

Not offering our children every conceivable opportunity “feels like bad parenting,” said Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist and author of The Blessing of a B Minus.

But in an effort to give their children everything, some parents end up not just depleting financial resources, but also their own emotional energy -- at a cost to their own kids' happiness.

According to economics professor at George Mason University, Bryan Caplan: "[A lot of parents] make so many sacrifices and are so stressed out by driving around so much that they explode at kids for changing the radio station.”

So far economists agree there is no evidence that these kinds of parental choices are at all correlated with academic success.

There are certainly good reasons to offer our children a variety of activities. However, there's a downside, too, i.e. when we attribute signing our kids up to such activities to good parenting, or when we assume that such clubs and skills will guarantee success in later life.

More important than stimulating extracurricular activities is a warm and well-connected family life. Sometimes that means saying no to certain activities.

And if we do not cut back on all the intensive activity? Psychologists warn we'll find ourselves frequenting another costly activity — the therapist’s office.