As this was my first year as an empty nester, I had plenty of time to look back and analyze my parenting experience. I’ve met many people who have regrets about how they parented. I’m not big on regrets since they change absolutely nothing about the past. I do, however, like to think about the past from a place of learning and growing and maybe sharing that learning with others or applying it to other aspects of my life.

Here’s the one area of parenting that I might do differently if I was doing it over; I would limit the travel sports or possibly even eliminate them for my family. This would be a tough choice in that there are so few other options for athletics and sports than intense, almost daily practices and games or competitions. I have vivid memories of sitting in a dark theatre on Mother’s Day. My husband was home with our boys and I sat in that darn theatre for about eight hours to watch a total of fifteen minutes of my daughter competing. Looking back, I see that there are so few Mother’s Days where we all could truly spend the day together and I lost a couple to competitive dance days.

The 4 a.m. wake ups to drag miserable kids to pre-school practices weren’t enjoyable for any of us, particularly since it was clear that none of my children were interested beyond the high school level. The exhausting late night pick ups from practices and then home to eat and do homework wore us all out and I’m not sure that I can rationalize that with benefits. I do believe that athletics and team sports are totally beneficial to health and character development, but is it necessary to do so daily and for numerous hours a day? 

Family Time v. Extracurricular Activities

What I most miss as an empty nester are the moments when the five of us are together, plopped on a couch or eating a meal together. Just those spontaneous, easy moments in which we are together and laughing or arguing about politics or just talking about life. We missed so many of those moments because one or more of us was at a practice or a game. My daughter danced at least six days a week, four of those she was gone from 4 – 10 p.m. and not with us for dinner. Was it worth it? I’m not sure that it was. Wasn’t family time ultimately more important?

Yet my daughter loved dance. My boys loved basketball, baseball, and volleyball. Should I have pulled them from the sports that they loved? I don’t think so, but I do think that we can do a better job as adults of finding balance between participating in a sport and spending time with family. Having the whole family sit at a game or competition watching one of our children didn’t really feel like quality family time to me. The dinners afterwards and the car conversations were what were most meaningful in those days.

I hope the next generation of parents does a better job at setting those limits than my generation did. We bowed to the competitive, “keep up” monster and we did it at the expense of time with our families. It’s possible to have both, but someone needs to start saying no to make it happen.

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC