Three years ago the middle school swim team here in town was in danger of folding – there was nobody to run the program, and not wanting Kasen, Gretchen and Marit to miss out on the experience, I stepped up.
I had been the head coach of the program before, but I hadn’t run the entire thing. Since the team is not run directly through the school, I had to do everything: collect team fees, order suits and sweatshirts, reserve and pay for busses, schedule swim meets with other teams, find a pool to host state championships, and run the entire state championship meet.
It was completely overwhelming, and I was an emotional, physical, and financial mess for those couple months.
I had to learn to protect my time – and my health – the hard way.
The next year I made two decisions.
I did not coach the team, and none of the kids swam on it.
It was too much, and not worth the investment of my time.
EVEN IF THE KIDS MISSED OUT.
So many of us don’t want our kids to miss out on, well, anything.
We jam pack their days full of activities. We jam pack our days full of activities.
Music lessons, band practice, swim team, baseball, soccer, track, football, tutoring, theater, birthday parties, playdates…
The more stuff we pack into our kids days so they don’t miss out on stuff, the more we pack into our own days.
But the reality is there are 43 sports in the Olympics and over 200 sports with national or international federations.
There are hundreds of musical instruments.
There are over 7000 languages.
The reality is you will not have time to do 99.99% of all the things you could possibly do.
But we still try to cram it all in.
And in the process of trying not to miss out on anything, we miss out on almost everything.
Time boundaries are one of the hardest to tighten up if you have spent your life saying yes to everything.
When you say yes to everything, your kids gain two things:
- a few more experiences
- a mom who is spread too thin, depleted, irritable, distracted, not present
But what do you miss out on when you say yes to everything?
You miss out on family dinners, exercise, actual connection, down time, recovery, boredom, your own goals and dreams, slow mornings, reading for fun, naps, creativity, conversations that aren’t rushed, movie nights, summer vacations, and time to think.
Filling a schedule and filling a life are not the same thing.
Your kids don’t want to be shlepped around to every possible activity by a pissed off, unhealthy, resentful mom.
We can’t do every single thing.
And when we stop trying and are more particular about how and where we invest our time, we finally have the time to notice the parts we really don’t want to miss.
Leave a Reply