Pain radiated from my lower back as I sat along the sidelines of the field. I was 20 weeks pregnant, exhausted, and watching my 7-year-old play soccer on a damp October morning.
There’s no way I’m doing this with a newborn, I thought to myself as I considered our family life in future months.
My husband and I soon had the conversation with our sons, who were both in early elementary school: For a year after the baby was born, we weren’t going to sign up for any formal activities.
We weren’t quitting; we were pausing, we explained. The baby would be our primary focus for a while. Rather than spending evenings away, our family life would be centered at or around our home. We knew from experience that life with a baby is primal and intuitive. It made sense that our family life would be less regimented for a while.
We would take breaks from soccer and swim lessons. When one son asked if he could play basketball, I replied, “If you still want to sign up once the baby is a year old, we’ll look into it.”
Our sons were (mostly) understanding of this adjustment — and they grew to enjoy the arrangement over time. They thrived outside a calendar of scheduled games and practices.
We played sports at times that were convenient for our family. Rather than joining a basketball league, I shot hoops with the boys in our driveway and at our local gym. Sometimes, as I pushed the baby in her stroller, they’d bike to the park with their father to throw a football in the open grass.
This recreational freedom positively impacted their personal motivation. My sons’ soccer skills did not grow stagnant. With the extra time they had after school, they practiced their ball handling for hours in the backyard, and I watched from a window as I cooked dinner or nursed the baby.
You can’t list “whittling in the backyard” or “climbing the monkey bars” on a college application or CV — but surely they had the rest of their lives to join that exhausting rat race.
In this yearlong pause from formal sports, my children seemed to become more athletic. Still, they couldn’t say that they were officially pursuing particular activities. You can’t list “whittling in the backyard” or “climbing the monkey bars” on a college application or CV — but surely they had the rest of their lives to join that exhausting rat race. Or maybe this pause during their early childhoods would model ways to opt out in the future.
The decision to simplify our lives made our schedules less complicated — but it didn’t entirely alleviate my mental load.
Frankly, sometimes I felt like a bad mom.
When I opened social media and saw a photo of a friend’s child with his soccer trophy, when a coworker spoke about spending the evening at ballet practice, I felt indicted. Like I wasn’t holding up my end of the contemporary parental bargain.
I tried to recognize this unhelpful comparison for what it was — insecurity. My decisions were personal, contextual and aligned with a set of values. Those values? Rest and sanity.
When I found myself trapped in games of comparison, I reminded myself that we all have to live within limits. Neither parents nor children have inexhaustible time and energy. No one can have it all.
Here’s what we did have during our year of no extracurriculars: leisurely evenings. Impromptu pancake dinners on the porch with neighbors. Card games. Bike rides around the block. Lots of independent play.
Here’s what we did have: leisurely evenings. Impromptu pancake dinners on the porch with neighbors. Card games. Bike rides around the block. Lots of independent play.
And yes, sure — we had screens. I introduced my oldest to one of my favorite TV shows as a child, “Boy Meets World.” He and I cuddled under blankets and watched it together after I got the baby to bed.
My baby turns 1 at the beginning of February, and as we promised the kids, we’ll push play on extracurriculars once more. I recently signed them up for indoor soccer. I hope, though, if our life shifts and we need to press pause again — because of work stress or illness, travel aspirations or mood — we’ll have the courage to modify in a way that benefits the whole family.