High school graduation is the exclamation point marking the end of childhood. It is the final punctuation for one’s childhood story. For the young graduates, it is an overwhelmingly joyous occasion for good reason: their life adventures are just beginning.
For parents, however, the emotions are more complex. Our kids are beginning a new chapter–one where they are the authors, not us. In these new chapters, we will remain characters, but not necessarily the main characters. Because this is the time for our kids to begin writing their own life story.
When a child graduates, this is also the time that parents metaphorically re-read the first chapters of their kid’s story. The ones when we were the authors.
It’s so much easier to see the childhood plot twists that we got right and wrong when we re-read the story. Many of the plot twists were intentionally written into the story, but others just crept in along the way.
Parenting Performance Review
My daughter, Riley, graduated last month. Since she is my youngest, my nest will be officially empty in less than two months when she leaves for college. Like many empty-nesters, I am now carefully re-evaluating my job as “parent.”
It’s a long list of Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda.
I know my husband, Dale, and I made plenty of mistakes. If you don’t believe me, just ask my kids.
On one road trip, in a Hail Mary effort to engage them in conversation, I asked the question:
Tell us about a time that we messed up as parents?
Now that’s a conversation starter! After an hour of parental failure anecdotes, Dale and I told them to go back to their devices.
Despite our long list of parental fails, there is one thing that we got right in their childhoods:
We chose family travel over sports.
Did I just hear a collective gasp among readers everywhere? Sports are practically a religion in many places, including the Deep South. To choose anything over sports is akin to heresy in many circles.
So if you are a fully satisfied sports-centric family, please stop reading and head on to the soccer field or dance studio. But don’t worry…this isn’t about bashing sports. There’s no doubt that sports offer many valuable life lessons, opportunities, and benefits.
However, if your child doesn’t really like sports or is struggling to find their “thing” (when all of their friends seemingly already have), then let me offer you some encouragement from a mom who has been there.
Middle School Sports
I will never forget middle school basketball tryouts. Delaney had spent Kindergarten through 6th grades playing rec league basketball and softball. She loved everything about it–the coaches, camaraderie, and competition. But rec league ends in 6th grade. Beginning in 7th grade, players must tryout for the school team or a club (travel) team.
The week of middle school tryouts, Delaney spent every afternoon participating in after school clinics. Tryouts took place on Friday afternoon with the coaches posting the results on the school doors that same evening.
After dinner, Delaney and I drove to the school. In nervous anticipation, she barely uttered a word on the way there. Once we arrived, she instructed me to wait in the car. I watched as she walked toward the school entrance, reaching the door at the same time as another girl. Their eyes and fingers quickly scanned the newly hung roster. My heart dropped as both girls burst into tears.
Yet they were crying for completely different reasons.
Tears of devastation still streamed down Delaney’s face when she returned to the car.
“I made it,” she sobbed as she climbed in.
That’s when I knew: Delaney didn’t love basketball. She enjoyed basketball (and softball) in the low-key, rec league sort of way. But she certainly didn’t enjoy any sport at the level that is required of today’s youth beyond rec league play, and she knew it too.
Finding Your Child’s “Thing”
I was exasperated. Every one of her friends had a “thing.” No one was ever available to just play anymore, because they were all committed to doing their thing. Every. Single. Day.
I wanted Delaney and Riley to be involved with something that they enjoyed, but they really just wanted to play or hang out after school without scheduled commitments.
Now maybe you’re thinking that we didn’t try enough “things” for our daughters to find their passion. I’m pretty sure we did. Our girls participated in the following activities for at least a season:
- basketball
- softball
- tennis
- lacrosse
- swimming
- diving
- gymnastics
- dance
- cheer
- track
- cross country
- figure skating
- baton twirling
- fencing
- karate
- drama
- art
- piano
- guitar
- harmonica (Dale deserves bonus points for finding a harmonica instructor for a 7 year old)
It’s not that they didn’t like any of those activities, it’s just that being involved in any of those activities required more time or interest than they were willing to commit.
They were willing to participate in 1980’s-style sports: two practices a week; a game on Saturday; a three month season. The end.
Sadly, low-key rec sports opportunities are dwindling fast. Families struggle to find sports opportunities that don’t become all consuming. Some children have private coaches before they can even read chapter books. There are fewer and fewer options for children (and families) to play sports AND have a life. It’s either-or.
Saying NO to Sports
So rather than jumping on the sports train along with everyone around us, we opted out. Instead of spending our evenings, weekends and breaks traveling to fields, gyms and studios near and far, we explored the world.
In other words, we said NO to travel sports, and YES to travel.
Our family travels (including two sabbaticals) have taken us to nearly 40 countries across six continents, exploring the world’s greatest adventures and cultures. None of which would have been possible had we sacrificed our calendars and wallets on the altar of the sports gods.
The decision wasn’t as easy as it sounds, though. If you have school-aged kids, then you know that their extracurricular activities are often synonymous with their social groups. It can be a struggle for them to find their “people” when their name isn’t on a roster.
My daughters have now closed the chapters on their middle school and high school years. Despite some periods of loneliness or feeling like they didn’t always have a group, neither would trade their worn passports to have been MVP-of-this or Captain-of-that.
In other words, my daughters’ inability to find their “thing” turned out to be an unexpected gift for our family. Our experiences have taught us that family travel is better than sports in many ways. Following are just a few of them.
4 Reasons Why Family Travel is Better Than Sports
1. All family members participate in the travel experiences.
In sports, typically one family member is the player and the other family members are spectators. In travel, everyone is a player. Family members share in the “wins” (like snagging a budget room in Sydney for New Year’s Eve), and the “losses” (like being deported from China).
2. You’re creating lifetime family memories.
Shared family travel experiences form bonds that last forever. Each trip creates distinct family memories that can be revisited over and over, as opposed to a long season of games/competitions that all run together in the end. I’m certain our daughters will never forget taking Bollywood dance lessons with their dad in India!
3. All family members are the stars.
Families (with more than one child) involved in travel sports are faced with two difficult choices: 1) drag along the other child(ren) to the games/competitions, causing them to miss out on activities of their own (often resulting in long term resentment), or 2) use the divide-and-conquer method of parenting.
Over the short term both options can work, but neither is ideal over the long term. With family travel, one child’s sport isn’t placed on a pedestal at the expense of another child.
4. Travel is an expense that benefits everyone equally.
According to numerous articles and anecdotal conversations with parents, travel competition sports can easily cost $6,000-15,000+ per year, per sport, once all expenses are included. As a result many families make huge financial sacrifices for one child to participate in club sports. For the same amount of money, the entire family could experience a life-changing global adventure.
Life Lessons
While there are countless life lessons that can only be learned as part of a team, there are just as many life lessons that can only be learned outside of your country and culture. Family travel is the greatest teacher of these life lessons.
If you are lucky enough to parent a mediocre or apathetic athlete, embrace it! What better way to add plot twists to your kid’s childhood than to stop collecting participation trophies and start collecting passport stamps?
The world is waiting for your family to join their team of global citizens.
Ready to explore the world? Then check out THE PASSPORT PROJECT and THE ULTIMATE TRAVEL TRACKER to inspire and manage your wanderlust.
Interested in more epic adventures? Check out the following:
- Camping in Antarctica: Everything You Need to Know to Survive
- How to Save Thousands on Your Family’s Galapagos Adventure
- Ten Day Namibia Road Trip: Sand, Seals, and Safari
- How to Plan a Budget Vacation to the Luxurious Maldives
- How to Book an Amazing and Affordable South Africa Safari
- No Regrets: Bungee Jumping in Queenstown, New Zealand
- The Passport Project: A DIY Journey Around the World
Interested in more cultural adventures? Check out following:
- Three Tips for Ethically Visting Myanmar‘s Long-Neck Women
- How to Volunteer at Delhi’s Gurudwara Bangla Sahib Sikh Community Kitchen
- Burial, Cremation, and Reincarnation in Bali
- Learn to Meditate at Truc Lam, Da Lat, Vietnam’s Buddhist Monastery
- Family Travel Idea: Spend the Night with the Embera Puru Indians in Panama
- Don’t be Flashy! Guidelines for Luang Prabang’s Alms Giving Ceremony
- Cambodia‘s Genocide: What I Never Learned in School
3 boys played travel hockey and baseball. Evan though they all made it to the ncaa collegiate level and slightly beyond, my 20-20 hindsight still tells me your article is spot on. Family bonding through travel sports? Hogwash. How is splitting the family up to go 3 different directions the day after Christmas family bonding? For the sake of family vacations, holidays w grandparents, church on Sunday, and our 401k’s i hope the travel sport trend reverses, and house leagues make a comeback!
What powerful, insightful feedback from the parent of talented athletes. It’s so hard to see the sacrificed opportunities when you’re in the middle of it, but hindsight is so revealing. The good news is that it’s never too late to start creating those memories. However, as the parent of young adults myself, the tricky part is getting their work and life schedules to align. Thank you for reading, and I appreciate your comments!
What a great article, I hope lots of people get a chance to read this and hear your message. You have to get out of your safe little backyard to learn about life, other people and cultures. I believe that the hovering parents phenomena has done a lot of harm to the younger generation. Family road trips of my youth seem a distant concept and I miss them of course that was before the evil devices took over all consciousness. Great story and well done!
Thank you, Lars, your feedback. I completely agree!
Hi, so interesting. I live in NZ and was quite shocked by how demanding teenage sports is where you live. We too however face increasing social pressure to get our kids into extracurricular activities and fill up their lives. There is still many options for teenagers to play on what we call social teams, where you have one practice and one game a week. What a shame that your kids couldnt just play sport for fun. I think you made a fantastic decision to travel the world instead!
Hi Alice. Thank you for your comments. Interestingly, we spent a month in NZ during our 5 month sabbatical. We absolutely loved it!! People in the U.S. often describe the NZ lifestyle as the way things used to be here 40 years ago. That’s not meant as an insult. On the contrary, it is a compliment on the awesome lifestyle vibe that Kiwis enjoy. My kids would have thrived on the social teams that you describe, but those are rare options in our part of the country. But I do understand that the pressure to have a full social calendar is a universal issue. 🙁
BTW…One of our favorite things about NZ were all the fun, funky, quirky VW vans that are painted up so creatively. I have an entire collection of photos of the vans. 🙂
As a military “brat” we had moved to many different places, including 3 foreign countries, in my youth. The experiences (as we never just stayed on base) and the way you view the world after being out of your “bubble” certainly broadens the mind. There have been times where I had wished I came from a small town, knew everyone, and didn’t venture more than 30 miles from where I was born. But I wouldn’t trade the upbringing, and open-mindedness I received from it, just to live small. I think I will focus my energies into creating eye- and mind-opening experiences for my sons that definitely don’t understand their first-world privileges or that there is more than one way to go through life. I’m glad I followed the link from Hands Free Mama, this is a wonderful article and beautifully written.
Bridget, thank you so much for your kind words. It sounds like you have led an adventurous life and are well-versed in the importance of experiencing different cultures. I think the military brat lifestyle has many long-term benefits. I understand it can be VERY tough as a child, but the resilience, open-mindedness, worldly experiences, and flexibility pay off in the long run. Your boys will benefit enormously by your decision to give them out-of-the-bubble experiences. Well done!
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Rachel, I am humbled, blown away and eternally grateful for the small part I played in your journey to Africa! What we have found from all our travels is that our “people” are all over the world. Thank you for encouraging your readers to look beyond their local communities for opportunities to grow, find themselves, and make a difference.
Also, you did such a great job explaining the life-changing impact from the relationships that you formed during your trip. We have found that our lasting impressions from the countries we’ve explored boil down to the people we meet along the way—not the sights or experiences—but the people. There is nothing better for the soul than getting out of our personal bubble and into the world. It brings perspective like nothing else.
XOXO,
Kellie
This is such a great article– I pray that every parent of a young child sees it. You are SO RIGHT, and I wish we had done more of this. We could have traveled to so many different places together had we not been so invested (literally and figuratively) in sports! Just the cost of 8 years of pitching lessons could have sent us overseas a few times. We got a lot out of sports, but at the end of the day, it didn’t meet some of our core values such as family time, faith and education. Thanks for a very compelling read.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Eve. You are definitely not alone! I’ve had several good friends recently who’ve shared the exact same thing. They said it is so hard to see when they were in the middle of it, but now that it’s all over they would have done things differently. However, it’s never too late to begin making those memories. The kids keep showing up for the trips as long as we’re paying. 😉
Yes!! My oldest is entering high school and the realization that we only have her home for 4 more years it hitting us. We have decided to make family travel the focus going forward. Just now starting my research where we will go :).
Jennifer, thank you for commenting. I am so happy for you!! You will never regret the sacrifices that you’ll make to create these memories over the next few years. High school flies by and you’ll never get these years back. Please keep me posted on the adventures you choose! 😊👏🏻