Latest / The Rooted Family / Ep 33 | When Kids’ Activities Take Over Family Life (And How to Know It’s Time to Pull Back)
Transcript
- Christian Cornish: And when I think about the type of children I want to raise, at the end of the day, I would much rather raise a child who knows their worth in Jesus Christ from not achieving or doing anything, but just because of who they are. And a child who deeply loves being with Jesus, learning about Jesus, spending time with Jesus and people who love Jesus. I'd rather raise a child like that than a child who can, you know, make it into the Olympics or make it into the NFL or who can, you know, be the best in their sport or their instrument. Well, hey friends. Welcome back to the Rooted Family Podcast. Last week we asked a pretty big question. when did childhood get so busy? Or even how? how are our children living busier, crazier lives in their early years, more so than us even in the millennial generation and beyond? We talked about the pressure so many families feel to give their kids every single opportunity to get them involved, help them discover their gifts, and then make sure they don't miss out while their peers are still moving forward. And we talked about how somewhere along the way, all of those good things can start adding up. And because the question isn't whether sports, activities, music, dance, or extracurriculars are a good thing, because they are, so many of them are very valuable. The real question here is when do good things become too much for our family? And honestly, I think that's a question a lot of us are wrestling with. And so today we're going to walk through some of the signs that your children's activities may have crossed that line, that they may have become too much for your family in this particular season. And we're not coming into this conversation as people who have figured it out. Absolutely not. we've had to wrestle with these questions in our own family, and we currently are wrestling with them too. We have children ages 12 all the way down to one, seven of them, in between there. And we are in the midst of trying to figure out what does it look like to maintain our family's rhythms and culture and the values of our family, all while still providing opportunities for our kids, especially living in a big family. And so if you're listening to today, or you listened to last week's episode, and you have found yourself thinking, okay, but how do I actually know if we have gone too far? That's what we're going to talk about today. So let's get into it. we're just gonna share some signs that your children's activities might have become too much. This is from our own observation, but also from our own lived experience. And one of those things that we would just say right off the bat is that if you're going into debt for your children's activities, it is too much. Yeah. I I think that's just straight up simple biblical wisdom. borrower is slave to the lender, as it says in Proverbs. So If you want to be a slave to these activities, if you want to not have control over your finances, if you want to carry credit card debt and interest, I mean, yeah, keep going with what you're doing. But the truth is there's a spiritual component to how we make these decisions and live our lives. And so if we are enslaved to interest and payments and all this other stuff, we're gonna just dread the activities and we're gonna dread going to things and we're gonna dread every time we have to go out of town again and book another hotel. I'm still paying last month's hotels off, whatever it is. So the fruit of the spirit is joy. And if you can't have joy in what you're doing, now we're not being who God made us to be. Well and you said it really well the other day when you said that by putting your family into debt For a child's activity, you're actually stealing from the future of your family. the legacy, the financial legacy that you could be building long term for your family, you're almost shortcutting that in the short term to give your kid this thing. Yeah. It goes back to that principle we talked about earlier of when you say yes is one thing, you're saying no to something else. And debt. Robs our future. I mean, you and I have felt that. We both went to private school. So that was incredibly expensive. When we were first married, we had to learn how to handle credit cards properly, and car loans and all these things. And the more we cleaned them up and got rid of them, the more we realized, yeah, that was ridiculous and awful and very Wake, just it just costs us so much. And cleaning it up was a very difficult process. And we are so happy to be almost to the other side of all that. And we're like, we're not going back. We're just not gonna go back to that. Yeah. In fact, I'll give a good tangible example. You came to me the other day, told me how much this extra competitive dance was gonna cost, like in thousands of dollars. and I was like, It's just a clear no. It's just not in the budget. And that was one of those boundaries of when is when is enough enough? what what is enough is what we can afford to pay for. and I'm happy with that. And she can be happy with that. I truly believe she will be happy with the level that we landed on. And we're not bad parents because we said no to that level of dance. That's such a good thought. If if we can encourage you in any way here, you're not a bad parent if you have to say no because you can't afford it. Again, this goes back to what do we what is a good parent? A good parent takes care of their child, gives them what they really need. And also, I think a good parent teaches a child what it looks like to have boundaries when they get older. I mean, if we just go into debt and spend fruitlessly. And then our children don't understand that, hey, money doesn't grow on trees. if they don't understand that only so much comes in, and so we wisely choose to have it go out, then if they don't learn those lessons, they're gonna go out and make the same mistakes we did and then multiply them, most likely. That's true. And that's so easy to forget, especially in the moment when we're afraid to disappoint them. And we're afraid to let them down. So yeah, I think that these are just really good things to remember in life. This is an opportunity when we actually have to say no because of the financial reasons. I think you can actually give your kid a better lesson that they could never learn from an activity and one that will serve them as they go into adulthood. And that's probably very difficult. To remember, I totally get that. But we have to remind ourselves of these things now. So that when we're in those moments, we can remind ourselves there's a bigger picture here. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if I ever shared this with you, but when I was in middle school, I was a figure skater and a ballerina. And I was the oldest of four kids, my parents. had us all in different, you know, activities. And I remember they had asked us all to take they called it a pause from all of our extracurriculars for a full year. And I remember I was pretty heartbroken at first because I was very involved at the ice skating rink. I was on a synchronized ice skating team. I had a private coach. I was taking ice skating lessons. Like I was there multiple times a week. Wow. Yeah, and it was fun. I loved it as a kid. You were too legit to quit. Too legit to quit. But then you were But then I quit. So but my parents framed it as were taking a pause. And looking back on it now, they didn't make it about the finances, but it probably was. You know, they didn't really share all the details there, but I think it was because they wanted to just have some breathing room for a year. And I remember thinking as a kid, I was actually excited to just take a break. And I I actually looked forward to just having more free time. And in the end, I mean, I'm not like a destroyed adult. I'm not a heartbroken adult because I didn't have that year of figure skating. But I will always remember my parents' choice in that. And actually looking back on it as an adult and as a parent. I actually have a lot of respect for them because they had four kids who were involved in a lot of things. And they essentially said, you know what, this year as a family, we're not doing any of it. And we're going to take a break. And so I I don't know if any of you listening are in that situation where you're like, my gosh, that would be amazing. A whole school year where our kids are not involved in anything. I mean, I think about what could that give your family in time this year? What could that look like for your finances to essentially cut out all of the activities, the instrument costs, the you know, equipment costs, the travel costs? What could it look like even for your family? Like what could you gain by doing that? Yeah, because we sacrifice a lot. And I think it's important to remind ourselves, like at going back to this question of when is it too much? Have you really counted the cost of what you're sacrificing? I grew up with a boundary. my dad was like, we're not skipping church for sports. that was just a family value. we weren't going to someplace that was like everybody's in church, you know, five nights a week or something like that at all. But it was important to my dad that we Did not forget the sacredness of going to gather on Sunday mornings and do worship. And so that was just a boundary in place. But we can so quickly sacrifice going to church or a community. We can sacrifice schoolwork, even. We can sacrifice learning. We can sacrifice finances, all kinds of things that. We haven't probably counted the cost for, but if you want to say, for instance, church is important to you, if you really say and believe that, but then you don't go, you actually start skipping for sporting stuff. I think it's just fair to ask ourselves, is it really? Because am I willing to put something else before it? Yeah. And I mean it's so tempting. We're very entrepreneurial. Like this is slightly different, but I'm just being real of It can sometimes be tempting on a Sunday to say, Hey, we're skipping church because we got work to do. You know, we just didn't have time throughout the week and we're just gonna work and go. And what does that say about us? What does that say that we truly value? And we've we've had those conversations and had to make the what really does feel like a hard choice to say, Okay, we're gonna keep this as important to us and we're gonna go to church. Yeah. And then later I don't think we've ever regretted it. I think we've always turned around and said, you know, it's kept us true to what we actually value. Yeah. And I think it's it's good to stop and say, you know, hey, if you stick to those kinds of rules and boundaries of what's really important to us, what do we don't want to sacrifice? Yeah. I've noticed in today's world, way more than when I was younger, is there's a lot of people who say that they're Christians, believe that they're Christians. I mean, some of them are even friends of mine from college but they've really stepped away from the body of Christ. They are not active in any church community, but they say that they're believers in Jesus and that they're Christians They just believe that you don't have to be a part of the body of Christ. Yeah. And well, I'm gonna put you on the spot for a moment too. because I think there are a lot of people listening here that they might say, Well, you know what, going to church is a nice idea, but these sports today, they require their students to be there on a Sunday morning. To be at practice or a game. And if they are not, then they can't be on the team. And so I I'm curious to know do we just say no to those kind of sports? Or do we feel like there's a bigger thing at play here as a Christian? Yeah, I think you have to really stop and think about this. If you want to be a rooted follower of Jesus, you want to be a rooted follower. family. I think you're here right now because you want that. So let's just evaluate what's the values of sports and that that culture and that community versus what are the values of the church? And you decide you're an adult. What do you really want? The values of church and and I get not every community is perfect. So let me just preface that. But let's just say this is what we should be pursuing as a church. This is what we also have to do as individuals To make that a reality. If you want to pursue accountability, if you want to pursue the fruits of the Spirit, if you want to pursue a heart of of service and just a soft heart toward the Lord, right? Like scripture talks all the time about hardening our own heart. So if you want to be softening your heart, if you want to be a part of a community that encourages you and uplifts you to be more like Jesus, then you have to be a part of the church. You cannot get that outside of the church. Like you can proceed how to move forward. But I think as rooted followers of Christ, we're just gonna have a really hard time. Saying, hey, we're Christians but we don't go to church. Hey, we're Christians, but we don't spend time with other Christians. Hey, we're Christians, but we don't serve. We don't give. We don't have accountability. We don't have accountability to our life. And I can say as somebody who, you know, at one point in my life lacked accountability, as an adult, I've only added in more and more layers of accountability. I have financial accountability. I have spiritual accountability, I have temptation accountability, and I am so happy and so grateful and more like the man God wants me to to be today with those things in my life. the only accountability you have from a team in the in the activity world is did you get your work done? Yeah. Did you get better? Did you work harder? You know, that's it's really where that culture of First in, last out is honored. But then most of those people truly turn around and say, Yeah, but you know, my my family sacrificed or my family lost for that. So I think if you're here today, what you want, your deepest heart desires, you know, there's some things you can find in activities. And I hope you hear us say that, because we are doing those things. But I don't think you can find them solely by giving up being a part of the body of Christ. I just I I think that's misaligned. and I only learned that from my own father, like we talked about, and the boundary that he helped me learn as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And we're all here because we want to have a rooted family. We want to raise a deeply rooted family and not just raise a deeply rooted family, but we want to raise deeply rooted Men and women who will go on to contribute to society, who will become rooted moms and dads for our future generations of our family legacy. And I think about the people who who truly are a part of our family story that can help bring out the best in our family, and who do help us become more rooted is being a part of. body of Christ And so I almost think it's impossible to raise a deeply rooted family if we are not prioritizing our time and our schedule to be with the body, Can I ask you something? When was the last time you actually felt at peace? Not just productive, not just caught up, but settled. Because most of us aren't lacking desire for a slower, deeper life, we're just stuck in the busyness that keeps us rushing right past it. That's why we created the Slow and Savor Society. It's a snail mail club. Yes, it comes straight to your mailbox. It's a simple, tangible way to slow down each month with a piece of art, a cozy recipe, and a letter designed to help you reconnect with what actually matters, with God, with your family, and with your own soul. if your life has felt full, but not meaningful. This is your invitation to begin again. You can learn more or join us at legacyrootsco.com slash Mel Club. And right now, if you use Code Podcast, you'll get 50 % off your first month so you can try it out. Now back to the episode. I have a question for you. Uh-huh. Because I I think there's this relatable thing. And I'm gonna ask you this question. I think we both went through this. So I'm not trying to single you out here. But I think there's a lesson to be learned for people about also shaping your identity. Uh-huh. And I'm curious because you were in so many activities And now when you become an adult The truth is, you're not those things anymore. You don't get to be a ballerina. you don't get to be a figure skater anymore. Like I don't get to play tennis anymore. at least competitively. Yeah. So, you know, share with us how you had to kind of rewrite pull back your identity and I mean I've I've just watched this from a distance and I've gone through this, but how hard that is. Yeah, and I think this is a big part of my story in in probably why I'm such a big proponent of honoring the Sabbath and creating margin and rest within our family life. And this is to no fault of my parents because it's truly like what I wanted. In high school, I was involved in many things, including being an athlete and a ballerina and a part of many clubs and extracurriculars. And then you went into college. Mm-hmm. And did the same thing. Class president and you held executive council roles and you were very involved. Super. And so what happens is when you raise your kids to be so involved like that, again, this is not The fault of my parents. They did not make me do all these things. but what happens is you start to believe about yourself that your value is in what you achieve. And I valued, and I hate admitting this today, but it's true, I valued doing more for God and achieving more than being with Him. Hmm. And when I think about the type of children I want to raise, at the end of the day, I would much rather raise a child who knows their worth in Jesus Christ from not achieving or doing anything, but just because of who they are. And a child who deeply loves being with Jesus, learning about Jesus, spending time with Jesus and people who love Jesus. I'd rather raise a child like that than a child who can, you know, make it into the Olympics or make it into the NFL or who can, you know, be the best in their sport or their instrument. Those things are amazing. I think both of us would say we value excellence and we want our kids to be competent. it's not to diminish those character qualities. But if I had to choose, I do think that to me it's more important that we prioritize what does this look like to raise a child who their top most priority isn't in producing. I love how you said that. That's I think that's so important. And let's bring this back to one of our first topics around this conversation is we want to give our kids something more, something even better than what we had. We want to take the the hard lessons we learned, the mistakes we made, and we want to help them either miss or learn earlier in a more gentle way. And I think what we're talking about here is unwinding our identity. Yeah, right. And there's nothing more humbling than becoming a parent. Mm-hmm. My kids couldn't give a rip that we made it into state as a tennis team. They couldn't care less. I actually could go out there and tell them that right now and they'd be like, I don't even know what that means. Like they couldn't give a rip. they don't care that I have some trophies from winning baseball tournaments. But I can tell you they truly admire watching you lead our family in devotion. I know that they look up to you when they come down the stairs and see you sitting in the chair with your Bible. I know that they love the time they get with you on Sabbath. Time that you are not with your phone, that you're so focused on them. And I think about that's the man they're admiring. yeah, They don't admire your going to state. They admire who you are as a leader and a man of God for this family. And our kids love spending time with you in the kitchen. They jump for joy when they're invited in. They love just sitting with you, playing a game, and they genuinely love coming alongside you. to to take care of things around here as your painting business has grown. Our girls love going to class with you and being alongside of you and and helping and supporting that. And I think that that's beautiful that we can give them that. Yes, I think I think we make the point that again, there are so many ways to develop your child, to form your child, and it it can happen outside of kids' activities. And so if you have to make the hard decision of hey, we can't do this sport because we're gonna now prioritize church on Sundays. And that's a really hard decision to make as a family if you already are committing your weekends to these sports. I think that having the greater picture in mind of okay, we might be saying no to this in this season, but what are we gaining in character formation, spiritual formation, even just family formation? What other signs would you say that a family is doing too much when it comes to kids' activities or extracurriculars? Yeah, I think we've done a great job of covering some of the big ones, but I do think there's a few that are really worth bringing up. And making sure that if these speak to you, I don't want to miss them because I want you to hear this. So does your child have time to simply be a kid? Can they go outside and play? Can they sit around the house and hang out with you? Or even have time alone for themselves? I mean, these are some great gifts. there's a lot of research coming out on the gift of boredom. And the actual true value that that provides for children. And I think you have done an amazing job of this. Can you share actually quickly about that conversation you had with Azalea recently about how she's getting older and I thought you just had such a great conversation with her that really put this into perspective. Well, Azalea, she's almost thirteen. And it's hitting me. I'm like, my gosh, we almost have a teenager. She's five years away from being an adult. And I had a conversation with her because she was really sad, you know, that we weren't gonna sign her up for more dance classes that she wanted to do. And he said, you know what, Azalea, this isn't about what other kids are doing or what we're not doing. I said, at the end of the day, you are still a kid. And I want you to feel the freedom and the joy of being a kid to come home from school and to feel like you don't have anything going on. you could pull out a book or go for a bike ride or play a board game with another sibling. Like that's the joy of being a kid. And very soon you are going to be a teenager getting a job. You know, having a lot more on your plate when it comes to your studies and schoolwork and homework. I don't want you to have every night of the week with an activity. I want you to feel like you have the space to be a kid because soon enough you will not be a kid. And so that was my reasoning for her. it really didn't have to do anything with finances at the time. I feel like it wasn't even the The family time, we have lots of family time together. for me, it really came down to her being a kid I wanted her to look back on her childhood someday and be like, you know what? I actually had lazy afternoons to just kind of hang out and let the sun go down and do what I wanted to do as a child. Because we all know as an adult, we don't have that kind of time anymore. Yeah. Time is fleeting. I think another sign is that the family is constantly divided. Yeah. In some of these situations. So true. so I think you have to ask yourself how important it is for your family unit to be all together during the week and what kind of frequency do you desire? Yeah. If you're a family with multiple children, there's one child there. And we know because we've tried and we've sometimes succeeded at getting multiple kids together in the same activity. But because things are more competitive than ever, and because there is a lot of difference between kids, you know, in their development and ages year to year to year, you know, the culture is very much Either move up to higher age brackets or spread out. So you can't put kids in the same activity. And you can go to a game and you can see only one parent is there, and then the next time maybe the other parent is there because you're just divided, you have a lot going on. You know, it's not unusual. I hear this all the time too. one parent's grabbing that kid and going to soccer or whatever, and this parent is grabbing this kid and is going to baseball and you know the family is just divided. And if you do that so many nights of the week, you actually just don't have the time to enjoy being together. I feel like this is another sign too when it's too much. When mom and dad are just dreading the week. Mm-hmm. Because there is so much of that where the parents are just racing all over town, drop off pickups, going to games, sitting through games, going to practices, It's so much that the parents are feeling like th the sport itself is life-sucking to them. And I mean, we haven't even gotten to this, but what about your marriage? What if you get to the end of kids leaving and you have a cruddy marriage? you haven't learned what it is to enjoy being together. Or have a dinner together. And then there's no way you can be working together. Like I could say this because We have had these seasons where we are working so hard and we're trying to do stuff for the kids and we are like, okay, we're in this house, but we don't feel like we are connecting. We don't feel like we're working together. It's kinda like my schedule, your schedule, that kid's schedule, everything's just separated. And what are you gonna have left when everybody's gone? And it's just the two of you. Exactly. And your life was built on activities and running and how are you gonna make this marriage work? There's so many people who are getting divorced after the fact of their kids like raising their kids. And yes, of course, some of it is that maybe things were rough and they just were holding together, but I think more and more that is happening is two people live their lives living in the same house but constantly divided. And they have no idea what it means now to live together. And whatever they built was for nothing. Or what they built was around their kid. That's what I'm saying. cause your kids go off. Your kids leave. that is a reality. And we talk about all the time how you can't imagine and we know how hard it's gonna be to have our kids leave. But we also know that's going to happen. And that is a reality, and that is very important. Yeah, I I think that's a great point. I think that we have to all take into consideration, when we think about a rooted family, the rooted family begins with God. And then it's if you're married, it's you and your spouse. And if your kids' activities are taking from your marriage, that is a major sign. That the sports and the activities are too much. There is nothing wrong with telling your kids, you know what, hey, we can't do this activity in this season because mom and dad, frankly, we need more time together. And we're going to prioritize our marriage in the season. That is totally fine and acceptable. And I think looking in the future, your kids are going to look back on that and respect you for that. You're so right. You talked about like that hidden lesson earlier of pausing. What better lesson could you give your kid than to teach them about what it looks like to prioritize their marriage? What's what destroys an adult's life? More than anything, it's divorce. So teach your kid what it looks like to have a healthy marriage. Don't weaken your marriage, I guess is what we're saying. Yeah. for the sake of your kids' sports. Yeah. What is the point of that? I think the key and you know, we come back to this over and over and over again because we're the rhythms company. We're all about rhythms. And I think one of the final signs is that if you are consistently sacrificing your family rhythms to make your kids' sports work, that is another big sign that that it's too much. And what I mean by family rhythms, I'm talking, we already talked about church and Sabbath and family dinners and things like that. But I'm thinking about even the simple rhythms, the boring ones that keep your home functioning with peace. I'm thinking meal planning, laundry rhythms, just general cleaning rhythms, anything that is a rhythm to your family that you have made a priority at some point, but you're basically not keeping up on those rhythms anymore, and your house is falling apart. your family is stressed out all the time because you're not keeping a schedule anymore. you don't have food in the house because you're not planning your meals and you're not grocery shopping. even though those rhythms are kind of boring and ones that we would prefer not to spend time on, in the reality, those rhythms keep our home functioning. And so I would say personally if you're saying I just don't have time for those things anymore, that is a sign That your kids' sports and activities are too much. Yeah. I hear this often, just as you do, of I don't know how I have time for everything. And then they go off about all the activities and all this stuff. I don't know, I think if you really would have prioritized, you would say managing your finances, having food, all this stuff, having a family devotion, having times as a family where you're you know, just being together. that is what life is about. And there's no excuse to let activities get in the way of those things. And we've had to learn that lesson. Yeah. So we hope that today's episode has opened your mind to thinking about the topic of kids' activities and kids' sports a little differently. Perhaps some of this are new thoughts for you and your feathers have been ruffled a little bit. And we're not gonna apologize for that. We want to ruffle some feathers, but we hope that we did that in a loving way. I hope that you feel seen because we definitely know that the pressure is there. And so we get it. And we hope that just this conversation, this very organic, raw conversation has just helped you to think some new thoughts to possibly even. Ponder and reflect on your current situation and just see if it's the best situation for you. Or could there be some adjustments that you make moving forward this year or in future years to help your family prioritize the things that really matter to you? I would close with this. Stephen Covey says, in the seven habits of highly effective people. One of them is to work with the end in mind. And so that's what our ultimate encouragement is today. Think about the end. When your kid leaves at 18, and are we building toward that today? And our encouragement to you is that you have the opportunity to course correct now. You have the opportunity to take steps to be a more rooted family. And we just wanna encourage you to do that today. And we're not telling you what that looks like. But we are encouraging you to stop and let the pressures go. and encourage you to just pursue Jesus. And in that pursuit. Find a way to live within his ways and within his rhythms. Yeah, that's good. Cause at the end of the day, we're not trying to raise the most accomplished kids in the room. We're trying to raise rooted kids, kids who know who they are, whose identity isn't wrapped up in what they can accomplish, who know how to work and serve and rest and understand that their family and ultimately their relationship with God is the most important thing. And it's more important than the next trophy or recital or achievement. And so our question that we're gonna leave you with today is this is what we're as a family saying yes to helping our family become more rooted, or is it slowly pulling us away from the things that matter most? Thank you guys so much for being here with us on the Rooted Family Podcast. We're so glad you're here and stuck with us through this very difficult, thorny, layered conversation. Yeah, it really was. But I I've been challenged less just being a part of this conversation. And I know that we're gonna continue to wrestle with this just as much as you as a listener are. If you have thoughts on this topic, we would love to hear from you. Comment wherever you're listening. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, comment below. Shoot us a message on social media. leave a review. we love hearing from our listeners. And if you have any pieces of wisdom on this topic, we are all ears. We would love to hear. Yeah. So join us next time on the Rooted Family Podcast for another great conversation. And we look forward to seeing you. See ya next time.