When our kids were very young, Halloween was the most challenging holiday for my organic-loving, healthy foods-oriented wife. Seeing her children come home with bags of candy just about made her head split apart, so she set firm ground rules: one larger piece of candy after lunch, or three smaller pieces. If the kids didn’t sneak (and their father exhibited unusual self-discipline), the candy would last until Valentine’s Day.
Our son Graham went through a daily ritual of selection that I wish I would have recorded. It could take him almost an hour to make his choice. He’d pour his candy out, then try out about a dozen combinations, often negotiating with my wife: “This is really medium, not large, so how about this one and one of these?”
We didn’t know it at the time, but those dealings could have given us a glimpse into his life calling. He succeeded in business right after college in a way that was mesmerizing to watch: Boston Consulting Group and then the Gates Foundation pleaded with him to stay on as he moved upwards and onwards. He got into a prestigious business school and graduated near the top of his class, and then landed a great job with a very family friendly but also very profitable company. For his MBA graduation gift, I decided to buy him a “bespoke” business suit: you pick out the fabric, the cut, the lining, everything, get measured, and then they put it all together.
It was especially fun to go to the tailor together. As Graham looked at possible linings, I was taken back to those Halloween days. He tried two options, pulled one back, added a third element, reconsidered, pulled the first one back, until finally, he made his choice. This was repeated when he was choosing buttons, lapels, everything. Twenty years prior, his choice was about the flavor of the penny candy; today, he was choosing the texture of the wool for a suit in which he’d make business deals involving millions of dollars.
I saw the connection only in hindsight, but it was startling.
Our oldest daughter has primarily worked in caring industries that don’t pay much at all, but they fit her high “EQ,” emotional empathy and awareness. Our talkative, witty, and ambitious youngest daughter landed a job with a communications company that publishes various magazines. I always said that if I had Kelsey’s personality and wit, my conferences might rival Beth Moore’s.
When our children were growing up, however unintentionally, if you measured our concern for their future lives by the amount of time we spent doing any one activity, you might say we focused on sports. This isn’t entirely fair to say; since Lisa homeschooled, we spent a lot of family time on education. But when school was out, sports took over, along with various church activities.
I love sports and enjoyed watching our kids compete. But while only one out of 15,000 kids in the United States will end up being a professional athlete, sports has taken over modern family life, timewise. Churches will tell you that slavish devotion to competitive sports is making it more and more difficult for congregations to keep meeting together or have any extra conferences or meetings. Kids often spend far more time practicing their bodies than they do engaging their minds, and certainly more than they do learning the spiritual disciplines of our faith.
When my son was graduating from high school, he had a chance to play athletics at some smaller schools. When we talked about it, he realized while he could be a good athlete, his skills to excel laid elsewhere, so he went to a school where those skills could be developed while he settled for playing intramural sports. It’s paid off in a major way.
Here’s what I’d tell younger parents today: Study your young children. Protect them from just going along with the crowd—playing several sports at once like all of their friends do. Help them see their unique skillsets and what gives them soul-filling joy and point them in that direction. Sports can teach a lot of valuable lessons—I’m not saying it’s wasted time if they don’t become professional athletes—but don’t allow our culture’s slavish devotion to sports eclipse even more important and relevant lessons.
From my vantage point as an empty nest parent, I can tell you this: your greatest joy when your kids are young adults will be based on three things, in this order: their devotion to God, their devotion to their own family (their desire to stay connected with you, and their involvement in their own family if they have one), and watching their unique contribution to this world, whether that’s caring for others, creating products for others, or selling products to others (this world needs all three).
I’m not sure most of us raise our children with these priorities, time-wise, but for those of you still raising kids, you’ve got a chance to at least talk about this with each other. Does the emphasis of your family life, leisure time, and training line up with the priorities of what you think matters most in life?
Start watching for clues when your children are young. Looking back, I can now trace every one of my three children’s career arcs. I wish I would have spent a little more time fostering those rather than buying juice boxes and preparing orange slices for yet another tournament of toddlers that created more laundry and plastic trophies than it did life lessons.
Faith, family, and future—if our children excel in these, we won’t care how many home runs, goals, touchdowns, or matches they won when they were young. Let’s help our children focus on and prepare for the lifelong battles that truly matter.