Are You Parenting with the Big Picture in Mind?

Chances are if you’re the parent of a school-aged child, that child is involved in something: Soccer. Basketball. Academic teams. Boy Scouts. Playing an instrument. Ballet.

The list of possibilities is endless, and the time commitments are usually significant. How does one mother get four children to two activities each over the course of one week? How does she put food on the table and clean her house and handle dentist and doctor appointments?

I have no idea. I don’t have much advice either, but I will tell you “Good luck” and pat you on the back. We can both hope for the best as I leave it to the parenting experts to give you tips on how to do the humanly impossible.

After an extensive athletic career both in playing and coaching, however, I do feel that I have enough expertise to discuss another aspect of raising a child who participates in activities.

Let me ask you a few tough questions:

What is your reason for allowing your child to participate?
Are you keeping the big picture in mind as you drive them from place to place?
Are you focused on what this activity is teaching your child about life?
What do you spend the most time thinking about: their playing time or how they’re growing as a person?

Our children want to have fun and be with their friends and enjoy the journey. But somewhere along the line, parents can lose focus.

First Corinthians 9:24–25 (NIV) says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”

In other words, it’s okay to train for something and work hard for it. You may even win an award. Yet that kind of award is temporal. This life is but a vapor. What we’re really running for as children of God is to bring those with whom we come into contact to him, right up until our finish line.

Let me pause to give you my resume for leading this discussion. My father was an athletic director and coach at a small Christian school. I spent my life in a gymnasium—so I was a gym rat—and watched my father work with parents and constantly battle with them. I got to see coaching from behind the scenes. In addition, my father coached me in three sports at our school, and I played for other coaches on traveling and AAU teams. I then played Division I basketball at Western Kentucky University, followed by my own career as a high school coach of three different sports.

During that time I had many opportunities to observe parents doing it right, but unfortunately, I had many more opportunities to watch parents doing it poorly. Parents losing focus. Parents forgetting why they were involved. I watched parents throw fits about things they simply didn’t understand or misunderstood.

I reached the “pinnacle” of a basketball player’s career (outside of the NBA) by getting a full scholarship to a Division I university to play basketball, and still, for me, basketball ended around the time I was a legal adult. Now, as a forty-one-year-old woman, I’ve spent more years not playing sports than I spent playing them, and I was part of a minuscule percentage of high-performing teenage athletes. Most kids will graduate from high school and never return to the activity you (and they!) are devoting so much time to.

I’ve watched parents treat their child and that child’s activity as though it was their world. In the excitement, they forgot that the whole point of participation is to teach their young one about the world.

When I was a senior in high school, my position on the all-state basketball team for Florida was a given. Then the coach administering the ballots cheated by removing my name and taking her own player instead when my father/coach couldn’t make the meeting. I remember when he came home, sat me down, and told me something wrong had occurred. Then he asked me what we were going to do about it.

I shrugged and hung on his words. What would we do?

“Nothing,” he said. “We aren’t going to do anything.”

He explained that basketball was not about the ball and the hoop; it was about what we learned as people. Sometimes life isn’t fair. Sometimes people cheat. Sometimes the coach has favorites. (Although chances are, not as often as you think.) Sometimes things don’t go the way you want. If something upsets you, you have to learn how to handle it. Do you confront the problem? Do you let it go? Are you looking at the situation fairly or with a skewed lens?

He also reminded me of why I participated in sports: Teamwork. Exercise. Fun. Meeting new people. Showing my character and love for Christ to those I met. Learning how to handle disappointment. Learning how to be humble in victory.

I could give you example after example of parents making fools of themselves—even a father who moved his daughter to another school over something that happened on the court, despite the fact that she had friends and was settled in so well where she was.

I write this post to remind you to see the big picture. Remember why you’re having your kids participate in this activity: They’re getting exercise. They’re a part of a team. They’re working toward a goal. They’re listening to someone and following directions. They’re facing frustration, disappointment, and lack of fairness. They’re also achieving accomplishments, feeling excitement, and reaching goals. Those are the reasons, and hopefully they will be growing in Christ at the same time.

Around the time they leave home, most children will hang up their shoes or instrument. They may or may not return to the same activity. As they leave those things behind, what will they take from the experience? What will be their life’s goal?

Remember what the apostle Paul wrote: “My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24 (NIV).

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.