What ‘giving my kids the best I can’ really means: practical tips for ordinary parents
The crumbs from my half-eaten peanut butter toast stick to the edge of the $1200 tutoring brochure on my kitchen table, when 10-year-old Jax pushes his latest math test across toward me. Seventy-two. My chest does that little squeeze it does when I see a grade lower than a B, the same squeeze I get when I scroll the parent Facebook group and see all the announcements for after-school enrichment camps. Seven-year-old Lila is kneeling in the chair next to him, coloring over the tutoring company’s logo with a purple crayon, and doesn’t even look up when I clear my throat.
“Mom. I don’t want to do this. Can we not do it?” Jax says. I’m about to launch into the speech I’d rehearsed—how fractions are important for middle school, how I’m already saving up, how this will help him keep up next year—when he slumps his shoulders and adds, “I’m tired. I just want to come home after school and work on my Lego starship. I don’t want another class.”
For the first two years after we moved here, I lived by the rule that “giving my kids the best I can” meant checking every box. Travel soccer for Jax, that cost $180 a month plus uniform fees and weekend travel. A $10-a-month reading app for Lila, because the teacher said it would boost her fluency. I picked up extra weekend shifts at my part-time admin job to pay for all of it, we ate boxed pasta four nights a week, and I was so tired by 7 p.m. that I’d say “just give me five minutes” when they asked me to look at whatever they’d built or drawn. After three months, Jax quit soccer. He said he hated that I was always stressed in the car on the way there, checking my work emails, that he’d rather play pickup at the park with his friend down the street anyway. That’s when I started rethinking what “the best” actually is.
I lean back in my chair, look at the test, look at Jax’s tired face, and say, “What if we don’t do the tutoring? What if we try something else instead?” He blinks like he can’t believe I said that. I say, “I’ve got those heart-shaped cookie cutters, and we make brownies every Sunday. What if we spend 20 minutes after dinner every night doing fractions with me? We can cut the brownies into halves, quarters, eighths, practice adding them up. I won’t take any extra shifts to pay for tutoring, so I’ll be home every night by 6, and we can still have time for your Lego before bed. Sound okay?” He nods so hard his hair falls in his face.
That was three months ago. I started doing one small thing that I tell all my mom friends about now, it’s so simple I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. I keep a note in my phone labeled “What They Asked For” and every time one of the kids says what they actually want, not what I think they need, I write it down. When Lila said she’d rather I read one more picture book to her every night than do her 30 minutes on the reading app, I wrote that down. I canceled the app that next week, and we started reading two books before bed. Her last reading assessment showed her fluency went up 15 percentile points in three months, more than it did in six months on the app. It turns out, she was bored out of her mind clicking through pre-written lessons, and just wanted to hear me make silly voices for the characters.
I’ve started turning the “am I giving enough?” panic into a quick check. When I get that twinge seeing another kid’s coding camp or private piano lessons, I pull up that note in my phone. Last week, the top three entries were “Jax wants extra cherry syrup in his weekend soda”, “Lila wants to collect rocks at the creek after school”, “both want stargazing in the backyard next Saturday when it’s clear”. None of that costs more than $2 for a bottle of syrup. That’s the stuff they’re actually asking for.
One rule I’ve stuck to now is, if buying the thing means I have to work so much extra that I can’t show up for the small daily stuff, it’s not worth it. If I have to stress about the bill for a month after I buy it, that stress seeps into every interaction I have with the kids, and that cancels out any benefit the thing gives them. Last year, I spent $300 on a new tablet for Jax’s homework, and then I turned down his invitation to watch him launch his Lego rocket because I had to finish a work project to pay for it. That tablet didn’t make his grades go up, but sitting with him for 10 minutes watching that launch would have made him light up more than any new gadget ever has.
Last week, Jax brought home his latest math test. Eighty-two. It’s still not an A, and next year when he starts middle school, we might end up getting some extra help after all if he needs it. Last month, we saved for three months to get Lila the tap shoes she’d been asking for for six months, that’s the stretch we chose to make, because it mattered to her.
I still get that little twinge of doubt sometimes, when I see other parents posting their kids’ awards and camps. Last week I saw a mom talking about how her 10 year old already knows algebra, and I wondered for a minute if I’m shortchanging Jax. Then he came over, dragged me to the coffee table to show me the new laser turret he added to his Lego starship, and asked me to sit down for five minutes to watch him test it. I sat. I watched. I cheered when the little paper laser went flying across the room. That’s the best I can give right now. It’s not perfect. It’s not fancy. It doesn’t check all the boxes other people say it should. But it’s ours, and it works, most days. Some days I get it wrong, but that’s okay. We’re still figuring it out.
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