What I Regret About Being an Older Parent (And Small Changes That Have Helped)
The grass on the far side of the middle school soccer field was still dewy at 8 a.m. when I leaned against the chain-link fence, pressing a frozen water bottle to my throbbing left knee. I’d just climbed the 20 steps from the parking lot, and I was still catching my breath when the mom next to me squinted at the team sticker on my bottle and said, “Wait, how old are you again? I don’t think I ever asked.” I told her 48, and my son Jax is 12. Her eyebrows lifted just a little, the way they always do. “Oh, wow, you started so late,” she said.
I got married late, struggled with infertility for three years, and turned 36 when Jax was born. Everyone told me older parenthood was a blessing back then: I was more patient, financially stable, done climbing the corporate ladder, already owned our house. For the first few years, it felt true. I didn’t lose my cool over spilled juice the way my younger sister did with her toddlers. I had time to bake homemade cookies for every class party. But the older Jax gets, the more quiet regrets creep in that no one talks about.
A couple months ago, Jax came home from a weekend at his best friend’s house, where the two of them and his friend’s 36-year-old dad had framed out the start of a treehouse in their backyard. Jax dragged a stack of scrap lumber he’d gotten from the friend’s dad into our driveway and asked if we could build one in our big oak out back. My first thought wasn’t “how fun.” It was “I threw my back out moving a couch last month, this will put me in bed for a week.” So I said, “Maybe we can order a pre-built platform online. It’ll be done in a week, no hassle.” Jax just shrugged, kicked a loose nail across the driveway, and said “Sure, whatever.” That night, I walked past his room and saw him scrolling through photos of them covered in sawdust, grinning, and my chest felt tight. I realized I’d said no to something that mattered to him, just because I was too sore and too tired to deal with the mess.
That’s the big regret no one warns you about when you’re an older parent. It’s not just the obvious fear that I won’t be here to see him get married or hold my grandkids. It’s that I default to “no” way more than a younger parent would. I’m set in my routines. I look forward to my quiet evening on the couch after work more than I look forward to running around at the park. I’ve internalized the “old” label so much that I hold back before I even try. I’ve started noticing that Jax doesn’t ask me to do as many active things as he used to. He just asks his friend’s dad, or goes off and does it alone. His teacher mentioned at a conference last fall that he’s more hesitant than other kids to try new physical activities, and I realized my constant offhand “I’m too tired for that” has rubbed off on him. That’s the real regret, the one that stings: it’s not my age hurting me, it’s me letting it limit him.
I’ve made a few small changes over the past few months that have helped more than I expected. First, I made a rule I call “no default no.” When Jax asks me something that sounds tiring, I don’t answer right away. I wait 10 slow seconds, and I ask one question: “When do you want to do that?” instead of blurting out no. If it’s after a long work day and I’m dead tired, I can say “How about tomorrow after lunch, when I’ve had a nap?” instead of shutting it down entirely. Last week, he asked me to go skateboarding with him at the park after dinner. I was settled on the couch, ready to watch my favorite show, and the first thing on my tongue was no. But I paused, asked when, he said we’d only stay 20 minutes, so I went. I didn’t get on the board—my balance isn’t what it used to be. I just walked next to him while he practiced kickflips, and when he landed one for the first time, he ran over to me yelling so loud the other skaters turned to look. That 20 minutes mattered more than any episode of my show ever could.
Another thing I do is split big messy projects into tiny chunks. Instead of trying to build a whole treehouse in a weekend, I told Jax we’d do 45 minutes every Saturday morning, that’s it. If my knee or back hurts halfway through, we stop and eat popsicles. We’re three months in, and it’s still half done, but that’s okay. Jax brings his friends over to work on it on Sundays too, and I sit on the patio and bring them lemonade when they need it. It’s not the perfect dad-built treehouse I had when I was a kid, but it’s ours.
For the big, quiet fear of missing future milestones, I started a tiny notebook I keep by my bed. Every Sunday, I write down one small thing that happened that week that made me proud of him, or something silly he said that made me laugh. It’s never more than two sentences. No big life advice, just stuff like “October 14: Jax stopped to help a little kid pick up his spilled candy at the football game, didn’t even wait for a thank you.” I told him where it is, so if something ever happens to me, he has it. It doesn’t fix the fact that I’m older, but it takes away the little bit of anxiety I’ve been carrying around, and I stopped making offhand comments about “hopefully I get to see this” that were making Jax uneasy too, I realized.
I still have regrets. Some days I can’t even walk around the block with him because my knee is too swollen. I still say no more than I want to. I still lie awake some nights thinking about all the milestones I might miss. Last Saturday, we were taking a break from the treehouse, sitting on the lawn eating popsicles, and Jax called me an old man when I complained about my back. I threw a piece of grass at him, and he laughed, and for a minute I didn’t think about regrets or age or what might happen later. I just thought about how cold the popsicle was on my hands, and how loud his laugh was. It’s not the story I thought I’d have, but it’s the one I get.
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