Don’t mistake activity with achievement.
– John Wooden

Figuring out your kids’ extracurricular activities is a bit like wedding planning. You start off with good intentions—something simple and small—and before you know it, you’re sucked into the black hole that is the wedding industry, filled with the sudden conviction that you must have this exact floral arrangement or that particular font on your invitations.

Most of us start our kids off in extracurricular activities with good intentions. We want them to have skills they can carry into adulthood, to learn teamwork and make friends, to commit and work hard at something. But then, at least where I live, you get sucked into a black hole of intensity pretty quickly. Suddenly, you’re committing much more time and money than you had expected, your goals are becoming performative, you’re investing more and more. Multiply all that per child, and your life proliferates into a revolving door of activities. Your idea of normal becomes warped. You start wondering, what is the point of all this? Am I doing too much or too little? Am I pushing them too hard or not enough? Am I missing some crucial window of entry? Or am I depriving them too much of free time?

I have no answers to these questions. I have been the parent realizing my kid is at a noticeable disadvantage for starting a sport later than every other kid in her age group. I’ve also been the one wondering if it’s reasonable to start another child in a competitive sport at an early age. I’ve been the one regretting that one music teacher is not challenging my child enough, and wondering if another is too harsh. I’ve been the one concerned about activities cutting too much into family and church time, and the one celebrating the identity, friendships, and life skills these same activities have given our kids. I’ve been the one following charts and books to figure out which activities to do, and I’ve also been the one taking things as they come. I’ve been the one deciding for my kids, and I’ve been the one letting them decide. And probably just about everything in between.

There’s plenty of fodder for analysis here. There are factors unique to each child: their proclivities and personalities, tendencies and needs. There are factors unique to each family: available resources and margin, geographical limits, held values. There are those pervasive in the surrounding culture: implicit standards, norms of behavior, cultures set by teachers and coaches. And then there are the factors that I bring in: my personality and biases, past experiences, fears and hopes.

Much as I wish there was a formula for figuring this all out—some way to plug in all these factors and output a definitive plan for what, where, when, and how much to do for each child—I don’t know if that’s really the point. Equilibrium is elusive anyway: just when I’ve finally figured something out, enough changes that I have to think through it all again. Perhaps the point is not so much equilibrium, perfection of decision, as it is the process. And these are the kinds of things the process is making me think through:

• what is success? What is this thing that we all feel like we’ll know when we see it, but can’t put into words? Is it getting into an elite college? Is it making a certain salary? Is it thriving socially or emotionally? Is it loving and following Jesus? The answer “all of the above!” doesn’t cut it anymore, because things tend to come at the cost of something else. And really, nothing forces you to examine your own definitions of success as honestly as realizing, when rubber meets the road, what it is you want for your kids.

• the illusion of control. It’s easy to believe that if we parent a certain way, our kids will turn out a certain way. When we labor under that illusion, every decision is blown into monumental proportions. The pressure we put on ourselves is enormous. But the reality is, in the end we have far less control than we think. Which is a scary prospect. In what other venture in life do we invest so much with so little control in the end? But that is part of the calling of parenthood, that is part of the point of it all, to experience the faith and grace that come into play where our control ends and God’s begins.

• the lens of self. I look at the world in a very specific way, because of my personality and my past. Because I love my kids like I love myself, I tend to make decisions for them the way I would for myself, but part of what this process forces me to realize is that my way is not the only way. There may be less-linear paths to a goal, or other values that are just as important as the ones I hold. My kids will not experience life the way I did, because they are not me.

• fear of missing out. Part of the problem is that there are so many options out there. And this can lead to FOMO (or its cousin, FOBO—Fear Of Better Options). Just when you’ve settled into one option, you hear about another that seems better. Just when you’ve settled on which activities to do, you hear about someone else excelling in something else and wonder if your child is missing out. The fact is, no option is perfect. Even things that look perfect and effortless come at a cost. There will always be options out that there seem better. And in the end, is it really up to you to figure it all out? Can you be content in the one or two values you’ve decided to be most important? Comparison is a double-edged sword—sometimes helpful, mostly not.

In the end, it’s not so much about what our kids do, but how we go about doing it all—how we go about considering these issues, how we live day-to-day with mission, perspective, and grace. And what we learn along the way.