Tag Archives: family

Running from Math Teachers

Being a mom, I’ve decided, is a lot like signing up for an ultramarathon you don’t remember registering for, on a course no one has accurately mapped, with an elevation chart drawn by a drunk cartographer.

There are moments when the sun hits just right, the road opens up, and you think, “This. This is why people do this.” And then, about three minutes later, you’re in a ditch, tying your shoe with one hand while trying not to cry into your Gatorade.

That’s motherhood for me.

I love it. I hate it. Simultaneously. In the same way I love and hate mile 17 of a long run—far enough in that you can’t turn back, not far enough that you can see the finish line, fully committed and questioning every life choice that led you here.

Here’s the part people get weird about: if I had to choose motherhood again, I wouldn’t. There, I said it. Not because I don’t adore my kids—because I do. Fiercely. If it came down to it, I would step in front of anything for them, no hesitation. I show up for them, I take care of them, I push for what they need. They are, without question, the most important part of my life.

But if we’re talking about some cosmic do-over button? Knowing what I know now about sleep deprivation, emotional whiplash, and the sheer volume of sticky surfaces? I’m not sure I’d sign up for this particular race again.

And yet, here I am—bib pinned on, shoes laced, in it for the long game.

My kids bring me so much wonder and joy it feels like hitting that perfect runner’s high: the world sharpened, the air brighter, the sense that maybe, just maybe, I can do hard things. Then, ten minutes later, they bring anger, self-doubt, and anxiety—like realizing you misread the route and there’s another hill you didn’t plan for.

The mental part of parenting is the real endurance test. It’s not the packing lunches or the laundry; it’s the constant, gnawing question: Am I doing right by them? Am I screwing this up? It’s that voice that pipes up around mile 8 and mile 13 and mile 21: Are you sure you can finish this?

This week, that voice had company.

My oldest is in 5th grade, but he’s taking 6th grade math. He’s already finished that curriculum, so he’s been moved on to 7th grade content, most of which lives in a program called MATHia. Picture it as the treadmill of math: technically useful, but not especially inspiring, and you’re never entirely sure if anyone’s actually running the thing.

In my opinion, there hasn’t been a lot of actual teaching happening—more like supervised screen time with occasional math problems.

So when his teacher emailed to imply he wasn’t doing his assigned work this week, I felt my heart rate spike like I’d just started sprinting intervals. Then I noticed she’d copied the middle school principal.

Not his principal. Not his building. A completely different principal.

It was like getting a race DNF email from a race director for an event you didn’t even run.

The rage I felt in that moment could have powered the school’s lights for a week. I had just spoken to her last week about how he’d moved on to the next set of lessons. Now she was telling me he wasn’t doing work tied to lessons he had finished weeks ago—work that had only been officially assigned in the last two weeks.

So let me get this straight: he’s ahead, he’s done the material, and we’re mad because he isn’t pretending to still be on mile 4 when he’s already cruising at mile 9?

Absolutely not.

This is where the running metaphor and motherhood collide: I can tolerate a lot when it comes to my own race. I can handle blisters, bad weather, bad pacing, and poor decisions involving mid-race snacks. But when it comes to my kids, I turn into the runner who will absolutely march over to the race director and calmly, clearly, with a polite smile, demand to know why the course was mis-marked.

Motherhood is a marathon, sure—but no one talks enough about how messy the middle miles are. The beginning is all enthusiasm and new shoes. The end is finish-line photos and relief. The middle miles are where the doubts live. Where your pace slips. Where you negotiate with yourself: Just get to the next mile marker. Just make it to bedtime. Just answer this one email from the teacher without setting anything on fire.

In those middle miles, things get complicated. Teachers misunderstand. Kids get ahead or fall behind. You second-guess yourself hourly. You try to advocate without overreacting, to push without bulldozing, to support without smothering. You’re tired. You hurt. You keep going anyway.

But here’s one thing I’m certain of, even when nothing else feels clear: my kids will always feel my love. They will know, without a doubt, that I will stand up for them, even if my hands are shaking when I hit “send” on the email. They will know I am in their corner, whether the problem is long division, a MATHia module, or something much bigger down the road.

I may not have chosen this race if I’d seen the whole route ahead of time. But I’m running it. Every day. Some miles are ugly, some are beautiful, most are a strange blend of both. And as long as I’m on this course, my kids will know one thing for sure:

Their mom is still moving forward. Still showing up. Still fighting for them.

Even when she’d really, really like a water stop, a pacer, and maybe a new course map.

Running from the Old Me

How did I—a reasonably sane 42-year-old woman who once fancied herself a college athlete—end up screeching across the dinner table, “Stop saying buttcrack, for the love of God”? It’s a fair question, and the answer, I’m afraid, is that life has a way of sprinting ahead while you’re still lacing up your trainers. None of it was my doing. Not a single humiliating, heart-stopping mile. Call me stubborn if you must, but let me trot out the evidence like so many rogue blisters on a marathoner’s heel.

Exhibit A: Compartment Syndrome, My Five-Year Nemesis (2001–2005)
Ah, college volleyball glory days—until my legs decided to rebel. Chronic compartment syndrome: too much muscle crammed into too small a sheath, swelling like overpacked luggage on a redeye flight. I could barely hobble off the court, pain radiating like I’d run a marathon barefoot over coals. Surgery in 2002? Fizzled like a dud firework. The punchline? I was too fit. My body, that traitorous overachiever, had outgrown its own packaging. Who knew ambition could literally cramp your style?

Exhibit B: The Husband Who Strayed (2015—or Whenever the Heck It Ended)
End of June 2015, baby in arms, no maternity leave, husband off on noble recruiting trips like the dedicated coach he was. Or so I thought. What should have been a relay race through early parenthood turned into a solitary slog through betrayal’s mud pit. The fallout? A wound that festers still, quite possibly the hidden accelerant to that later stroke. Life’s curveballs don’t come with batting practice.

Exhibit C: The NICU Marathon (January 1–21, 2018)
Why my body treats pregnancy like a bad blind date—bolting for the exit before the appetizers arrive—is one of life’s more baffling mysteries. My babies always emerge from the chaos strong, healthy, and perfect as polished trophies, yet my womb seems to regard the whole affair as an unwelcome intrusion, ejecting its precious cargo weeks ahead of schedule. It’s a wretched mismatch, like a marathoner cursed with shoes two sizes too small. That premature arrival turned our world into a 21-day gauntlet of beeping monitors, tiny incubators, and the kind of bone-deep terror that makes every sunrise feel like borrowed time. Touch-and-go doesn’t begin to cover it. He’s thriving now, of course—my little sprinter, outpacing the odds—but those NICU nights remain the slowest, most grueling miles I’ve ever logged.

Exhibit D: The Stroke That Came Out of Nowhere (March 24, 2022)
Picture this: six weeks postpartum, fit as a fiddle, no vices to speak of. I’d never smoked, rarely sipped, and my cholesterol was so pristine you could frame it. Doctors poked and prodded, shrugged their white-coated shoulders, and declared it cryptogenic—a fancy word for “beats us.” Just one of those cosmic pratfalls, like tripping over your own shadow mid-stride. No warning, no fault, just a brain misfiring while I was still catching my breath from new-mom life.

Exhibit E: AFib’s Electrical Gremlins (January 19, 2025)
One ordinary Sunday, my heart decides it’s auditioning for a techno rave. Electrical system gone haywire—no clogged pipes, no dietary sins, no excess poundage. Just faulty wiring in the old ticker, demanding a hospital marathon and surgical pit stop. Here I am, patched up and plodding on, wondering if my body’s secretly plotting a mutiny.

I could keep lapping this track—miscarriages, job upheavals, the daily gauntlet of boy-mom chaos—but what’s the point? Running from everything has left me winded, circling the same bruised shin. No more. I’m grabbing the baton, plotting a new course, even if the map’s half-sketched. Because here’s the truth I’ve pounded into my skull on a thousand solo jogs: you don’t outrun life’s ambushes by fleeing faster. You lace up tighter, pick your stride, and charge toward whatever finish line you damn well choose. Buttcrack or no buttcrack.

Running from 6-7

In a world where you can be anything, be kind—until they say “6-7,” and then, well, all bets are off. That’s my new motto, etched into my boy-mom soul with the same grim permanence as a Sharpie stain on a couch cushion. You know the original saying, the one that sounds like it was dreamed up by someone whose biggest household crisis was a slightly wilted ficus? Mine’s been battle-tested in the trenches of a home where survival sometimes feels like the main event.

Picture this: I’m in the thick of what I call the “keeping them alive” phase of parenting three boys—Cub, Oz, and Wynn, my little whirlwinds of testosterone and poor impulse control. It’s not hyperbole. These kids have elevated “6-7” (you know, that endlessly clever knockoff of the world’s dumbest joke) to a kind of tribal chant. Say it once? Adorable. Twice? Tolerable. By the 47th time before breakfast, I’m wondering if the neighbors would hear a scream or just assume it’s the dog again. Being a boy mom isn’t for the faint of heart; it’s for those who’ve stared down a fart joke epidemic and lived to tell the tale. Poop? Fart? Endless variations on bodily functions? I’ve banned those words so often I sound like a malfunctioning parrot: “Quit saying it! Napkin! Napkin exists for a reason!”

And don’t get me started on selective hearing. You can deliver a State of the Union address about bedtime, and it bounces off them like rain on a raincoat—yet whisper “ice cream” from the next room, and they’re there faster than a Disney Lightning Lane Premier Pass holder. Dinner tables? Forget Norman Rockwell; ours is a spill zone of biblical proportions. Ketchup arcing through the air like a poorly aimed missile, milk pooling mysteriously under chairs—it’s inevitable, like taxes or that one sock vanishing in the dryer. The shirts? Always, always stained, not from heroic spills but from the casual genius of wiping grubby hands right across the chest, napkin be damned. I’ve done laundry loads that could fill a Laundromat, each one a testament to why paper towels were invented.

Then there’s the trail of abandoned gear—water bottles sprouting like mushrooms in every corner of town, jackets draped over bleachers from wrestling meets to soccer fields as if we’re auditioning for a lost-and-found world record. We’ve left behind more Owalas than a hydration influencer. It’s chaos, pure and operatic, the kind that would send a lesser soul fleeing for the hills. But here’s the magic: amid the “6-7” choruses and the perpetual crumbs, there’s this ferocious joy in it. These boys are my tornadoes, my glorious messes, and somehow, in the eye of the storm, I wouldn’t trade a single stained shirt for all the quiet in the world. Kind until 6-7 hits critical mass—then mama roars. Be kind out there, friends. Or at least napkin-adjacent.

Running from Elves

There are holiday traditions no one asked for and yet, like Aunt Linda’s fruitcake, they appear every year anyway. The weight gain, the mandatory family gatherings, the office party with that one co-worker who treats the mistletoe like a binding legal contract. But towering above them all, in a tiny polyester outfit, is the most dreaded tradition of all: the Elf on the Shelf.

This is the year the elf went from “whimsically impish” to “kid-sized federal parole officer.” I have had it up to my eyeballs with this smug little narc. At one point, he went missing for two days, which sounds dramatic until you realize he was just hitchhiking to work in my backpack, because I was too exhausted to stage yet another whimsical overnight scene involving dental floss, flour, and a crime-scene-level cleanup.

Christmas really wrung me out this year. I flirted with the idea of putting the tree up before Thanksgiving, but only in the same way people say they “might run a marathon someday” while eating nachos. By mid-December, the decorations, the gifts for co-workers, the gifts for children and extended family, the holiday baking, and the festive obligation to appear merry at all times all merged into one long, glitter-covered to-do list that I trudged through like a mall Santa on December 24th.

As of today, December 26th, the tree is coming down, the lights are going back into their natural tangled state, and every piece of decor is being evicted to the attic until further notice. Less stuff, less visual noise, fewer things silently screaming for attention from every flat surface. Overstimulation is my default setting these days; between the stroke fallout and regular life, my brain processes “holiday cheer” about as well as a dial-up modem processes streaming video, and last night it all bottlenecked into an ugly, paralyzing cry on the couch.

So here’s the moral, from one frazzled human to the world: be kind to your mom. All of this holiday magic is powered by a tired person who is probably one Elf misstep away from a nervous breakdown. Be kind to everyone, really, because even if nothing “big” is going wrong, the endless pressure of “all the things” can be enough to send someone sliding into the new year held together with tape, tinsel, and a questionable amount of peppermint mocha.

Running from Homework

I am raising a seven-year-old liar. At least, that’s what it feels like. Between the nights spent at the hospital with my mother—which stretched endlessly past eight o’clock—and juggling what should be the simple act of parenting, I discovered last week was, in every sense, a total wash.

I’d been assuming my husband was heroically managing the usual domestic parade of dishes, dinners, and homework. Reasonable, right? I should’ve known better.

It all came unraveling yesterday morning. Trying to look like the archetype of attentive motherhood, I pulled out Oz’s school folder—a thick bundle of papers and promises—and, harried and late for work, I deposited it on the couch with lofty intentions of review come evening.

Evening arrived with the sorts of surprises mothers dread. Eight homework assignments? Not one completed? The embarrassment was real and immediate. An apology email swiftly dispatched to the teacher affirmed my commitment to better vigilance.

But the real kicker came at 8:45 p.m., following football practice and a pit stop at the hospital. Forty pages—yes, forty—of untouched math lay glaring at me from his book. Forty! Bewilderment quickly morphed into quiet fury. Was it the seven-year-old, or perhaps the 46-year-old husband who had let us down?

So here I am, recalibrating our life’s schedule to accommodate this newfound mountain of homework. I’ve searched for a mantra to soothe my frazzled soul. It boils down to this: a woman’s work is never done, and if you want something done right, you must do it yourself.

The inevitable conclusion? I’ll be relearning second grade every night for the foreseeable future.

Running from Preschool

I suppose I ought to be more distraught today—perhaps even a little melodramatic, clutching tissues and sighing wistfully at family photos—but, apart from my knees muttering unrepeatable things about my running schedule and the Ohio humidity, I’m actually buoyant. Today, my youngest began preschool. This is remarkable not for the educational milestone, but for the subtle breaking of the laws of physics involved: at eight months, he walked out of the living room and straight past the baby stage, like someone late for an appointment. I’ve been waiting for this day with the patience of someone in the world’s slowest Starbucks line, already certain he’d love school, collect a minor fan club, and, with luck, keep his streak as resident class clown.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when he wept at the threshold. Cried. Suddenly, we were the emotional equivalent of the Titanic, and I’d become the ice floe. Part of me—about forty percent, depending on knee status—didn’t want to usher him forward. These transitions, these big-boy milestones, tug harder than anticipated. I mislaid a good chunk of his miniature years, busy patching up my own heart, knees, and other body parts, and now even the universe seems to have pressed fast-forward.

He is, contrary to this morning’s Oscar-worthy scene, ready. I know he’ll be brilliant. But the real snag, if I’m being honest, is called summer. Thanks to a few golden months with his dad and older brothers, my preschooler now suffers from dangerous levels of sibling confidence, convinced his miniature personal assistants are always on call. This is the magic realism of being three. He has no notion that his entourage must soon return to their educational holdings, leaving him more or less abandoned with only me, a healthy snack, and the increasingly bitter complaints of my knees.

By Friday, I expect he’ll ascend to full class celebrity and will start telling people, “Preschool is fine, but the staffing is subpar compared to what I’m used to.” Until then, I’ll be over here—alternating between nostalgia, pride, and speculation about whether it’s possible to put one’s kneecaps in timeout.

Running from Ping Pong Balls

To say the last few days have been a whirlwind would be rather like saying the Titanic had a bit of a leak. On Wednesday evening, I took my mother to the hospital for what was meant to be a harmless little outpatient MRI, the medical equivalent of a quick oil change. We never left. Instead, they discovered a tumor in her right frontal lobe roughly the size and shape of a ping pong ball, which—while delightful on a table with paddles—was considerably less cheery inside someone’s brain.

The worst part was when they yanked me out of the MRI halfway through, deposited me in front of the neurologist, and explained the horror in that brisk, matter-of-fact tone doctors seem to perfect in medical school—equal parts terrifying and unhelpfully calm. I had my three-year-old in tow at the time, who was requesting snacks with the urgency of a union boss, and holding myself together for both of us felt like a feat of Olympic-level emotional gymnastics.

About twenty-five minutes later—during which I tried to deep-breathe myself to a distant, tropical beach unpopulated by rubber gloves and antiseptic odors—they wheeled my mom back out. And then, astonishingly, they made me tell her she had not one, but three tumors in her brain. I don’t know what training program covers this particular duty, but I seem to have missed it. To summarise, it was one of the most excruciating moments of my life—and I say that as someone who has already endured a stroke and heart surgery. Within minutes, my mother had been upgraded to Person of the Hour at the ER, though I doubt she appreciated the honor.

Fast-forward three days, and here we still are. After spending 20 thoroughly disorienting hours in the ER—the sort of place where time passes both too quickly and not at all—they moved her to the neurosurgical floor. Compared with the ER, it’s practically a five-star spa. Coma-inducing lighting, yes, but far fewer crashing alarms. Now we sit and wait for Monday’s brain surgery, a phrase I still struggle to process whenever I say it aloud.

Meanwhile, my heart palpitations, which usually stop by for a polite hello a few times each day, have upgraded themselves to full-time roommates, appearing several times an hour. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone—largely because what could they do besides add it to the mounting pile of things none of us can control? So instead, I hold my breath, because the alternative—falling apart—feels almost indistinguishable from not surviving at all.

And yet, here’s the maddening part: I keep telling myself I can run this away. Every health crisis I’ve had, every checkpoint in this absurd obstacle course of existence, I’ve tried to outpace with running shoes and grim determination. But you cannot log enough miles to outrun brain tumors. You cannot map a route long enough to escape them. The more I try, the more disappointed I am when it doesn’t work. Like a disastrous training run, all stumble and stitch and no joy, I can only hope, truly and stubbornly, that this too shall pass.

Running from Labor Day

September, already?

Honestly, I don’t know how we got here. Somewhere between Memorial Day and Labor Day, time slipped out the back door without so much as a goodbye. One moment I was dutifully buying sunscreen and popsicles, and the next thing I know, we’re knee-deep in sharpened pencils, lopsided backpacks, and the collapse of all illusions that summer still has any life left in it.

Labor Day, for us, was extravagantly uneventful. We made no plans—unless you consider “trying to stop the children from recreating scenes out of a medieval torture manual in the living room” to be plans. Which, in fairness, it probably is. My children have acquired a new pastime: exacting as much physical and emotional damage on one another as possible, all before noon. The soundtrack to this, of course, is a relentless chorus of shrieking, crying, and at least one nosebleed (always the middle child, who, bless him, seems doomed to a life of collateral damage). We have thus far managed to avoid the emergency room, but I can practically feel it penciled onto the horizon of future weekends.

Naturally, the boys would have been perfectly content to spend the entire three days motionless in front of the TV, embalmed in potato-chip crumbs. But, because we are excellent parents—or at least stubborn ones—we forced them outdoors. They ran half-heartedly around the block in under five minutes, returned looking betrayed, and then managed to ask for snacks roughly every three minutes until bedtime. Forty-six snack requests in an afternoon. I did the math.

Now, I like to imagine myself as calm, patient, and capable of handling these miniature crises with grace. This is a delusion. At the tenth spilled cup of juice or the eighth announcement that last week’s “favorite meal of all time” is now “too disgusting to even look at,” something inside me snaps. It’s usually at this point that my husband, recognizing danger, quietly slides into the scene like a diplomatic envoy, defending my honor and ushering me away before I declare dinner a lost cause and start packing my bags for Monaco.

And so here we are: September. A new school year, a new season, and new opportunities to relearn multiplication tables, lose library books, and discover that my children’s capacity for whining is in fact infinite. Still, I’m clinging to the lofty goal of keeping my head—and occasionally even my sense of humor—through it all.

Here’s to a month of beginnings, cooler heads, and hopefully fewer nosebleeds.

Running from a Pickaxe

Tax-free week in Ohio is the back-to-school version of Rope Drop at Magic Kingdom. If you’re a parent, you know the drill: you’ve got a list longer than the line for Peter Pan’s Flight, desperate for deals and every coupon clipping you can snag. Last Saturday, the Thompsons charged into the outlet malls like it was the opening bell at Black Friday—fast, purposeful, semi-delirious.

Now, if you’ve ever wandered World Showcase in August, you’ll be familiar with the special brand of sweaty exhaustion that set in as we wound our way through the stores, kids melting faster than a Mickey bar in July. Coupon victory came hard, but eventually we limped home, untamed shopping bags in tow, seasoned and slightly singed around the edges.

But the magic didn’t end there! A sign at the end of our street declared in bold: “Garage Sale. Tools and Man Stuff.” For those who share their home with another adult, this was less a suggestion and more a legally compelling summons. Chas vanished faster than a Lightning Lane slot at Rise of the Resistance, Oz in tow, clearly hoping to unearth some hidden Indiana Jones relic (or at least another stick to add to his collection).

Ten minutes and one mini-expedition later, they reappeared, faces radiating unspoken adventure—think dads after surviving EPCOT’s Food & Wine with only a wallet mildly damaged. Moments later, Oz, our seven-year-old, appeared clutching a ten-dollar bill and loudly proclaiming his new life ambition: acquiring a pickaxe. Cue visions of him storming Frontierland, wielding his new prize, with me nervously calculating just how quickly Child Protective Services would respond in our zip code. But hey, boring never makes for good park stories or memorable family runs.

If there’s a lesson buried beneath the layers of outlet shopping, surprise hardware quests, and the ever-present din of “when does school start”—it’s this: structure is more magical than any Cinderella castle. By the time the school year finally started this morning, my fifth grader bolted for the door like he was rope-dropping Seven Dwarfs Mine Train; his enthusiasm was nothing short of Disney magic itself, and I couldn’t be prouder to stand on the sidelines, medal or no medal.

My second grader approached with equal excitement, though laced with those opening day jitters familiar to anyone who’s ever tried a new ride (or new lunch table). He’ll be making friends by lunchtime, probably organizing a lunchroom conga line just to make things interesting.

The preschooler, meanwhile, is pure Tomorrowland—marching to his own futuristic beat, running operations with a tone that suggests he skipped straight past “Cast Member” to “Attraction Manager.” If anyone’s wondering, yes, I’m bracing for parent-teacher conferences featuring references to “leadership skills” (read: tiny tyrant).

But I crave the rhythm as much as the kids do. And after a summer of running from everything—chaos, coupons, pickaxes—I’m ready to settle down with a fastpass for structure and a side of predictability.

So, here’s to tax-free weeks, unexpected adventures, and the kind of family training that leaves you with memories more magical than any race medal or Disney pin. May your journeys be as joyful and slightly unpredictable as a day at the parks—and may your neighbors never need to speed-dial CPS.

And the morning rope drop? Well, we made it. Just keep running forward.

Running from Everything: The August Marathon

Here in the thick of August, we find ourselves on the last, long lap of summer—the kind you run when you can both see the finish line and also suspect it might, in fact, be moving further away every time you glance up. In our house, the new school year is lurking just around the last bend: two weeks for the kids, but my husband and I are up for a head start with students next week. If this were a Disney race, we’d already have hit the castle, gotten distracted by a Dole Whip, and realized we still have to finish.

I work all summer, so my personal schedule doesn’t change much—it’s the unremarkable “Tomorrowland Speedway” of routines: reliable, uninspired, and a little too loud. But my husband and our kids? Their summer is pure Magic Kingdom chaos: rope drop every morning, parades all day, fireworks every night. Bedtime and wake-up times are more like vague suggestions, as if the laws of time only apply to mortals living outside the borders of summer vacation.

But race director that I am, I know better than to let the “RunDisney After Party” lifestyle run all the way to the start line of school. With two weeks left, I’ve activated the dreaded Operation: Earlier Bedtimes, much to the dismay of the crew who have become accustomed to living like nocturnal pirates. If I don’t do this now, the first day of school will look less like the opening moments of a Disney half marathon and more like the “balloon ladies” coming for anyone left at the back.

To try and restore balance (or at least fake it long enough to get us to the first bell), I’m putting us all on a reentry plan worthy of any Dopey Challenge: one room gets cleaned each day, one load of laundry run, and there’s a loose attempt at meal planning, in between the usual nutritional gambit of “Is this leftover pizza or the lost-and-found churro from last week?” I know this will pay off with more evenings free for kid activities, maybe even some peaceful runs around the neighborhood—my solo laps through the EPCOT of suburban life, waving to neighbors like we’re all characters in some elaborate parade.

Most days, I’m just trying to help my kids (and myself) become finishers in the marathon of “life skills.” The goal isn’t perfection; it’s having options. I want my kids to try gymnastics, football, science club, trombone—whatever piques their curiosity, like a list of Genie+ reservations: the more you sample, the better your story. Back in my day, exploring wasn’t so easy, and specializing was rarely a choice. I’ve found that being a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none has gotten me far: kind of like being able to race all four Disney parks, rather than winning one. In my career and as a coach, I see again and again that it’s the kids who diversify—who build different muscles, learn from new experiences, and sometimes even get a little lost along the way—who really go the distance.

And that’s what I’m aiming for: a family ready not just for school, but for the miles and magic that come after the starting gun sounds.