Our oldest son is almost 14, and while I wouldn’t say he is lazy, there aren’t many things he is truly passionate about. At this age, I am ok with that. He does well in school, he has friends, he is a leader among his peers, etc. BUT, he isn’t truly passionate about any one thing. The other day he visited his bio-dad, who took him to a gym about 45 minutes (with little traffic) from our house, of great. He comes home saying he would like to try Jiu-Jitsu, again, ok great. But, I asked him did you think about the logistics. He will be starting high school in a few months with a very full course load-four honors courses, Latin, PE, and whatever elective he decides to take. The gym is at least 45 minutes from our house, with traffic it could take us anywhere from 45-90 minutes to get there, then the class is two hours, that would put us home about 10 pm (if we are lucky) on a school night.

“Uh, well, no I didn’t think of it like that.” Was his reply to me.

Seriously, I want to smack my head against the wall. Not to mention he has four younger brothers at home. If Dad is home…ok, fine. IF not, that means we pack of at least two little ones, drag them all the way to the gym, they sit there for two hours, yeah, lots of fun.

A part of me wants to encourage this excitement for a new activity, what if this is the ONE thing he could become passionate about and I squash it. On the other hand, I feel that IF he was truly interested, why hasn’t he looked at the places closer to home? His bio-dad doesn’t live here, and while I am sure he can guess what things are like at home (controlled chaos is putting it nicely at times) C KNOWS that things are like here day to day. I didn’t grow up in a large family. It was my sister and I, and she came along when I was almost seven years old, so I don’t truly understand what it must be like to sacrifice time spent alone with their father and/or I. ON the other hand, I would say time is about the only thing in short supply here. Our kids rarely wear used clothing, though hand me downs are in our house they each get their share of new clothes that they picked out…especially our oldest who is at the age where he is starting to care about his looks. (our 12, 8 and infant could care less, and as long as it has a Power Ranger or Mickey Mouse in it our 3 year old is happy) We have six computers in the house (though to be fair two are pretty much off limits), we have ALL the popular gaming systems hooked up to a 67″ TV! The kids have iPods, we are fairly liberal in what they listen to and watch, etc. These kids aren’t hurting for things…but sometimes I wonder if that is because our time is limited? Do I buy these things because they have to jockey for time alone with us and material things appease them?

I think that would be a way to put it off on us…but in reality, my husband and I like these things too. Oh, sure I am not a huge fan of my husband’s PSP or the kids’ DS, but they get those things I get my magazines (course my mags are a LOT cheaper than a PSP, but hey that is what I dig.)
And yet maybe that is a family problem…we each have our own ‘thing’ and we don’t know how to have fun as a family. We do have season passes to Busch Gardens, we have taken trips to DisneyWorld (though even on that trip I was afraid of missing stuff I planned things each day and hubby had to remind me to chill out), but the day to day ‘family time?’

Perhaps that is something we ALL need to work on.

Excuse the disjointedness of my post…I am still getting things together with the baby and not getting enough sleep (though that is getting MUCH better).