I’m tired pretty much all the time, and I blame a lot of that on having three kids between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.
Somebody has practice. Somebody has religious school. Somebody has SAT prep. Somebody’s pickup time changed again, and I find out about it forty minutes before I need to be there.
Most nights I get into bed wondering how my back is supposed to survive another week of this.
But lately one thought keeps stopping me: In about five years, all three of them could be out of the house. And these completely ordinary days I keep trying to get through are probably the exact days they’re going to miss.
I started noticing how often I was annoyed by the logistical stuff
Not the big parenting moments. Not the fights or the milestones. The small changes that show up in the middle of a day that was already full.
Practice moved by half an hour. Someone needs a ride I didn’t know about. A pickup location changes. One kid suddenly remembers they need something from the store tonight, and it’s already eight thirty.
My first reaction was usually a sigh. Sometimes a grunt. Some version of seriously? while I was already reaching for my keys. I’d do exactly what they needed while making it pretty clear that doing it was costing me.
I’d pull into the pickup line and text here like the word itself was annoyed. I’d drive them to the store and spend the whole ride reminding them that they should have mentioned this earlier.
I’d help every time, but with an attitude that said you owe me for this.
I think some of that is just being a tired parent. But once I started noticing how often I was doing it, I didn’t love what I saw. My default setting had become mild annoyance at the normal events of my own children’s lives.
To me it’s logistics, but to them it’s their whole life
Driving to practice is another errand on my list. But practice might be where my kid sees their best friends every single day. It might be the only hour this week where they get to be good at something.
SAT prep is one more thing I have to work my schedule around. But for them it’s tangled up with all this nervous excitement about what comes next, about college, about the version of their life that’s starting to look close enough to touch.
A last-minute change in plans is fifteen minutes of frustration for me. For them, it might be the night everybody ends up remembering.
I started thinking about my own childhood, and what I remembered wasn’t the schedule. It was the feeling of being in the car.
My dad driving me to swim practice with the windows down, complaining about the route but still going. My mom waiting outside the school with a granola bar she’d grabbed on the way.
That’s what finally got to me. I’m experiencing these years as the person running the schedule. They’re experiencing them as childhood. And I don’t want every memory of getting somewhere they loved to include me huffing in the front seat because traffic was bad.
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I’m not trying to guilt myself into enjoying every second
Some of this is hard. I’m allowed to dislike sitting in a parking lot for forty-five minutes. I’m allowed to wish somebody had told me about the schedule change yesterday instead of twenty minutes ago.
I’m allowed to be tired and occasionally irritated and not feel like a bad parent for it.
I don’t think good parenting means smiling through every inconvenience. I’ve read enough of those essays, the ones where a mother explains that she now savors every single moment, and I always end up feeling worse, not better. That’s not what I’m after.
My kids should know that other people’s time matters. They should understand that last-minute changes affect the people around them.
I want them to tell me things ahead of time, and I’m going to be visibly annoyed when they forget for the third week in a row. That’s fair. That’s parenting.
What I want to change is one specific habit: the reflex to make my kids carry my irritation every time their lives create work for me.
There’s a difference between being exhausted and making sure everyone in the car knows exactly how much they’ve worn you out.
So I’m trying to complain less about the ordinary stuff while I’m still inside it
If practice moves, I say okay, what time? before I sigh. If somebody needs a ride, I try not to narrate my entire inconvenience on the way there.
Sometimes I leave ten minutes earlier than I need to, so I’m not already angry before we get in the car. That one helps more than I expected.
And I’ve started noticing the things that happen around the errand.
The conversation on the drive that I’d normally tune out because I’m thinking about what needs to get done. The song one of them insists on playing that I pretend to hate.
The kid who gets in sweaty and starts telling me something that apparently cannot wait until we get home.
Last week my seventeen-year-old got in the car after practice, put her feet on the dashboard, and told me about a fight between two of her friends in detail so specific I lost track of who was who.
I almost said Can this wait? Instead I just drove and listened, and by the time we got home she’d told me more in twenty minutes than she’d said all week.
I’m not suddenly thrilled to be a chauffeur for three teenagers. I’d rather be a little more present inside the ride instead of counting the minutes until it’s over. Because the ride itself is part of the life I’m going to miss too.
One day they’ll remember the feeling of these years more than the schedule
They probably won’t remember which practice got moved or how many times I sat in the parking lot scrolling my phone. They won’t remember most of the individual drives.
But they might remember that I showed up. That I was there when they came out.
That they could call me from a friend’s house at nine thirty on a school night and ask for a ride without worrying I’d make them feel bad about it.
I think about what I want them to say when they’re twenty-five and someone asks about their childhood. I want the answer to be easy and warm.
I want it to be mom took us everywhere. Not mom took us everywhere and made sure we knew what a pain it was.
Tonight I’ll get into bed tired. Tomorrow somebody will need to be somewhere at a time that doesn’t work for me, and I’ll probably want to complain about it.
But I’m holding onto the thought that keeps stopping me: I’m not just getting my kids through these years. I’m standing inside the years they might spend the rest of their lives missing.
And I’d like my part in those memories to feel a little warmer than a sigh from the front seat.
Editor’s Note: “As Told to Bolde” stories are inspired by reader submissions, interviews, and accounts shared with our editorial team. Details are often changed, combined, or dramatized, and our editors use AI tools in the writing process. See our Editorial Policy.
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