Driving Is The New Dinner in Youth Sports

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Driving Is The New Dinner in Youth Sports
by Karen Scholl

Driving is the new dinner in youth sports. I’m not sure who we have to thank for putting The Family Dinner on an Everest-sized pedestal, but I’ve got a club soccer schedule — digitized, color-coded, and synced with four family calendars — I’d like to show them.

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Sure, having the whole family sitting around the kitchen table — at the same time — eating a homemade meal (preferably organic, allergy-friendly, and Instagram-worthy) while sharing witty, thoughtful, intelligent conversation is pretty cool. But so is winning the lottery, and parents with kids who play sports may have more luck with scratch-offs than made-from-scratch.

It’s not like I haven’t tried. Even with expert-level menu planning, disciplined meal prep, and an all-in-one air fryer/pressure cooker/veggie chopper/homework monitor/meditation timer appliance that fits neatly onto my countertop and definitely does not listen to our conversations, I still couldn’t make dinner happen before 9 pm on a good day. Between getting my kids to practices, games, tournaments, extra sessions, special sessions, and Mom-will-you-take-me-to-the-field-so-I-can-practice-my-latest-trick sessions, I’m rarely in the kitchen long enough to refill the dog’s water dish.

But as overwhelming as all that driving seems sometimes, a lot of those miles come with some pretty awesome perks. Turns out my car is the most fruitful place for meaningful conversations with my kids, important news alerts, and general life updates.

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I’ve learned about their dreams of success and fears of failure, feeling lonely and fitting in. I’ve learned about their classes and friends, and their TikToks, YouTubes, and Spotifies. I’ve heard about the book they’re reading, the movie that’s coming out, the playlist they love, and how they use ChatGPT to draft texts they feel too uncomfortable to write themselves. I’ve participated in debates about local issues, like who has the best pizza in town. I’ve answered questions about politics, dating, when we’re ever going to go on vacation, where bacon comes from, why we can’t get another dog, what that button on the dashboard does, and why that kid in math class never gets in trouble even though he doesn’t do the homework.

Yes, my kids scroll while we talk — and sure, sometimes I’ve done that too, usually while pretending to check work email and not Google the latest lingo they’ve dropped on me. But when the stars — or maybe in this case, the traffic lights — align, a casual question can turn into them telling me a story I never would have known was lurking in them. Then I hold the wheel extra tight so that I don’t accidentally pump my fist in the air if I see the phone tucked away under their thigh. I realized that car time now is a lot like diaper-changing time was when they were babies. Before I had kids, I thought changing diapers was going to be the most unbearable task of parenthood. Yet, by the end of the first week with a newborn, not only did I realize parenthood had greater challenges than diapering, I’d also changed enough of them to realize they were no big deal. As the months went by I found that the pause we had to take to change his diaper every few hours opened up space for great (albeit nonverbal) moments. We’d laugh and play and bond while my body released enough oxytocin to carry me through 4 excruciating minutes of cleaning an up-the-back blowout.

Whether I’m changing my kids or chauffeuring them, these captive moments are special ones. Will I still complain about driving three hours each way for a 70-minute soccer game? Sure. Will I gripe about dropping him at the stadium at 4:45 am for high school practices? Definitely. Will I whine about getting on the outer belt every day at rush hour knowing that the 15-mile drive to practice could take anywhere from 25 minutes to 2 hours? You can put money on it. But I wouldn’t trade a single mile.

I’m just going to say it: the car still beats the dinner table. And honestly, it now has better Bluetooth. You may never hear that from a parenting guru, but for 16 years my car has been a confessional, a comedy club stage, and a therapy couch. I get the unfiltered download from my kid and can still pretend-grumble about traffic, mileage, door dings, and the time spent waiting in unpaved, unlit parking lots scrolling social media until my eyes cross.

Dinner isn’t the only — and still maybe not the best — shot at connection. And the way I see it, I can fantasize about what I’m missing out on at the dinner table, or steal bites of my gas station snack at stop lights while we debate who in our family would last the longest on Survivor.

Karen Scholl is a writer and creative director. In between driving her kids to more than 2,000 soccer practices, games, tournaments, and tryouts, she started writing about the everyday hilarity of being a soccer parent. Pre-order her new book, Surviving Soccer: A Chill Parent’s Guide to Carpools, Calendars, Coaches, Clubs, and Corner Kicks.