Sometimes Parenting Feels Like Planting Seeds

Teaching kids responsibility is something most parents are doing quietly, repeatedly, and without much proof it’s working.

My son was sick most of this past week. Fever, sore throat, congestion, the kind of tired that settles into a kid’s face and doesn’t leave. We took him to the doctor, tested for strep, came back negative. But he wasn’t well, and anybody looking at him could see it.

The problem was that he had a big soccer tournament this weekend. Not a casual round-robin. The end-of-season tournament. Two games Saturday, potentially a third on Sunday. The kind of thing that matters to a kid who’s been working toward it for months. And from the moment he realized it was approaching, he had one position: he still wanted to go.

That put me in a spot a lot of parents know. Do you protect your kid, or do you let them honor their commitments? There’s not always a clean answer. As a dad, my first instinct is to protect him. He’s sick. He has a fever. He doesn’t look good. The last thing I want is to push him out onto a field in the heat because of a soccer tournament. But he wasn’t asking to be pushed. He was asking to be allowed. And those are two very different things.

That tension is actually what this article is about. Not the tournament. Not soccer. But what it feels like when you’re raising a kid and you’re genuinely not sure if any of the things you’ve been trying to teach are actually landing anywhere. Because sometimes you just don’t know.

He Still Wanted to Show Up

By Friday afternoon, he went off fever medication. No fever Friday night. Woke up at 5 a.m. Saturday morning and still no fever. So we went. Left the house at 6 a.m. to get to the field for an 8 a.m. game. He still looked exhausted. He still clearly wasn’t at 100 percent. But he wanted to be there for his team, and I wasn’t going to be the one to take that from him.

I was watching him the whole drive over. Not in a hovering way, just in a dad way. Trying to read him. Wondering if we were making the right call. But he was calm. Quiet the way he gets when he’s focused on something. He wanted to be there.

Then during the first game, he got hit in the head with the soccer ball. Medical staff came out to evaluate him, which is standard, but it got a little more complicated because he was already under the weather, already dealing with congestion and pressure. When they asked if he had a headache, he said, “Not really.” And I had to step in, because if you know my son, “not really” basically means no. That’s just how he talks. The medical staff heard it differently, understandably, and pulled him to sit out the second half while they reassessed.

I completely understood the caution. But I also had to advocate for him in a situation where the adults in the room didn’t know him the way I do. I had to explain that the congestion and pressure had been there before the game, that this was baseline for him this week, not a new symptom. I wasn’t fighting anyone. I was just trying to make sure the full picture was on the table. That’s the kind of thing nobody really prepares you for as a parent. The small moments where you have to show up and make judgment calls in real time, while simultaneously trying to protect your kid and let him grow.

Maybe Some Things Are Actually Sticking

Here’s the part I keep coming back to. Throughout the whole week, through the fever and the doctor’s visit and the uncertainty about whether he’d even be able to play, my son kept coming back to the same thing. He wanted to show up for his team. He didn’t want to let them down. He knew they were counting on him, and that mattered to him.

My wife and I have had a lot on our minds lately with parenting. Not every season gives you clear signs that you’re doing it right. So when you see your kid push through something genuinely hard because he cares about honoring a commitment, it hits different than it might otherwise. I found myself thinking: did we even sit down and talk about this recently? Have we had some big direct conversation about commitment and follow-through? And honestly, I don’t think we have. Not lately. Which means somewhere along the way, something absorbed. Maybe from older conversations. Maybe from watching. Maybe just from the way we try to live it out and hoping he picks it up.

Watching him that morning, seeing how much he cared about showing up for people depending on him, I’ll be honest: as his dad, that made me proud. Not in a “chest puffed out” way. More like a quiet, “this is what you hope for” kind of proud. And it gave me hope. Not because of the tournament. Because of what I saw in him when things got hard.

Most Important Things Are Built Slowly

There’s a verse that talks about raising children in the way they should go. As a parent, I hold onto that with a lot of hope and a fair amount of humility, because I don’t always feel like I know what I’m doing. I believe it’s true. I just also know that the gap between trying to raise your kids well and actually seeing it show up in them is long, and it takes a lot of faith to keep going in the middle of it.

Character takes time. So does a marriage. So does faith. So does trust with anyone. These are things that form slowly, through consistency and small choices made over and over again, most of which feel invisible while you’re making them. You can’t rush any of it. You just try to keep showing up and trust that the accumulation of it means something.

The Same Is True in Business

I think business works the same way. Trust takes time. Reputation takes time. People eventually figure out whether you are who you say you are. That’s part of why I try to build Coast333 the way I do. Slowly. Relationship-first. Long-term. There’s no shortcut to being someone people can count on, in business or anywhere else. The values are the same. Show up. Keep your word. Do the right thing when it would be easier not to.

Maybe the Little Things Matter More Than We Think

I’m writing this before the tournament is over. I genuinely don’t know how it ends. I don’t know if his team wins, I don’t know how much he plays, I don’t know if the rest of the weekend goes the way he wants. And honestly, that’s kind of the point.

The outcome isn’t what I’ll be thinking about when this weekend is done. What I’ll be thinking about is a kid who was sick all week, who still wanted to show up, who cared enough about the people depending on him to push through something hard. That’s what gave me hope. That one day he shows up for his faith and his family and his responsibilities the same way he showed up for his team this weekend. Not because he’ll always win. But because he’s becoming the kind of person who shows up regardless. As his dad, watching that start to take shape, that’s the thing that actually matters.

Maybe the little things we’re trying to teach are sticking after all. Some days, that’s enough.