Your Don’t List

I had a flashback today as I sat in the waiting room for my son’s appointment with a specialist. Let me rewind a bit. He was born a little over ten weeks early, nine years ago. Those first two years were full of doctor’s appointments because he was so premature. One of the specialists he had to see on a frequent occasion was a pediatric ENT for a lymphatic malformation he was born with. I remember going to those appointments with a diaper bag, cheerios, and a sippy cup of juice. I would watch him play with one of those wooden activity cubes as we waited for his name to be called. You know, the ones with bead roller coasters, spinners, letters, etc.

Fast forward to today. We hadn’t been in an ENT’s office in years, but due to some new symptoms, we found ourselves in an office waiting for his name to be called. After I checked him in, I sat down only to look up and see an activity cube. In one instance, I was taken back to my days in the waiting room with a toddler, his cheerios, and a sippy cup. Oh, how so much had changed. My boy wasn’t playing with the wooden cube. Instead, he had found himself a Sports Illustrated Magazine and was reminding me of how disappointed he was that the Cowboys wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl.

You moms know, anytime we are reminded of how quickly our little ones are growing up, we desperately try to cling to the fleeting childhood of our babies, yet fail as it is impossible to grasp.

Our kids will grow up and one day leave our home, flipping it upside down just as they did when they entered the world. Every time I am reminded of this I start a mental list of what I must do to slow down the perpetual clicking clock of their youth. Approximately from today I only have around 3,000 days until our firstborn leaves the nest. How can I fit in everything that I still want to teach him in 3,000 days when my days are full of never ending To-Do lists.

Finding the right parenting books to read, or places to take him, or conversations to have, or Pinterest worthy quality Mother/son dates just isn’t going to cut it. I can add those things to tomorrow’s To-Do list before I close my weary Mom eyes and fall asleep. But the truth is I’ll wake up and my already overflowing to-do list will probably go out the window before my feet even hit the ground when I am awakened in the middle of the night by a toddler who peed their bed. So add washing the sheets to that list.

What if instead of focusing on our to-do lists we instead make a don’t list. For getting the stuff done that matters can’t truly start until we DON’T do the stuff that doesn’t.

What if we strive to intentionally add things to our Don’t List. I love scrolling through Instagram as much as the next person. I often find myself in a trance as I grab my phone to check something and 10 minutes later I realize I’ve been staring at pictures, many of people I’ve never met but yet I’ve lost an hour of my week as I admire their beautiful Instagram accounts. So if that sounds like you, maybe a couple of days a week you put scrolling through Instagram on your Don’t list.

Or maybe you DON’T try to make a new recipe that you spend all afternoon on in the kitchen, only resulting in a sink full of dishes and a meal you knew the kids would never want to eat in the first place. Not that this has happened to me.

Or maybe you DON’T start that new show on Netflix and lose yourself to the couch for the next week. I am a boss at binging and that frequently happens to me.

Or maybe you DON’T say yes to that thing you know will drain you and take away hours of your week you never had time for in the first place.

Or maybe you DON’T be so quick to say no to your kids when it is something so small you could say yes to. Just last week, one of our boys asked me for something. I was quick to snap a “NO!” And then quickly I realized, oh wait, I can say yes to that.

Whatever your DON’T is, add that to your list.

Maybe instead of continuously adding things to our never-ending To-Do list, we add a few things to our Don’t. And perhaps it is in those extra moments we gain from doing this that we can savor their childhood more fully.

I am speaking to myself as much as I am to you. I always get excited to try out new ideas and ways to prioritize what matters. Then midweek comes, life, the laundry, oh so much laundry, and I forget what I was trying to focus on for the week. But if you are like me, something you always remember is to give yourself more work on your neverending list. So every time you go to write on that list, I hope you will also be reminded of your Don’t List.