My child’s first ever sports day

Last week was my older boy’s first sports day.  It was in fact the first sports day that I’ve attended since I actually took part in one.  Parenting as we all know is a tough all consuming business, amongst all the hard work that goes into it are golden nuggets of sweet moments, going to my boy’s first ever sports day was certainly one of them.

Before I went to the sports day I hesitated for a long time on whether to take half a day off to attend.  As I contract I would miss out on half a day’s wage.  The more people I spoke to the differing opinions I got, certainly money is tight at the moment and I’m constantly looking for ways to make more much less losing some.  But then I spoke to one of my work colleagues, he said to me something that I knew for a long time, that events like these only happen once.  That is to say of course there are going to be other sports days, there’ll happen every year,

but the first ever sports day will only happen once and once it’s gone it’s gone.

Next year’s sports day and every subsequent one will never carry the same significance as the first one and won’t be nearly as exciting as the first one was.  Everything about the even was magical, never mind that it was raining, the anticipation of seeing the children being led to the field and then standing in line waiting for their turns was as exciting as the actual race itself.

I had the same experience the first time we went swimming together,

we’ve been swimming since several dozen times but none of them hold the same magic as the first time.

I know we’re all busy with work, and work life balance is hard to achieve, but please make time for the first sports day, unless you work in a hospital or are in the emergency services nothing at work is that important to miss your child’s first ever sports day.

[Tweet “how to be there on your child’s sports day – & why you should! pic.twitter.com/kvO6HOo5EC #parentingtips“]

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear your stories of attending significant events be it a sports day, taking them to nursery/school for the first time, their first play etc. and whether it was a challenge getting time off from work for this.

Farhan

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