My daughter is making me learn about plants. By that I mean she will literally stop in the middle of a walk, hand me my phone, and ask me to look up the name of a plant she’s not familiar with. And I have learned so much! I finally know what rhododendrons are, I have a favorite rose (the Mme. Paule Massad), I know that it is (too) easy to grow lettuce, and that sunflowers can hit heights of up to 14 feet. I have learned all of this because my daughter has been obsessed with growing things since she was old enough to speak, and her obsession was surprisingly infectious even for me, a city kid who until recently couldn’t tell the difference between a cherry blossom and a dogwood, and who only knew what oaks were because I once lived on a street named after them.
Plant lore isn’t the only thing I’ve picked up from my daughter. I never had much interest in graphic novels before she came along, my small artist. Now we read them together. It’s been genuinely fun to buy her art supplies and learn about digital art, too. And, talking to parents my age, online and off, I'm struck by how not-even-close-to-alone I am in this. Maybe it's because we spent so much time with them during the Covid pandemic, confined to our homes, but parents seem more delighted than ever to not just support their kids' hobbies — be they sports, the arts, Studio Ghibli movies, or boy band fandoms — but share them, too. And with gratifying results.
“For me it’s musical theatre,” says James Kolchalka, a cartoonist. “I never cared about it before my kids got involved with it and now I act in a production each year and have been fantasizing about writing my own.”
Kelly K. plays Pokemon Go competitively, traveling the world with her two daughters. “We even named our dog Eevee,” she says. “I never thought a video game would take over my life like this!”
Austin Gilkeson was never that into sports, but his son plays on both a little league team and a select team and is a huge fan of the Houston Astros. "He is an absolute baseball fanatic," says Gilkeson. “I've come to know and appreciate the game a lot more —especially the skills of the players. When I'd go to MLB games before my son was born, I went mostly for the beer and hot dogs and barely watched the game. Now when we go, I'm rapt. I even watch it on TV! It's a real gift my son has given me.”
University professor Gigi Gronvall spent so much time on the sidelines of her kids' games, she taught herself sports photography. “It gives me something to do, and now all the teens want the pictures for their Insta.”
“Following where their interests go has been one of the best, unexpected, and life-expanding parts of parenting."
When I was a kid, my parents and my friends’ parents were (usually) supportive — they’d go to the games and the concerts and sometimes even have a good time. But I didn’t know many parents who took up activities alongside their kids. And while I know my generation tends to helicopter, and I was concerned that adapting my kid’s interests could be another way of hovering over her, discovering new interests through my kid has been one of the most surprising and rewarding things about being a parent. Heather Ray, a children’s book author, agrees: “Following where their interests go has been one of the best, unexpected, and life-expanding parts of parenting."
Being a parent is more difficult and more isolating in many ways than it’s ever been, but the life-expanding aspects of parenting can make all the difference. You know, those aspects that exist outside of capitalism, that don’t demand productivity, that have nothing to do with the daily grind. Especially the kind of wholesome, low-stakes, often wildly creative and collaborative interests that kids tend towards.
The kids often outgrow these hobbies and interests. But for us, sometimes they stick. Lauren Ferris says her child briefly went through a mushroom phase. “I love the outdoors and had a casual appreciation of them, but she got really into them and then so did I. Now she’s moved on to something else and I’m out here buying foraging books and constantly on the lookout on every hike.”
Zarine Mohideen is a writer and artist whose then-3-year-old got her really into arts and crafts. "Eventually he outgrew it but I never stopped. Now he’s 7 and I am a painter with a studio, show my art in galleries and exhibitions and do art workshops with elementary age kids.”
As for me? I’ll always be a city kid, but now I’ll be one who stops to smell the flowers, too. And not just the ones that smell good; thanks to my daughter I’ve learned there are corpse flowers in the Botanical Gardens that bloom a few times a year and smell like death. I can’t wait to go to and see it.
Amber Sparks is the author of two collections of stories, And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World, and her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.
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