On Being a Band (Robotics) Mom
The benefits of supporting the things your kids love to do.
Ed and I spent our weekend dividing and conquering – a parenting term for “you take one kid and go that way, and I’ll take the other and go this way.” Granted, our kids are old enough that they mostly don’t need us to do anything with them, but fortunately for us, they still like us enough to want us along at robotics tournaments and Lunar New Year parades.
And both activities are ones that we deeply enjoy, in part because our kids have enjoyed them so much, but also because we’ve made our own connections among the people who do those same things. I got to hang out with the eldest at a VEX robotics tournament his former mentor was hosting at the high school from which he graduated, and where he was the head referee along with old friends from his high school robotics teams. I worked in the judges’ room with moms alongside whom I’d organized other robotics tournaments, discussing their seniors’ plans after high school, and my own kid’s trajectory since then. We shared experience about applying to college, navigating financial aid, housing, and school counseling, and I spent very enjoyable hours working with women I don’t otherwise see except at robotics events.
In the main competition room, while our graduates were running the tournament, I reconnected with parents whose adult children were launching into interesting lives. One mom is spearheading a cloud computing symposium for women in STEM and suggested we get together to talk about ways to collaborate. The Superintendent came, and I pointed out that in a room full of engineers who had volunteered to judge the event, only two were women, and so the robotics mentor continues to direct his recruitment efforts toward the high school girls. During her opening remarks, the Superintendent then praised the number of girls she saw in the tournament, and later, an organizer made a point of asking one of those two female engineers to present the premiere award of the night so those girls could see her.
When our eldest was on his middle school VEX team, I wasn’t thinking about women in STEM. I had no experience other than my own with college, and cloud computing was not on my radar. The conversation has evolved, I’ve evolved, and I got so much value from the reconnections I made with people I don’t otherwise talk to in my day-to-day life.
So many relationships can be made because of our kids, and when we make friends during their activities, not only are we creating diversions and ways to pass the time during tournaments and concerts for ourselves, we’re teaching them how to create their own connections. I had a conversation with my kid once about being social and entertaining (as in, throwing parties). He said that even though he doesn’t initiate a lot of social gatherings with his own friends, just watching how his parents entertain has taught him the way to have a party. It’s not always easy to make friends, he said. But watching how we interact with the people in his world – parents of his classmates, his mentors and coaches – has given him tools that he can use to create his own communities. And even though I’ve been out of the competitive robotics world for a couple of years (having moved on to the pipe band world with our youngest), reconnecting with the people in that world is fueling something different in my own. I’m bringing something different to the conversation too, it reminds me that community is where you find it, seek it, and say it is.
Our kids know when we’re in the stands. They see us pulling the wagon full of waters and first aid in the parade, and they watch us talking to their coaches, pipe majors, and peers. When we’re there – engaged and connected – we show them not only how valuable they are to us, but how much we value the things they’re interested in.
As a parent on the far side of robotics tournaments, I will say this: go and support the thing they’re into. Sit in the stands, talk to the parents, get to know the coaches and the kids. Your kid will notice, feel validated and supported, and they’ll learn to create their own communities by watching you form yours.