My mother is an AP Government teacher at Santa Monica High School, my high school,
while my father is Vice President of Account Services at Tapstone, a digital media marketing company. My brother is a starter on his undefeated club soccer team, captain of his competitive robot team, an avid skateboarder and surfer. In high school, I was head coxswain of my nationally ranked club rowing team, founder of two political clubs on campus, held a nationally ranked position in the largest student run organization in the country and was a dedicated poet on a competitive spoken word team. Needless to say, we’re a pretty busy group of individuals so that meant a lot of planning our weeks out in advance.

I could talk about the way my mother would stay up until our homework was done to review the next day’s events. Or I could talk about the way my parents divided up driving my brother and I places. But I focused my analysis on the immense value set on family time and the conscious effort to ensure both parents held an equal part in our lives.

Value Set on Family Time: In simply scheduling family time, I learned that quality time with my parents or brother was just as important as any state regatta or overnight convention. We had a few rules in the family pertaining to scheduling:

• Holidays are always spent exclusively with the family, with the exception of Halloween and July 4th. New Year’s Eve could be spent with friends but we must partake in the countdown for New York’s New Year’s Eve together (3 hours ahead).
• We always ate dinner at the table together on weekdays. If you are getting dinner with friends after practice, you still have to sit at the table to converse with the family and/or save room for dessert.
• We must attend every member of the family’s extracurricular events, if it doesn’t conflict with our own. To ensure there is always a “cheering section” for everyone.

Equal Parenting: My parents split everything related to spending time with my brother and I. Whether it was switching off who attended conflicting games or who drove us to parties or playdates. This was partly out of necessity given my brother and my’s schedule generally conflicted as a result of being so involved but my parents never fell into a consistent role. This intentional lack of consistency resulted in an equal presence of both parents in every aspect of our lives. One prime example of this is my mother instituting the Daddy/Mommy Dates, outlined below. This conscious effort reminded me that both of my parents were always there for me and always involved in my life– I never felt like one was missing out.

Daddy/Mommy Dates: Switching parents every week, my brother and I were assigned a parent to do an activity with. Activities included visiting art museums or the tar pits with Dad, massages or beach dates with Mom. These became some of my fondest memories and really helped to ensure that everyone was in the loop with everything.