Parenting Is an Endless Game of “Would You Rather?”

When our children’s happiness is at stake, many of us choose to sacrifice our own.

The only way to get my 6 year old to sit for 10 minutes at the dinner table is to play endless rounds of “Would you Rather?”

You know this game — it’s the one where you pose two scenarios and everyone gets to decide which they would choose. When older children play this game, at least one option usually involves excrement or some kind of extreme eating challenge (or both?)

At my house, a typical round of “Would you Rather?” is slightly more innocent. A round initiated by my feline-obsessed son goes something like this:

“Mom, would you rather be eaten by a mountain lion or a snow leopard?”

“Mom, would you rather be a mountain lion or a snow leopard?”

“Mom, would you rather have a million mountain lions or no mountain lions?” *

You get the idea. It seems silly, but I absolutely love these moments with my sons.

I love watching them process each decision presented to them as if it was a true possibility. I love coming up with bigger and bolder decisions to shock them with.

My own style of “Would you Rather?” is less cat-centric and more focused on the most dangerous scenarios I can think of.

“Would you rather fly into another galaxy in space or go to the very bottom of the ocean in a submarine?”

Either of these adventures seems absolutely terrifying to me. And the truth is, I don’t know which I would choose.

Were I truly presented with this decision, I would almost definitely choose space travel over deep-sea exploration. The bottom of the sea seems dark, cold, and populated by eery creatures. And the view from space would be like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

Of course, there would be inherent risks to either of these choices.

Perhaps my focus on deciding between dangerous adventures is a way to avoid the anxiety that grips me when I think about all of the decisions, big and small, that I’m faced with each day as a mother.

Many of these decisions are simple cost-benefit analyses of time.

With limited time that belongs just to us, every small decision requires some assessment of the relative worth of each moment and how we want to spend it.

Would you rather see your dear friend for a coffee, or get exercise for the first time in 2 weeks?

Would you rather get 15 minutes of extra sleep or blow dry your hair?

Would you rather pack the kids’ lunches tonight, or do it at 7:15 am tomorrow with two children competing in a javelin competition in your kitchen?

But our biggest parental decisions are not trivial assessments of how we’d like to spend the next few minutes. Sometimes the “Would you Rather?” dilemma runs much deeper.

And sometimes the stakes are higher.

When our children are struggling, this constant decision-making can keep us up at night worrying about whether the path we’ve chosen for our lives is causing our children to suffer.

We feel this when our children beg us to spend more time with them instead of finishing that last email for work, or when we must send them to school every day in a place they don’t feel accepted by their peers.

We feel the weight of this decision-making when we recognize that we must release our children slowly to a world that feels frightening without always standing by their side.

We recognize that it’s worth absorbing any pain this may cause us as parents if our children feel happy.

Because in the “Would you Rather” game of parenting, our children’s happiness almost always wins.

In my marriage struggles, I’ve also felt stuck in an endless loop of this game. And the stakes are unbearably high.

I feel stuck between maintaining the family home we have built for our children and tearing it all down in pursuit of my own happiness. In my darkest moments, the decision truly seems binary:

“Would you rather be happy yourself, or would you rather your kids be happy?”

And yet I know logically that most of our decisions, unlike our dinnertime rounds of “Would you Rather,” are not binary.

There are shades of happiness for all of us. And, at least I’ve been told, making one big scary decision can sometimes open up hundreds of opportunities we didn’t see before.

In my marriage, I want to believe that choosing my own happiness may give my children a chance for future happiness that I can’t see now through my fog of worry.

But for now, I remain here, paralyzed. I’m terrified of making the wrong decision.

And so instead of announcing that I want a divorce, or declaring my loyalty to my marriage vows, I hold out for more time.

I try to focus on the moments of joy I can share with my children. I take walks and listen to music that moves me. I relish the moments I have at night to write.

I’m still in a holding pattern, but I want to believe that I am somehow getting myself closer to believing that the flight into space may not be as terrifying as I thought it would be. And perhaps the view will be worth all of my fear.

*My answers: 1. Mountain lion ; 2. Snow leopard; 3. Definitely no mountain lions

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