I thought extra academics made me a good mom. Now I wonder what my daughters lost
Gurpreet Virdi-Bains enrolled her daughters in an after-school math enrichment program to help them get ahead. As she reflects on her own childhood, she considers what it means to be a good parent.
I’d forgotten that unstructured time is also a form of learning
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This First Person column is the experience of Gurpreet Virdi-Bains, who lives in Caledon, Ont. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
One night, I looked up from wiping down the kitchen counter and noticed how dark it was outside. My daughters' backpacks were still by the door where they always dropped them. The dishwasher hummed in the background, the familiar signal that we were moving toward bedtime. I realized how much of the evening had already slipped by, and we hadn't really been together in it.
It was like this almost every evening.
A few months earlier, I had enrolled my daughters in a math enrichment program. They weren't struggling with math. I enrolled them because I didn't want them to fall behind — because I didn't want to be the parent who left an advantage on the table.
But standing there in the kitchen, I felt what that decision had quietly cost us. Our evenings had become a series of tasks. There was less lingering. Less room to simply exist.
My kids were already spending seven hours in a structured academic environment. Home was supposed to be the break. A craft might get started on a whim, or someone might pick up a book because there was nothing else to do.
When I think back to my childhood growing up in the 1990s, what stands out most is how little was expected of us after school.
I'm the youngest of three and the daughter of immigrants adjusting to life in a new country. When my two older brothers and I came home from school, we did our homework and then we scattered. Some of us were on the couch, some at the table, the TV humming in the background.
Virdi-Bains, pictured as a two-year-old, grew up in the 1990s. Her parents moved from India to Canada in the 1980s. (Submitted by Gurpreet Virdi-Bains)
We didn't sit down for formal family dinners. Sometimes we ate at different times, half on the sofa, half at the table. No one organized the evening. It simply unfolded.
There were no tutoring or academic enrichment programs waiting for us. We watched Family Matters and Full House. We played outside until it got dark. We read, got bored and figured out what to do next. School stayed at school.
At the time, it felt ordinary. Now I understand how much freedom lived in those evenings.
It wasn't that our parents were absent. They were navigating language and work in a place that still felt new, trying to create something steady for us. We felt safe and cherished in quieter ways — in the routines, in the meals waiting for us, in the expectation that we'd be home before dark.
That didn't mean education was unimportant. It simply looked different. Learning wasn't confined to worksheets or programs. It was woven into everyday life: helping in the kitchen, measuring rice into a pot, shaping roti balls between our palms, counting change at the store, noticing the trees on our walk home and asking questions about them. Nobody called it preparation but it was. We were learning how to look after ourselves.
My parents' version of involvement was sacrifice. It meant long work hours, putting our needs ahead of their own, and doing what they could to keep our lives stable, even if it meant not being present for every moment. They trusted that school would teach us what it needed to, and that we would figure out the rest. Looking back, I see how much faith was embedded in that approach. That kind of separation feels harder to hold onto now.
I care deeply about education. Before my children started school, I made sure they felt prepared and confident. I practised letters with them at the kitchen table, not as part of a structured plan but in small, unremarkable moments that felt more like play than preparation. We counted steps on the way to the park. I assumed that once school began, learning would mostly stay there, the way it had for me.
Instead, I found myself second-guessing every decision.
Was I doing enough? Should I be doing more?
The pressure crept in through small conversations with other parents. A casual mention at pickup. A program name said in passing. Just enough to linger.
Slowly, I began to believe that being a good parent meant adding more: more structure, more measurable academic progress. Letting evenings unfold started to feel irresponsible, even if my husband didn't fully see it the same way.
Writing this column has forced me to admit that some of the pressure wasn't coming from school or other parents. It was coming from me, the daughter of immigrants who doesn't want to squander opportunity. I had internalized the idea that if there was a way to get ahead, you took it, that leaving something on the table — whether it was extra practice, extra support or an added advantage — meant risking falling behind.
After about five months, I withdrew my kids from the program. It was thoughtful and well-run. I understood why families valued it. But I had lost sight of what I wanted our home to feel like.
Virdi-Bains has come to appreciate the value of unstructured time with her daughters. (Submitted by Gurpreet Virdi-Bains)
I still believe deeply in education. What has changed is what I feel compelled to protect: the ordinary moments that make up a childhood. I want my daughters to remember laughter in the kitchen more than the rush from one commitment to the next.
I notice it in small ways. My kids play longer without checking in with me. They ask more questions, even the ones that seem to come out of nowhere at bedtime. When something doesn’t work the first time, they’re more likely to try again on their own before coming to find me. I’d forgotten how much happens in the time I used to think was wasted. That’s often where they figure out what they actually like.
Some evenings, when I notice the light fading earlier than I expected, I remind myself that a free evening doesn’t mean my kids are falling behind. They can play or talk or be bored for a while, and that matters, too.
It's a choice I find myself coming back to again and again.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gurpreet Virdi-Bains is a journalist who writes about parenting and family life.
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