A parenting story about slowing down, affordability, and time.
A few weeks ago, I was talking with someone who had moved to Texas decades ago from the East Coast.
“You learn to walk slower here; otherwise you’re drenched in sweat in the first five minutes.”
But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like quiet wisdom. Texas has a way of teaching you to slow down whether you want to or not. You don’t rush from place to place in the heat. You don’t sprint across parking lots at noon in August. You learn to pace yourself. You conserve energy, water, breath. You learn patience the hard way.
That does not come naturally to me.
I am wired to move quickly. To finish things. To optimize. To treat life like a race or project plan with dependencies and milestones. Even my downtime sometimes feels calculated. Slowing down can feel uncomfortable, like I’m wasting time or falling behind.
Which is probably why my kids keep finding ways to remind me that speed isn’t always the goal.
That reminder showed up recently during STEAM night at my son’s school. There were various science, tech, and arts related activity stations set up across the school for the night. And who doesn’t love a good punch card challenge. The kids were challenged to complete all the stations for the chance to win a big prize. We were moving from station to station, figuring out where to go next, and I was very much in logistics mode. Keep things moving. Stay on schedule. Don’t linger too long.
At one point, my six-year-old looked up at me and asked, “Dad, how do you spell my full name?”
He already can spell his first name. He repeated it back, proud. Then he moved on to his last name, sounding it out carefully. Thoughtfully. He got it right.
Then he paused and asked, “Is that my full name?”
In my head, the answer was easy. Yes. Close enough. Let’s keep moving.
But instead, I stopped myself.
“Well,” I said, “your full name also has your middle name.”
And just like that, everything slowed down.
We stood there together while he worked through it - likely for the first time. Sound by sound. Letter by letter. No rushing. No correcting. Just waiting. It took longer than I wanted it to. And it mattered more than I expected. He did miss one letter, but he was too proud for me to dampen the moment.
Patience is one of those values we all say we admire, until it costs us something. Time. Momentum. Comfort. Control. As a parent, patience rarely shows up in grand gestures. It lives in small moments like this, when you choose not to hurry someone along, when you let them struggle just enough to grow, when you resist the urge to optimize the experience for your own convenience.
That moment stayed with me because it connected to something older, something deeper.
Growing up, I heard stories about my German great-grandmother. Stories about thrift that went far beyond money. Food wasn’t wasted. Nothing was taken for granted. You didn’t rush through meals or throw things away just because you could replace them. Affordability, in her world, wasn’t just about cost. It was about respect. Respect for resources. For labor. For time. Very likely molded by the times she lived in (Depression-era hardship, war, and farm culture).
Nothing was infinite. Everything mattered.
Now it seems like affordability is more narrowed down to dollars and cents. Prices on shelves. Numbers on a spreadsheet. And those things matter, deeply. But real affordability is bigger than that. It’s whether families can afford time together. Whether parents can afford patience. Whether kids can afford to learn slowly without being rushed through childhood.
Texas has taught me this in its own way. You conserve water because it’s scarce and precious. You slow your pace because the heat demands it. You plan differently, not to squeeze more in, but to endure longer. Patience can also be a form of sustainability.
Parenting, I’m learning, works the same way.
If I rush my kids through everything, I might get through the evening faster. But I’m borrowing against something more valuable. Their confidence. Their curiosity. Their sense that they’re allowed to take up time and space in the world.
That’s not a trade I want to make.
We talk a lot about affordability in public life. Rent. Groceries. Gas. And we should. But there’s another layer that doesn’t get as much attention. Can families afford to slow down? Can kids afford adults who wait? Can communities afford patience instead of constant urgency?
Because when everything feels rushed, people get sharper. Less generous. More reactive.
Patience, it turns out, is a resource too.
That night at STEAM night, nothing monumental happened. We didn’t win anything. We didn’t check off more stations than the other kids. But my son walked away with the pride of knowing his full name. And I walked away reminded that sometimes the most valuable thing you can give a child isn’t an answer.
It’s the time to arrive at it themselves. And something I’ll likely be working on for the rest of my life.
As I think about thriftiness, affordability, and the values we pass down, I keep coming back to this idea. Real wealth isn’t speed. It isn’t optimization. It isn’t how quickly you can move on to the next thing.
Sometimes it’s learning to walk slower. To wait longer. To sit in the heat a bit. To let a six-year-old figure it out.
Because those moments don’t cost money.
But they are priceless.
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