Before you have kids, it can be easy to get caught up in what you imagine the people they’re going to be — what they’ll like, what they’ll do, how you can raise them to be kind, caring individuals. But then they actually come along and well, things aren’t always quite like you planned. As the mother of Oliver — a soccer-obsessed 10-year-old — Elizabeth Applen knows a thing or two about this.
“My little sister played soccer through high school and she makes fun of me now because I hated going to her games and avoided it and wanted nothing to do with it,” she says via Zoom.