93% of the Time
A friend told me that she heard a news story that said you spend 93% of the time you’ll have with your kids before they leave high school. Or on the flip side, you only have 7% of the time you’ll have with your parents after you leave high school.
I couldn’t find this number online — Googling brought me answers ranging from 80% to 95% — but the message was still the same. You have very little time left with the people you love.
I spent the rest of the day obsessing over the number.
People don’t spend 24 hours together — work or sleep gets in the way. So working with the idea that we spend, on average, eight waking hours together, I multiplied it out to reach 52,560 (8 x 365 x 18). If 93% is correct, I get 56,516 waking hours with the kids. 3,956 hours spread out over my remaining years.
If I live another 40 years, it comes out to 99 hours per year, which averages 12 days per year (if we still go with 8 hours per day). Or 24 days per year if they live nearby and we spend 4-hour chunks together. A visit every other week. Or a week-long trip together and a handful of smaller visits. Or make a conscious decision to get more than my universe-allotted 99 hours.
Sad math.
4 comments
Oh this is very sad math. Im choosing to believe it’s wrong. I spend a lot of time still with my parents, relatively speaking, but my husband doesn’t with his. So if the hours are an average, some get more and some get less. I’m choosing more.
Oh man. This is depressing.
I don’t have kids, but I can relate via the flipside of this equation. I live 1000 miles away from my parents, who are now in their early 80s — and I am hugely conscious that the time I have left with them is both precious and rapidly ebbing away. The pandemic did NOT help in this regard. 🙁 (And I feel like I spend a lot more time with my parents than a lot of people I know in similar situations.)
Do you honestly believe your children aren’t going to want to just come and hang out with you as they get older? I don’t. I believe you will bring up the average for everyone.