My DD would love it if I would stay and watch the whole time, but honestly my ADD kicks in. There is just no way I could sit, staring through glass, for 3-4 hours at a time. I get twitchy just thinking about that. Now, if I'm
doing something when I sitting in there, I can handle it - like reading, knitting, etc. But I can't just stare for hours at a time. Plus, sometimes when I'm there, I notice she'll look for me, wave, etc, and she needs to be paying attention to her coaches not trying to determine whether I'm paying attention to her. And since she inherited her mother's goldfish-like attention span, sometimes it's better to just remove the temptation, so I make myself scarce.
A parent I was talking to at a meet said that their club had a parents' lounge for the team parents. You couldn't view the floor from this room, but it had tables and chairs, as well as easy chairs and couches, a tv, a vending machine, free wifi, etc. So basically, if you lived far away, you could go to the gym and get work done, read, just hang out with the other parents,whatever, without having to watch the kids. That seems like a really cool idea to me and helps meet the needs of the kids/coaches not having parents watching every minute and giving the parents a place to go when they live too far away to go home during practice. I realize most gyms probably don't have the space for this kind of set up (ours doesn't), but it is very cool for the families at that gym.
We do have free wifi and tables/chairs in the waiting room, which is nice. Sometimes I'll bring my laptop and get work done (or this week, bring my tax stuff and work on that... yes, I know it's April 3rd
). It's just so crowded and loud and I hate feeling like I'm taking a seat from a rec parent, kwim? But we do live too far away to drive home in between, so what can you do? Also, sometimes I go to a coffee shop where I can read comfortably or I'll go shopping. If my younger DD is with me, I'll take her to a park if it's nice out.
