A Bedtime Reminder About Presence
This post originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, BL&T (Borrowed, Learned, & Thought). Subscribe
Borrowed
“The finest meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant might as well be a plate of instant noodles if your mind is elsewhere; and a friendship to which you never actually give a moment’s thought is a friendship in name only.”
From “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman [Book]
Learned
There’s an interaction with my son Mylo from last week that I’ve been coming back to in my mind since it happened. I had just wrapped up a packed day. My parents had stopped by to pick something up. We had just finished dinner. Mylo didn’t nap that day, so while he seemed fine, we knew he could lose it at any minute.
My parents stayed to read a bedtime story to him, but as they were leaving, he lost it. “I don’t want to go to sleep! I’m not tired!” For the parents of little ones reading this, it’s what we’d call “overtired.” I was cleaning up in the kitchen and came in to lay with him. My parents and Dana left the room as I tried to calm him.
As he caught his breath, I tried explaining to him how sleep gets you ready for the next day. He’s in his cars and trucks era, so I used a couple of car metaphors. A car needs fuel to keep going, but I didn’t want to confuse him with the food and fuel, so we moved to electric cars. Our Tesla plugs in and “sleeps” each night to recharge, the same way we need to so we can keep going. Then we started joking about him going to school without recharging and falling asleep while his friends wanted to play. Lots of snoring sounds and belly laughs. It was the best. He went to sleep soon after.
I think I keep coming back to this because it’s been a hectic few months, and this simple moment had a way of stopping me in my tracks. It reminded me what a huge difference it makes when I’m focused on the moment, focused on the kids. I might be physically there but if my brain is somewhere else, interactions like this one don’t happen.
Presence is so important as a parent. There’s always so much going on. Rushing to this, rushing to that, rushing to get dinner on the table. That’s also being there for the kids. But being present, being patient, is helping my kids experience the world, whether that’s explaining why we sleep or laughing with them about it. Which, by the way, we’ve been coming back to all week. So for now, it was a success.
Thought
What am I rushing past to get to the next thing?
