Give Me Your Finger

For most of my daughters' lives, they've preferred their mother.

That's not particularly difficult to understand.

I'm the primary breadwinner in our family, and I spend most of my waking hours working or doing something adjacent to work. I'm a Director of Psychology, I have a private practice, and I serve in the Army Reserve.

My days are full.

Meetings. Emails. Phone calls. Seeing patients. Psychological testing. Writing reports. Documentation. Managing a department.

And when one role quiets down, another usually has something waiting for me.

There is almost always something competing for my time.

Their mother is simply around more.

So when someone gets hurt, they often want Mom. When they need help, they often call for Mom. When they want someone to sit beside them, carry them, or get them something, Mom has historically been the first choice.

I've understood why.

That doesn't mean I've always liked it.

Recently, though, something has started to change.

A few weeks ago, I found myself thinking seriously about what happens when I come home at the end of a long workday. I realized that my daughters don't experience the hours I've worked or how mentally exhausted I am.

They experience me.

That reflection eventually became a blog, The Walk to the Front Door. But writing it did something I hadn't expected.

It changed the way I came through the door.

I started paying closer attention to the moments I actually had with my daughters. Not trying to manufacture some elaborate version of "quality time."

Just being there differently.

Putting the phone down.

Getting on the floor.

Letting their excitement become my excitement.

Making sure that when I was with them, they could feel that I wanted to be there.

My work schedule didn't change.

I didn't suddenly find several extra hours in the day.

I just started approaching the hours I already had differently.

And then yesterday happened.

I'd spent eight hours seeing clients in private practice. By the time I finished, I was tired.

But for the rest of the day, my youngest daughter seemed determined to be wherever I was.

She's learning to walk, and whenever she wanted to move around, she wanted my finger.

Not Mom's.

Mine.

She'd grab it and start walking.

If she wandered away, she'd eventually make her way back toward me.

When I opened a protein bar, apparently that belonged to her too.

When she was riding in a cart, she wanted me pushing it.

Later, when I ate frozen yogurt, suddenly my frozen yogurt was very interesting.

Whatever I was doing, she wanted to be part of it.

Wherever she wanted to go, she seemed to want me beside her.

At some point, I realized just how different the day felt.

She was choosing me.

Again and again.

In tiny, almost meaningless ways.

Except they weren't meaningless.

Young children don't sit us down and explain how connected they feel.

They show us.

They reach for us.

They follow us.

They bring us things.

They climb into our laps.

They want what we're eating even though they weren't remotely interested in it thirty seconds earlier.

They find a hundred little ways to say:

Be with me.

And lately, my daughters have been saying it to me more.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why.

The obvious explanation would be that I'm spending more time with them.

But I'm not.

I'm still working.

I'm still gone more than I would like.

There are still days when work consumes most of my waking hours.

The amount of time didn't change.

The way I approached it did.

I think working parents can become consumed by the amount of time we don't have.

I know I can.

We count the hours we're gone.

We notice the mornings we miss.

We think about how much more available we'd be if work weren't demanding so much of us.

And sometimes that matters.

Time matters.

There is no clever way around the fact that relationships need it.

But I've started realizing that there's another question worth asking.

Not simply:

How much time am I giving them?

But:

What does it feel like to have me when I'm there?

There's a difference between being physically present and being available.

I can sit beside my daughters while thinking about work.

I can look at my phone while they play.

I can hear a story without really listening to it.

I can technically spend an entire evening with them while communicating, in a hundred subtle ways, that my attention is somewhere else.

Or I can give them twenty minutes in which they feel like there is nowhere else I'd rather be.

I don't think twenty minutes replaces an evening.

And I don't think "quality time" gives us permission to continually choose everything else over our children.

But I do think I've underestimated how much children notice the way we are with them.

Whether we look up.

Whether we light up.

Whether we follow their attention.

Whether we seem delighted when they choose us.

Whether being with them feels like another obligation at the end of a long day or something we've been looking forward to.

Those experiences become part of what children come to expect from us.

And, eventually, from other people.

Yesterday, my daughter couldn't have explained any of that.

She didn't need to.

She just kept reaching for my finger.

I still wish I had more time with my daughters.

Maybe I always will.

But lately I've stopped treating the time I don't have as the only thing that matters.

I can't always decide how many hours I get.

I can decide who they get during those hours.

And yesterday, my daughter kept reaching for my finger.

So I gave it to her.