Presence: An Answer to Most Parenting Problems

As a parent, you face challenges that are complicated and constantly shifting. Your toddler refuses to brush their teeth, potty train, or go to bed. Or maybe your 10-year-old struggles to go to school, get along with classmates, or overcome a case of severe shyness. Or your teen wrestles with social anxiety, getting good grades, or addiction.

No parent is exactly like you, and no kid is exactly like your kid. Given this, how could any parenting advice ultimately be helpful? We could list dozens of tips and tricks, and it’s possible that none would help.

This doesn’t mean that tips and tricks don’t have their place. (Our lesson library is full of pragmatic suggestions, after all!) But it does mean that there’s something more fundamental at play — something that comes before tips and tricks. That something is presence.

When we give our kids our undivided attention, we give them one of the purest gifts we can give. As the philosopher Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

The fact is that the content of what’s happening during times of presence with our children often matters far less than the presence itself. When we spoke with meditation teacher Thomas McConkie about this topic in an interview for Uplift Kids, he said, “ I feel in my heart and my experience that when I’m completely present with my son, the presence in and of itself is nourishing to him.” He added that what matters is “the presence itself, unified and undivided — that stream of awareness that’s flowing into him and flowing back from him.” That presence transforms us and it transforms our kids.

Story: The Transformative Power of Presence

To further illustrate the transformative power of presence, here’s a story from Uplift Kids cofounder Michelle Larson, as shared on the Uplift Kids podcast.

“Around a decade ago, I was going through a dark time. I’d fallen into a season of depression, finding myself unable to get out of bed or do many of the things that I’d previously loved to do. I didn’t know why it happened. It just did.

It was painful for me, as well as for my husband and my children around me.

But I was lucky. Instead of denying my problems or trying to fix me, my husband showed me repeated small kindnesses.

He would make me breakfast and set it by the bed. He would place a hand and sit quietly next to me just to let me know he was there. Sometimes he would offer simple words like “this really hurts” or “this is so hard.”

It wasn’t any grand gestures or inspirational speeches that sustained me through that season — it was the daily expression of the simplest kindnesses. It was his sense of presence. He helped me to feel understood, and eventually the depression lifted.

I keep the memories of these simple kindnesses in mind as I move through mundane days with my kids. I may not always have a grand gesture or core memory to wow them with every day, but I can show up with full presence in small, simple acts of kindness and trust that, over time, those actions will bloom into the love and kindness that will imprint forever in their lives.

I can trust that simply being present will result in deep transformation with them, just as it did for me.”

Practical Ways to Be Present as a Parent

You might be nodding along at this point, acknowledging that you know that all of this is true — that presence is the foundation of good parenting, that it has a transformative and healing component, that we all long to be received by each other in full presence, and so on.

But how do you do it? What does presence actually look like? As we’ve already hinted at, presence takes work, patience, and determination. Here are few concrete things to try to be more present in parenting:

Find what you both enjoy. Since presence is easiest when you enjoy it, it helps to find ways to be present that you actually like. If you can’t find something that everyone in the family enjoys, rotate time with each kid.
Schedule it. Clear out your calendar so you can be present.
Put your phone in a different room. Don’t let a call, text, email, or notification pull you away from presence. With rare exception, everything on your phone can wait.
Let your kid lead. Resist the impulse to correct your kids or shape the experience to meet your desires.
Pause all lectures. It’s hard if not impossible to be present to your kid’s current emotional landscape when you’re delivering a lecture.
Listen, again and again. Listening to your kid talk about what truly matters to them allows their nervous system to relax. And once their nervous system relaxes, they’ll be able to talk about the difficult things they’re facing in their life. (And then they might be open to receiving advice!)
Embrace boredom (or at least tolerate it). Chances are high that what’s most interesting to your kid in a given moment will not be what’s most interesting to you. In fact, what’s interesting to them will likely bore you, especially at first. Notice the boredom and stick with it, noting that boredom is often part of staying present.
See the experience with fresh eyes. The Buddhist tradition talks about beginner’s mind. The Christian tradition talks about becoming as a little child. However you think of it, tapping into this state of wonder and excitement can help you stumble onto completely new ways of being together that you genuinely enjoy.
When you’re done, be firm that you’re done. Your kid will likely resist at first, but the more your kid knows that there is a clear start and end to your focused time together, the more likely they’ll be to honor that boundary. (Admittedly, this is easier said than done and might require a lot of repetition and firmness!)

Having said all of this, you should feel free to throw out all of these ideas and keep things simple: Just be present. You might almost immediately forget your intention to be present and find yourself engrossed with a notification on your phone. If that happens, set the phone down and return to presence. Don’t beat yourself up or wallow in your shortcomings. Just begin again.

Being Present Means Saying No to Many Things

Of course, being present to everything is impossible. There’s too much that calls to us each day. If we give our full presence to a child’s monologue about Minecraft we might not have time for anything else. We have to discern what matters most and then say no to many things. This might look like telling yourself that an email or text can wait while you attend to your child, or it might look like telling a child, “I’m free to play with you for another five minutes, and then I have to finish up my work.”

Put another way, being present to one thing means saying no to ten thousand other things. That’s a lot of no. And that’s one reason why presence is so difficult and so valuable. As we miss out on many things, we gain presence with the people in front of us: our children.

How Often Should You Be Present With Your Kids?

We should underscore that the goal here isn’t to always be present with your kids, as that’s not only impossible but possibly unhealthy. One researcher who observed interactions in 140 families and tracked whether they were over-attuned or under-attuned found that “to have high synchrony all the time, regardless of the circumstances, might be detrimental and actually lead to insecure attachment and relationship problems.” And another study suggests that being with your kids when you’re feeling flooded with stress, anger, or anxiety can actually make things worse — and that the parent might need to step away from being with their kids. Another study cited in the book Raising Securely Attached Kids found that even when parents are physically with their kids, effective parents are attuned to their children only about 30% of the time.

In short, it’s impossible to give a universal or scientific answer (down to the minute) when it comes to how often you should be present with each kid. Some kids need more presence than others, and during some seasons of your life you might be more or less able to provide that level of presence.

That said, here are some ideas to try:

Start with where you are. If you currently carve out regular time where you attend to your child, celebrate that. You might not need to change anything! On the other hand, if you’re reading this and thinking, “Yeah, my relationship with my kids would likely benefit if I spent more distraction-free time with them,” run with it. Try 10 minutes a day for a week and see how it feels.
Ask your kids how you’re doing. Sometimes kids will be frank with whether they want more presence. Ask, “Do you think I’m on my phone too much?” Or: “When we’re together, do you feel like we are together — that I’m giving you my attention?” Note that you don’t have to trust that everything they say is true. (Their viewpoint is not inherently more valuable than yours! It’s just something to consider.)
Experiment. Try out different lengths of time. If you’re facing a particularly frayed relationship with one kid, it’s possible you might have to listen to your kid talk about what they’re interested in for long stretches day after day. As you do this, you might find that they open up and do what you want them to do with greater ease.

The psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy recommends doing whatever you can do each day, whether it’s 15 minutes or 5 minutes or even just giving your kid a hug and telling them you love them and you’re glad that they’re your kid. For young kids she recommends giving the time together a name like “special time” and using this distraction-free time to describe what they’re doing (“You’re playing with blocks!”), copy what they’re doing (play with blocks), reflect what they want (“You want to build it tall!”), and connect (“I like being with you.”)

When it comes to older kids, it’s possible that presence might be even more important. One study found that while the quantity of time that a mother spent with their young kids didn’t make much difference in the life of that child, the same wasn’t true for older kids and teens. It reads, “For adolescents, more engaged maternal time was related to fewer delinquent behaviors, and engaged time with parents together was related to better outcomes.”

Of course, we’re pointing to generalities here and your mileage will vary. There is no universal rule to follow when it comes to the number of minutes you must spend in full presence with each child each day since each child is unique (and changing over time) and each family situation is unique (and changing over time).

Stay Simple, Be Gentle

More than anything, we recommend that you stay simple and be gentle with yourself. As Dan Siegel, professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, writes, “We’re not describing some kind of superparent here. You don’t have to be able to read minds or transcend all your shortcomings or achieve some sort of spiritual enlightenment. You just have to show up. Show up with presence and with the intention to let your kids feel that you get them and that you’ll be there for them, no matter what.”

You won’t always get things right when it comes to being present with your kids. But you can keep trying, remembering that if you’re at a loss for a parenting problem, the transformative power of presence might be exactly what you’re looking for.

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If you’re a member of Uplift Kids, use our lesson library to have scheduled time together for presence each week.

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