Finding Presence in Parenting
On devices, raising small children, and being in the moment
My attempts to regain control of my attention from the army of smart devices around me have failed. I was reminded of this when Kevin from The New Fatherhood pointed out an app that makes your smartphone into a dumb phone. He reported that his smartphone usage was down so much that his children took note of his renewed presence. The app is slick, and I had some limited success with it when it first hit the market last year. However, I eventually deleted it and returned to my old habits of using my smartphone as an escape hatch from the grind of parenting—and life itself.
The allure of the smartphone is strong for parents of small children like myself. The smartphone is a harshly addictive outlet that helps sleep-deprived parents, in various stages of losing and regaining their sense of self, cope with the challenges of raising little people. In the absence of community, where else can we turn for relief but the smartphone?
Yet, stepping back, I feel shattered that these devices, and what they represent, are in my house during this special time. It’s not a nice position to be in, but every parent faces it. You want some time alone and maybe a leisurely morning to loaf around amid sleeplessness and fatigue. But as soon as you regain that freedom when your children get older, you want to be needed by your children.
During school holidays, these conflicting feelings get sharper. I see the same thing playing out with friends and strangers alike. Go to a coffee shop early on a weekend morning, and you will likely see a parent consumed by an Instagram feed or buzzing WhatsApp messages as their children try to capture their attention.
I’m guilty of these trends, and that’s why I’m upset. The idea that a technology company is constantly refining advanced ways to steal my attention from my children during this sacred time is enough to make anyone extremely angry. There seems to be no end in sight as the algorithms improve and our collective drain grows deeper.
I wrote about how psychedelics can help parents be genuinely present, but they aren’t a perfect solution. For psychedelics to work, the user must engage in serious preparation and integration work. It’s like training for a marathon without considering the importance of diet and rest.
Another avenue worth exploring is building a community and sharing the parenting load from a spiritual perspective. However, in our isolated and remote world, many parenting communities are on the platforms contributing to the problem (e.g., WhatsApp groups).
On a particularly cold weekend in July, I went to the Cederberg mountains with a group of close male friends, some with children and some without. One friend with experience in men’s work spoke about how our ancestors went on hunting expeditions for weeks on end. During these expeditions, problems were discussed and resolved. The burden of raising a family took on a collective dynamic, and eventually, the group would return with food. Humans have lived this way much longer than they have lived in our current dynamic. No wonder we feel so alone and are constantly reaching for the smartphone to feel an illusionary sense of community. Each of us is doing their hunting alone.
I don’t have many solutions to the grave challenge facing parents right now, but I see how we are harming ourselves and our children. I shudder to think what the parenting world will be like for my children’s generation. We should remember that raising small children, though difficult, is one of the most blessed times of a parent’s life. It doesn’t last forever. So mute the WhatsApp groups for a week. Delete Instagram from your phone.
Reflect on the addictive pull of the device. Observe it quietly and without judgment, as you might observe your breath during meditation or breathwork. These moments of presence and reflection are a way of seeing the addiction. It might be impossible to break the addiction for all intents and purposes. The best we can do is strive to create awareness around it and create space for that awareness to help us take back some power we’ve given over to our devices.
The demands on parents during the holiday season are particularly intense and so it makes sense that we look to our phones for brief moments of escape from the intensity of it all. It’s important to go gently on ourselves here. Parenting has never been harder than it is right now for our generation. We have the awareness of what needs to shift and therefore the responsibility to shift it. By and large, our parents neither had the awareness nor felt the responsibility. This is the beginning of embracing the present moment.