Why Is It So Hard to Be Present With Your Kids?

It’s late August, and suddenly she can feel summer ending.

For the past three months, she’s been home more than usual with her two young kids. They’re too little for most camps, so the days have been long and mostly unstructured. There have been mornings at the playground, afternoons with the sprinkler running in the backyard, popsicles melting faster than anyone can eat them, library trips, snacks every twelve minutes, and walks around the neighborhood that somehow take 45 minutes because someone needs to stop and examine every rock.

And all summer long, she has been waiting for things to get a little easier.

At the playground, she’s thinking about the email she needs to answer. While the kids are playing in the sprinkler, she’s mentally making the grocery list. At the pool, she’s watching them while also wondering whether she should be doing more structured activities with them, whether they’re getting too much screen time, whether she should have figured out some kind of preschool camp after all.

She’s there. But she’s rarely just there.

And then one evening in late August, she notices that the sun is going down earlier.

She’s folding one of those tiny swimsuits that has been hanging over the back of a chair all summer and suddenly she remembers seeing the school supplies starting to appear at Target. She remembers seeing her friend from the gym in the toilet paper aisle who said, in passing, “I can’t believe summer is almost over.”

And something in her drops. Now that summer is ending, she can suddenly see it.

That was it.

Those were the summer days with her kids.

And instead of remembering how hard some of those days actually were, she starts remembering the good parts. Their wet little bodies running through the grass. The way her youngest said “watermelon.” The afternoon they all ate lunch outside. The warm evenings when nobody had to rush through dinner to get ready for school the next morning.

Almost immediately, another thought arrives. Why didn’t I enjoy it more?

I hear some version of this from mothers all the time.

We desperately want to be present for our lives, but while we are living them, our minds are often somewhere else. We’re anticipating what needs to happen next, replaying something that already happened, solving problems, scanning for what might go wrong, or evaluating whether we’re doing any of it well enough.

Then the moment passes, and suddenly we can see how precious it was. And we get mad at ourselves for missing it.

But I don’t think the answer is to tell mothers to “be more present.” Most of us already know we want to be present. Knowing that doesn’t necessarily make it easier to do.

Why is it so hard to enjoy something while it’s happening?

Part of the problem is that presence asks something very different of us than anticipation does.

Anticipation gives our brains a job. What needs to happen next? What could go wrong? What am I forgetting? What does everyone need? How can I make this better?

For many highly capable women, this kind of thinking is incredibly familiar. It’s part of what has helped us build careers, manage complicated lives, care for people we love, and get a tremendous amount done.

I call this strategic intelligence. Strategic intelligence helps us plan, predict, organize, analyze, execute, and solve problems. We need it. Motherhood needs it too.

But enjoying your child running through the sprinkler is not a problem to solve. Neither is lying beside them while they fall asleep, watching them dig an enormous hole at the beach, or listening to a four-year-old tell a story that takes approximately nine years to reach its conclusion.

Those moments ask for a different kind of intelligence.

They ask us to stay.

Presence sounds lovely. It doesn’t always feel lovely.

This is the part I think we miss when we talk about being present. We tend to imagine presence as a peaceful state. You put your phone down, take a breath, look into your child’s eyes, and feel grateful.

But being present means being available for whatever is actually happening. Sometimes that is joy, but sometimes it’s something very different. Sometimes it’s boredom or irritation. Sometimes it’s uncertainty, sadness, restlessness, or the uncomfortable feeling that there is something more productive you could be doing.

Being present with your kids doesn’t mean loving every minute you spend with them. You can love your children to the moon and back and still find an August afternoon with a two-year-old mind-numbingly boring.

Presence isn’t enjoying every moment. It’s being willing to actually inhabit the moment you’re in.

That capacity is part of what I call relational intelligence. This is the ability to stay engaged with reality as it is, especially when it’s uncertain, uncomfortable, or different from what you expected, so you can choose how you want to respond.

And like any capacity, it can get stronger with practice.

The strange thing about hindsight

When a season ends, we get distance from its discomfort. We remember the toddler running through the sprinkler. We don’t remember quite as vividly that they screamed for 25 minutes because you turned the sprinkler off.

We remember the tiny hand in ours. We forget that five minutes earlier we were trying to get that same tiny human to put on shoes.

Distance changes the picture.

So perhaps the invitation at the end of summer isn’t to look backward and think, I should have enjoyed that more. Maybe it’s to notice what that regret is telling you.

Maybe what that regret is telling you is that you want to be here for your life and experience your children as they are right now. That doesn’t mean every moment is magical, or that you need to appreciate the tantrums, endless snack requests, bedtime battles, or long afternoons that leave you counting the minutes until bedtime. Motherhood can be boring and frustrating and exhausting, even while you deeply love the people you’re doing it with.

The point isn’t to make yourself enjoy all of it. It’s to recognize that this ordinary, messy life is the life that’s happening right now, and there’s something worth noticing about that.

And you don’t have to wait until something is over to realize you wanted to be there for it.

So as summer winds down, try something small. When you notice your mind racing ahead, ask yourself: Does this moment actually need solving?

If it does, solve it.

But if it doesn’t, see what happens when you stay for another few seconds. Feel the warm air. Listen to whatever ridiculous thing your child is telling you. Notice their face. Notice your own experience too, even if what you discover is that you’re tired, restless, or ready for summer to be over.

You don’t have to manufacture gratitude and you don’t have to turn an ordinary Tuesday into a core memory.

You just have to be here often enough to experience some of your life while it is still happening.

Because someday you’ll miss parts of this. And you’re also allowed to be ready for September.