Why you are with them all day and still are not there
You share the house, the meals and the trips, and still the feeling remains that you were not there. Time with them is not what is missing. Presence inside that time is.
You spend the whole day with them and at the end the feeling remains that you were not there. That is not fixed with more hours, because what is missing is not shared time: it is presence inside that time. You can spend twelve hours in the same house and never once coincide.
Isha describes that state with a sentence you recognize immediately: “While I am talking with you I am thinking about lunch, or who I have to call, or what I have to do.” The conversation happens, the body is there, and the attention is somewhere else. Children notice that difference before anyone.
Patience does not break because of them: it breaks because of where you were
The outburst almost never matches what happened. A spilled glass, a question asked for the fourth time, something that cannot be found. What blew up was not that: it was that you had already been holding twenty things at once with your attention divided among all of them. Afterwards comes the regret, and with it the guilt, which does not help anyone either.
That is why Isha moves the focus from parenting technique to the state you parent from: “If you are present, everything will unfold, and everything will change and everything becomes easier.” It is not a promise of days without conflict. It is something else, more concrete: when you are present, the same scene asks a good deal less of you, because you are not solving it from the exhaustion of being in five places.
They do not learn what you tell them: they learn what they see
There is an uncomfortable part and it is one of the most useful. “We teach children fear,” Isha says, and she explains it: “Children actually do not have fear, they are not born with fear: they create fear afterwards.” It is not taught through speeches. It is taught through the way you react in front of them, through what worries you, through what you avoid.
From there comes a conclusion that relieves and commits at the same time. It relieves because it takes the pressure off always saying the right thing: what works is the state, not the script. And it commits because the work starts in you before it starts in them. Isha adds something that takes off a lot of pressure: “We have to stop worrying about what other people might think, because children really define themselves, they do not define you.”
Signs that you are close but not there
They tell you something and two minutes later you cannot repeat what they said.
You lose your patience over minimal things and regret it afterwards.
You handle logistics all day and cannot recall a moment of enjoyment with them.
You catch yourself answering with your phone in your hand.
When there is finally a free moment, you use it to get ahead on housework.
A scene you may recognize
You are in the kitchen, they are talking around you, and your head is on the email you did not answer and on what needs buying tomorrow. You answer “uh huh” twice. The third time they ask you something specific and you have no idea what they are talking about, and there an irritation appears that was not meant for them.
Nobody did anything wrong in that kitchen. There was simply no one fully present to receive what they were saying. And that is not made up for with one more hour in the same room, because the hour you were already there was not inhabited either.
The practice: showing up in the time you already share
- 1
You stop for a few minutes before the busiest part of the day, and your attention comes down from the mind to the heart.
- 2
You choose a small and fixed moment, like dinner or the drive to school, and during that time you are only there.
- 3
When you notice you drifted off to the list of pending things, perhaps you can come back without reproaching yourself. Drifting is normal, coming back is the practice.
- 4
If you are about to lose your patience, you stop for one second before answering. That second is almost all it takes.
- 5
When you react badly, you repair it in few words and move on. Long guilt teaches nobody anything.
If you are present, everything will unfold, and everything will change and everything becomes easier.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Because patience is not spent on them: it is spent beforehand, holding everything at once with your attention divided. By the time you reach the scene you are already running on reserve, and then something minimal is enough to set it off. That is why the outburst never matches what triggered it, and why afterwards that bewildering regret remains. It is not a failure of love or of character. It is an account of energy and presence. Isha moves the focus from what to do to where you are acting from: when you are present, the same scene asks a good deal less of you, because you are not solving it from exhaustion.
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