Sections
Parental Presence, Part II
The following essay first appeared as an article in Alvaro de Vicente’s Substack publication, Men in the Making. For more articles like this one, you can visit his page here. Subscribe to the publication to stay up-to-date on Alvaro’s writing.
Last week, we began our consideration of parental presence. We considered the importance of presence, as well as some of the main challenges that parents face today in being present to their children. In order to address these challenges, we also identified four kinds of presence: physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.
This article continues where we left off, looking at the final three types of presence, as well as the stages of parental presence.
Intellectual Presence
Beyond physical presence, intellectual presence equally matters. Your children ought to be present in your mind, and you ought to be present in theirs.
Though your child will one day leave the home, they should never leave your thoughts. Practically speaking, this means setting aside time to think purposefully about your children. Without such intentional time, the default mode may be to think reactively about them, which creates imbalance by focusing mostly on what has gone wrong.
Time for deliberate thought could happen in a variety of settings. Perhaps it’s during the commute home, or maybe it’s on a walk around the neighborhood.
Ask yourself:
- What in the last week am I grateful for about my children? (Be specific.)
- What are my children going through?
- Are they emotionally up or down?
- What is coming up soon in their lives?
- What do they need?
- How can I pray for them?
Your conversations with your spouse about the children are also very important. Your spouse may see things that you are blind to, just as you will have insights and approaches that your spouse may not have considered.
Another form of intellectual presence is being present in your child’s mind so that when he interprets things that are happening in the world around him, he does so with you in mind.
Counterintuitively, for this to happen, you need to learn to listen. Children love to be listened to, even if they do not speak much. They want to know they can speak without being harshly judged. In this way, they develop the habit of processing reality with you.
You should be ready for such conversation to occur at inconvenient moments. Your child may muster the courage to open a conversation late at night when you are exhausted after a long day and eager to rest before an early morning. If in such a moment you say, “Not now,” later may never come in the same way. Holding your teenage child’s late-night emotional conversation at sixteen years of age is just as important as holding your crying newborn in the wee hours of the morning at sixteen weeks of life.
You should also learn how to draw your child out. Learn the environment where they open up. For one child it may be a drive. For another, ice cream. For another, a hike.
Also ask yourself what your listening to advice-giving ratio is. Too often we move immediately to fixing. Sometimes children stop sharing because every conversation becomes a correction or a lecture.
Moral Presence
Moral presence begins with your example. The way you love your spouse teaches your children how relationships should be honored. Your relationship with truth teaches them how truth should be pursued. Your discipline, virtue, courage, honesty, and responsibility all become lessons. How you live now is how they will live later.
Correction is also necessary, but it must always be done with warmth. Correct with a smile. Correct with affection. The child should know that the engine behind correction is love, the vehicle of correction is charity, and the outcome of correction is hope. You correct because your children are called to become better men and women—even better than you are now.
Spiritual Presence
Your spiritual example becomes especially important as children grow older. If children see no spiritual life in the home, they may conclude that faith is something detached from real life rather than something integrated into it. They need to learn from you what it means to be a person of faith, not only through decisions but through visible practice.
I will never forget the example of my own father praying before Mass on his knees. There was something striking about it to me. There was my father, who in my eyes was the strongest man on earth, down on his knees. He was like a knight kneeling before the queen.
The Stages of Presence
Besides the kinds of presence, it helps to consider the stages of parental presence. There are four such stages: holding the hand, holding the bike seat, holding the steering wheel, and holding the phone.
When children are young, life is highly directed. You guide constantly: come here, don’t do that, be careful. This is holding the hand.
In the middle school years, you are no longer leading by the hand. You are behind them, stabilizing them while hoping to let go. They make more choices, but you still watch closely. This is holding the bike seat.
In high school, they are driving, but you remain attentive. You coach gently and intervene when necessary. Much of this stage is observation, and the call is to observe lovingly, not critically. This is holding the steering wheel.
In college and adulthood, you are available whenever needed. You may still call sometimes, especially if you know they are struggling, but much of this stage is availability and readiness. This is holding the phone.
Conclusion
There is no universal manual for parenting. Every case differs based on family size, children’s temperaments, ages, finances, personality, work demands, marriage dynamics, and opportunities to serve the common good. But awareness alone is already a huge step.
It is worth asking honestly: Do I really need to be away from home right now, or is it simply easier to be away? Can my spouse hold me accountable? Can a close friend or mentor challenge me?
Ninety percent of success is showing up—not twenty-four hours a day, but at the right place and at the right time. Those two minutes in the morning may matter greatly. That half hour in the evening may matter greatly.
Behave as you want your children to behave at your age. And perhaps pray: “Let me be the parent I want my children to become.”
I conclude with Mother Teresa’s saying: “God has not called me to be successful; he has called me to be faithful.” Applied to parenting, your children do not expect perfection. They expect loyalty. They expect dedication. They expect you to be there—emotionally and mentally.
Finally, ask yourself: What one thing can I do to become a more present parent in my children’s lives?
About the Author
Alvaro de Vicente
In addition to his responsibilities as headmaster of The Heights, Alvaro acts as a mentor to high schoolers and teaches senior Apologetics.