I was folding tiny cloth diapers the other day when my mom called. She mentioned how she’d spent the entire weekend waiting for my brother to return her texts, and something in her voice cracked just a little. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Here I am, teaching Ellie to call her grandma every Sunday, while somewhere across town, there’s probably another parent staring at their silent phone, wondering when their grown child became too busy for a simple hello.
You know what’s wild? That same parent who never missed a single soccer game, who knew every teammate’s name, who packed orange slices in precisely portioned bags, is now grateful for a rushed five-minute conversation squeezed between their kid’s meetings. How did we get here?
The math doesn’t add up
Let’s do some quick calculations. Four practices a week at 45 minutes each way. Weekend tournaments two hours from home. Evening recitals that meant leaving work early and grabbing drive-through dinner. We’re talking thousands of hours, literally thousands, spent in minivans with sticky cup holders and goldfish cracker crumbs everywhere.
But now? Now that same kid can’t find ten minutes in their week to pick up the phone. And before you think I’m just calling out the younger generation, hold on. This is about all of us. Because I see myself in both sides of this equation, and it’s making me rethink everything about how we connect as families.
When I transitioned from teaching to freelance writing, I suddenly had more flexibility with my time. You’d think that would mean more calls to my parents, right? Wrong. Somehow I got busier with the freedom. It’s like that weird phenomenon where the more time you have, the less you seem to accomplish.
We trained them to be too independent
Here’s a thought that keeps me up at night while Milo’s finally sleeping soundly in his crib: Did we accidentally teach our kids that needing us is weakness?
Think about it. We celebrated every milestone of independence. First time tying shoes alone? Huge deal. Making their own lunch? Victory dance. Driving themselves to practice? Freedom at last! We pushed and pushed for self-sufficiency, and now we’re surprised when they’ve mastered it so well they don’t need us anymore?
My parents were skeptical of my “hippie parenting” approach partly because I involve my kids in everything. Ellie helps me sort laundry while we chat about her day. Milo “helps” me cook by banging wooden spoons on pots. But maybe there’s something to this constant connection, this normalizing of just being together without it needing to be an event.
The guilt goes both ways
Can we talk about the crushing guilt for a second? Because it’s suffocating everyone involved.
The grown kids feel guilty for not calling more, so they avoid calling at all because they know they’ll have to apologize for not calling sooner. It’s like when you haven’t replied to an email for so long that now you need to write a novel to justify the delay, so you just… don’t.
Meanwhile, parents feel guilty for wanting more. “I don’t want to be needy,” my friend told me last week, her voice small. Her daughter lives twenty minutes away but visits maybe once every two months. “She has her own life now.”
But having your own life and maintaining family connections aren’t mutually exclusive. When did we start believing they were?
Technology made it worse, not better
Remember when long-distance calls were expensive and you had to plan them? Sunday evening, after dinner, the whole family gathered around one phone. It was an event. Now we can call anytime, from anywhere, for free. So we don’t.
It’s like how I have 400 photos of Milo on my phone from last month alone, but my parents had maybe 30 photos from my entire first year. Which ones do you think they treasure more?
The constant possibility of connection has somehow made actual connection feel less urgent. We can call anytime, so we call no time. We can text constantly, so our actual conversations have shriveled to emoji reactions and thumbs-up symbols.
Start with ten minutes
Here’s what I’m trying with my own parents, and what I’m already modeling for Ellie and Milo: scheduled, non-negotiable connection time. Every Tuesday after our bedtime routine of stories and back rubs, I call my mom while I clean up the kitchen. She knows I’ll call, I know she’ll answer, and neither of us feels like we’re imposing.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes Milo has a meltdown right when I’m dialing. Sometimes I’m so touched out from a day of constant physical contact with tiny humans that talking to anyone feels impossible. But we do it anyway.
Because here’s the truth nobody wants to say: One day, those parents who drove to all those practices won’t be able to drive anymore. One day, they won’t be sitting by the phone. And all those grown kids who were too busy to call? They’ll be sitting in a lawyer’s office, dividing up belongings, wishing they’d asked about the story behind that weird ceramic frog on the mantle.
Finding our way back
I don’t have all the answers. I’m still that overtired mom who sometimes lets my kids watch an extra show so I can hide in the bathroom and scroll my phone in peace. But I’m trying to be intentional about connection, both with my kids now and in preparing them for maintaining relationships later.
We talk about feelings during our morning walks to collect leaves. We call grandma together and Ellie tells her about the fort she built. We’re normalizing the idea that loving someone means showing up, even when it’s inconvenient, even when you’re tired, even when you only have ten minutes.
Because those parents who spent years driving to practices and recitals? They weren’t doing it because they had nothing better to do. They were doing it because that’s what love looks like in action. And maybe, just maybe, returning that love looks like picking up the phone, even when we’re busy, even when we don’t know what to say, even when we’re afraid of the guilt that might come tumbling out.
Ten minutes. That’s all. Less time than it takes to watch a couple of TikToks or read through Instagram stories. But for that parent sitting by the phone, those ten minutes might be everything.
