I was folding laundry in the late afternoon light when my oldest daughter, now seven, climbed into my lap unprompted and said, “Mama, remember when we used to go to the creek and you let me get all muddy?”
She wasn’t asking about the expensive birthday party we threw last year or the wooden toys I’d carefully curated from that sustainable shop downtown. She was remembering an ordinary Tuesday when I said yes to mess, yes to staying longer, yes to her.
That moment cracked something open in me. Because I’ll be honest—I’ve spent so much mental energy trying to do everything “right.” The organic snacks, the toxin-free home, the gentle discipline, the intentional routines. All of it matters to me, and I don’t regret any of it.
But somewhere in the thick of early motherhood, I’d started to believe that if I could just perfect the environment, optimize the nutrition, eliminate the chemicals, and create the ideal childhood… that would be enough. That would be love, tangible and measured.
But my daughter wasn’t cataloging the things. She was savoring the feeling.
The currency of childhood isn’t stuff
We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sell us a better version of parenting. There’s always another product, another method, another milestone to achieve.
And I’m not exempt from this—I’ve spent hours researching the safest mattress, the best probiotics, the right kind of wooden blocks that encourage open-ended play. I believe in being thoughtful about what we bring into our homes and bodies. That’s not going to change.
But I’ve started noticing what my kids actually talk about when they reminisce. It’s never the thing itself. It’s never the toy or the treat or even the trip.
It’s the way I sat on the floor with them. It’s my laugh when they told a ridiculous joke for the fifteenth time. It’s the morning I let the schedule go and we stayed in bed reading together until the sun was high. It’s the time I got down in the dirt with them, not worried about my clothes or the time or what we looked like.
They remember the feeling of being seen. Of being delighted in. Of being enough, exactly as they were in that moment.
I think about this when I’m at the farmers’ market and my three-year-old wants to carry the tomatoes himself, even though I know he’ll drop half of them.
I think about it when my oldest asks me to watch her do a cartwheel—the same cartwheel she’s shown me seventeen times this week—and I have to choose between actually watching or just glancing up while my mind stays stuck in the mental load.
I think about it when my son asks to help me cook dinner and I know it will take three times as long and create four times the mess.
The truth is, presence is harder than purchasing. It costs us something real—our time, our patience, our need for control and order.
I can buy an organic cotton lovey in two minutes online. But sitting on the couch and being fully there while my daughter tells me an elaborate story about her stuffed animals? That requires me to put my phone in another room. To let the dishes wait. To release my grip on productivity and embrace what looks, from the outside, like nothing at all.
And yet it’s everything. It’s the whole currency of childhood.
What they’re actually collecting
Children are collectors, but not in the way we think. They’re not cataloging the gifts or the experiences we worked so hard to provide. They’re collecting moments of felt love.
They’re gathering evidence of their worth. They’re building an internal library of what it feels like to be cherished, and they’ll carry that library with them for the rest of their lives.
I see this so clearly in the way my kids play. When my oldest rocks her baby doll, she uses the same gentle voice I use with her brother. When my son builds a fort, he always makes sure there’s room for everyone, because that’s what we’ve tried to practice in our home.
They’re not imitating the things we own—they’re imitating the way we make them feel. The way we make each other feel.
This has changed the way I think about my mothering priorities.
I still care deeply about reducing toxins, about feeding them nourishing food, about creating rhythms and routines that support their nervous systems.
I still believe in the power of slow mornings and early bedtimes, in cloth and wood and wool, in letting them be bored and muddy and free.
But I’m learning that none of that matters nearly as much as the energetic quality I bring to our days.
Am I irritated or am I curious? Am I rushing or am I settled? Am I half-present or am I here?
Because a child can have every material advantage and still feel unseen. And a child can have very little and still feel completely secure in their belovedness.
I’m not saying the practical things don’t matter—I think they do, and I’ll keep choosing them when I can. But I’m learning to hold them loosely. To let the perfect be the enemy of the present.
Some days I get it right. We’re outside all morning, moving slow, and I’m genuinely enjoying them. I’m not performing motherhood or documenting it or mentally writing about it—I’m just there, in it, laughing at their jokes and marveling at the way they see the world.
Those are the days that matter. Not because we did anything special, but because they felt me there with them.
Other days I miss it entirely. I’m touched out and overwhelmed, and I’m going through the motions while my mind spins with everything I’m not getting done. I’m physically present but energetically absent, and kids can feel that distinction like a change in barometric pressure. They don’t have the language for it yet, but they know. They always know.
And here’s what I’m learning: they need me to know it too. They need me to notice when I’ve drifted, to come back, to repair. To say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t really listening before. Tell me again.” To put down the phone, close the laptop, stop folding the laundry, and just be with them.
Not because I have to, but because I want to. Because they’re worth stopping for.
The other night, my daughter asked me to lie down with her at bedtime, even though she’s perfectly capable of falling asleep on her own now. And my first instinct was to say no—I had things to do, the kitchen was a mess, I was touched out and desperate for some time to myself. But something made me pause.
So I said yes. I climbed into her little bed and let her curl into me, and we didn’t talk much—she just wanted me there. And as I felt her body relax into sleep, I realized: this is it. This is the thing she’ll remember. Not the toys I agonized over or the birthday parties I planned. Just this. The warmth. The safety. The feeling of being worth staying for.
That’s the inheritance I want to leave them. Not a perfectly curated childhood, but a felt sense of their own preciousness.
Because in the end, they won’t remember what we gave them. They’ll remember how we made them feel. And if we’re lucky, if we can stay awake to what really matters, they’ll remember feeling loved. Completely. Consistently. Enough.
