How to Find PRESENCE in a World of Distraction

Article by Sally Prebble, PhD, Cofounder Peace Talks NZ

Are you missing it? 

Not that important email, not your tax return, not that great Netflix series everyone is talking about...are you missing the precious ordinary moments of your child’s life.

In my work with parents, I hear this all the time:

“I try so hard to be more present with my kids, but life is so overwhelming!”

Like them, I’m guessing you’re physically with your children a lot (you might even feel like you never get a moment to yourself); but you might notice that your mind is often somewhere else. Our fast-paced world never stops offering us distractions.

But late at night, as your phone slips from your hand, and you stare up at the ceiling, does a deep ache of knowing wells up: 

‘Is my brief time with my child slipping away?’ 

In this article, I’m going to talk about why presence matters so much for kids, why it can be so damn hard for us to give it to them, and I’m going to give you four really practical steps to come out of this daily fog and reclaim your presence, even in the middle of the chaos and mess of family life, even if it feels too difficult, even if no one was ever present with you.

But first, have you ever wondered why it can feel almost impossible to be present with your children sometimes?

(If you prefer to watch or listen, you can see a video I've made on this topic here.) 

Why is presence so hard?

When we are present with another human being, we are sending them a deep and ancient message that we have seen them, that they matter. One conscious creature is reaching through the walls of our physical separation and touching the consciousness of another: focusing, attending, stretching out with their attention. We know it as soon as we see it; It awakens something in us when someone turns the light of their presence on us.

This is truly the greatest gift we can offer another human being, and when we do this for our children it is literally forming their brains.  

We also feel it when others aren't present with us, when they’re distracted, thinking ahead, or their mind is elsewhere. And we can feel it in ourselves too… if we pay attention.

The trouble is, the parts of our brains that are able to truly attune to another human being (to recognise them as human beings, to allow the flow of our focus and attention to direct to them) are very often shut down.

There are all sorts of things that can interfere with our ability to be present with our children, but there are two big ones I see in the parents I work with, and they are closely related. 

1. We’re often distracted 

As parents, we are responsible for so much. The weight of the world is often on our shoulders. This gives us a lot to be distracted by, like paying the rent, not getting fired from our jobs, getting our sick children to the doctor in a timely fashion - that sort of thing.

But in addition, modern parents are surrounded by things that were designed to keep us distracted...and there’s a ton of money in the distraction game.

The main commodity of our modern world is not gold or even oil, it’s attention, and your attention is worth a lot to big tech companies and advertisers who want to buy it. 

But your attention is worth even more to your child; and it is worth fighting for.  I’m guessing that if you're reading this, you have already been fighting. If you sense that no matter how hard you try, you are always losing this battle, there’s a high chance that this second factor is also at play for you.

2. We're often numbing

When you were a child, you needed presence. You needed loving, warm attention directed at you, from the adults who cared for you to see you, value you, and reflect your existence back to you.  

Little you didn’t know this, but 200,000 years of evolution designed you this way. You needed to be seen and acknowledged by other loving humans in order to send your fragile developing nervous system the signal that you exist and you matter. 

If you did not receive the loving, warm presence you needed (and the regrettable truth about this is that an awful lot of adults today did not) or if this attention was inconsistent, or abusive, or scary, then it is very likely that your nervous system took a very caring and loving step for you. 

It wrapped you up to protect you. 

This was a sensible strategy and it kept little you safe. It shut you down from the pain of not being seen when you needed it most, protecting you with a warm bubble of not caring. You weren’t wrong to wrap yourself for protection; it wasn’t even your choice. This was an automatic response by your very cleverly evolved nervous system to care for you when you were too small to protect yourself. 

Unfortunately, this layer of protection is now insulating you from life, from joy, from aliveness. And it may be insulating you from your child.

But what if you are now ready to start the gentle process of allowing those protective layers to come away so that you can experience again, and so that your child can experience you?

How to Reclaim Your Presence

Reclaiming your presence involves a conscious and gradual unwrapping of the parts of yourself that have been deep frozen to stay safe. It is challenging work that requires a lot of support, love and care. 

Here are four steps you can take to support you to reclaim your presence. These aren’t individual steps; they all work together and build from each other.

Step 1 - Learn to be present with yourself 

How can we wake up and activate our neural circuitry for awareness?

The truth is, presence with your child is not the first step. The parts of our brain that are able to notice and be present with other people, regions like the medial prefrontal cortex, especially the right side) are also the parts that are able to notice and be present with ourselves. 

This is actually great news, because it means that we can practice presence with ourselves, by noticing our own bodies, our own emotions in any given moment. 

This doesn’t have to be a candle lighting, incense burning palaver. It can literally mean pausing for a minute every now and then to just notice.

Let’s try it now so you can see how painless this can be, just 10 seconds. (I will wait while you time yourself :)

During these 10 seconds, simply notice what you feel. Notice your hands, your feet, the weight of your body, your breathing - what is actually happening in your body right now? 

And if the answer is "nothing", let me nudge you a little. What does the "nothing" feel like? Can you trace its contours? Can you feel the cold, soggy edges of the numbness? 

If you want a more detailed process for how to find more awareness with yourself, I have created a self-connection video resource about this, so you might like to have a look at that next. 

Once you start to build in some regular, brief moments to be present with yourself, you can start to… 

Step 2 - Learn what presence with your child looks like. 

If you didn’t experience presence as a child, it can actually be a bit hard to recognise whether or not you are present. 

One mother I worked with really thought she was present being with her son, because she was physically with most of the time. She would help him get ready each morning, eat meals with him, cart him around to his activities. This was far more than her parents had been physically present with her.

But over time, she came to notice that while she was physically present in these moments, her mind, her thoughts, her awareness, her attention was often elsewhere. She was busy planning the next meal, checking her phone, thinking about that difficult conversation she needed to have, checking her work emails, worrying about finances. Her attention was very rarely with her son. 

In a nutshell, this is what presence comes down to: where is your attention?

If this is new to you and you would like a really simple formula that you can follow to let your child know that you are present with them, I have made this connection video guide that talks you through this. 

But for now, here is a thought experiment for you. Think of the last time you were with someone and you felt really cared for, listened to, valued. What did you see them do that let you know they were present with you? 

• Was it their eye contact?
• Their expression? 
• Something about the way they were holding their body?
• How they responded to what you were saying?

This exercise is very informative, because we tend to notice when someone is very present with us, but may miss the details that cue is into noticing. Once you identify these cues, you can start to pay attention to these details in yourself when you are with your child: Am I making eye contact? Am I holding my body in a way that shows my interest? Am I responding to what they say (not just what I am thinking about)? 

And once you have identified what true presence with your child might look like, the next step is to…. 

Step 3 - Get brutally honest about what is distracting you 

If we are honest, most of us know already the main contenders might be. We may have an unpleasant, guilty feeling alerting us that we are being pulled away more than we would like; and one of the main contenders - our phones - is always in our pockets. 

But this is complicated; it's not as simple as just saying these distractions are bad, so you need to get rid of them, because these things that distract you are also meeting important needs: 

• Late-night Facebook doom scrolling might give you the only social connection you have had today.
• Moving between various household jobs might give you some much needed order and peace in the chaos of your life. 
• Checking your work emails might give you a sense of financial security or purpose.
• Watching YouTube each night might be giving you some joy or meeting a need for learning.

These things are able to distract us so easily because we, modern parents, are living in a needs desert. We’re running on empty, giving so much without getting our own needs met. If we want to find a way out of constant distraction, we can start by noticing what needs are missing for us and start taking intentional steps to meet them.

So let's look at this together. Take a piece of paper and fold it in three:

1. In the first column, write down the three to five things that have been most distracting to you in the past week (e.g. your phone, Facebook, housework and mess, worrying thoughts). 

2. In the next column, write down what needs you think these activities or actions are meeting for you. 

• If you were checking your phone a lot - is this because you long for more connection?
•  If you were scrolling on Facebook, are you wanting some fun or joy?
• If you are really distracted by mess - is it that you want some order? Or maybe more support?
• If you were had a lot of intrusive worry thoughts - are you wanting safety

3. In the third column, you can brainstorm some alternative ideas of ways you could meet each of these needs. If you are seeking connection, could you build in a walk or coffee with a friend each week? Join a club, take up a hobby, schedule a daily 10 minute catch up with your partner or a text check in with a friend?

Rather than trying to fight our distraction, like it's an enemy, we are trying to understand it. What is it you are really looking for in the depths of the internet or in the bottom of the wine glass, and how can you start to meet these needs in ways that will better serve your life? 

Step 4 . Creating islands of presence 

Once you have learned what it means to be present with yourself and your child, and identified what is distracting you, you are ready to pull this together by creating regular, intentional moments when you commit to be present with yourself and your child each and every day. At first, it might feel awkward or unfamiliar. But overtime, this practice will rebuild that neural circuitry and you will return to your nature.  

I call these "stepping stones of presence"; regular times throughout each day when you will commit to being fully present with your child. This is quality over quantity. Regularity, consistency and frequency are key. Start small, with just a few minutes at a time, and then we can work up from there.

I recommend as a first step, you identify 3-5 regular moments in your child’s day when you will commit to giving them your full attention. These moments might be when your child first wakes up, during meals before they arrive home from school or you from work, or at bed time. 

Think of  these times as an appointment to bring your most present and alive self to your child. Over time you can add in more islands and extend the time for each. It can also help to identify times when you can allow yourself to rest, connect with yourself, or just zone out.  We’re rebuilding presence slowly, not kicking the door down and wilting in the shock of sudden brightness.

Taken together, and practiced regularly, these steps should make a real difference to your ability to be present with your child. But remember that this is not an easy or quick fix. Rebuilding presence is a slow, gentle process and you may need support to do this.

If you would like to join a community of parents who are working together to restore their presence, you might like to check out our From Chaos to Connection programme.