A small request after a long day
One evening, I came home from the office completely tired. My wife had already fed our 18 month old, Duggu. She asked me to stay with him while she made dinner for us. I wanted five quiet minutes. Nothing big. Just a few minutes when nobody needed anything from me.
So I picked up my phone. Duggu came running toward me.
“Daddu,” he said. That is what he calls me instead of Daddy. Then he said something that sounded like “buck.” I did not understand him. He tried again, using that special language of his that sometimes takes us a few attempts to figure out. Then it clicked. A Book.
“Which book do you want?” I asked.
“Mala Mala Jed Pama.” he replied
I knew exactly what he meant. It was his favorite: Llama Llama Red Pajama.
I smiled. The phone could wait. Five minutes earlier, I wanted to be left alone with my phone. Now he was standing in front of me asking for something so simple. He did not need a big activity. He did not need me to plan a special evening.He just wanted me to read with him.
The hours of his day we do not see
This is one of the hardest parts of being a daycare parent for me.
My wife and I spend much of the day at work while Duggu is growing somewhere else. We are there for the morning rush and the evening routine, but many of the small moments in between belong to daycare. Some days are difficult for him. Some days are wonderful. He plays, learns, tries new things, and slowly becomes more independent. We usually hear about those moments after they have already happened.I am grateful that he is cared for and learning. But gratitude does not completely remove the feeling that I missed something.
Sometimes it is a milestone. Sometimes it is a small activity that would mean very little to anyone else. As a parent, those small things somehow become the things you wish you could have seen. One evening, that feeling caught me by surprise while we were reading.
Counting butterflies
We had opened You Are My Happy, the book with the turtle. Duggu looked at the butterflies on one of the pages and started counting them.
One, two, three.
He kept going. Four. Five. Six…. All the way to ten!
I looked at him in shock. I knew he was learning new things, but I did not know that he could already count from one to ten. When did he learn it? How long had he known? He did not announce it as a milestone. There was no big moment. He simply counted the butterflies and moved on, as if this were something he had always known how to do. I was proud of him—and surprised that I had missed this small change. He was learning so much during the hours we were apart.
That is the strange part of watching your child grow while both parents work. You can be completely present in their life and still miss pieces of it. I do not think that makes us bad parents. But knowing that does not always stop the guilt.
Our routine was never a plan
My wife and I did not sit down and design a perfect evening routine. It happened naturally. Dinner. Bath. Books. Bedtime. At first, reading was simply one more step before sleep. Over time, it became the part of the evening that felt most like ours. Right now, Duggu loves Llama Llama Red Pajama and Little Blue Truck. We have read the same pages enough times that he knows what is coming before we do it. He knows how Mama Llama and Baby Llama are going to react. He waits for our expressions. He watches for the actions we make at certain parts, and sometimes he reacts before we even get there.
Then he smiles because he knows he was right. We smile because his excitement makes a familiar story feel new again. The books may stay the same, but he does not. One night he points at a picture. Another night he says a new word. Then, without warning, he counts ten butterflies and shows us how much has been happening inside his mind.
Tired parents still need a break
I do not want to make our bedtime routine sound perfect. My wife and I both work. By the end of some days, we are both exhausted. She may need a few minutes to herself. I may want to sit quietly and look at my phone. Sometimes both of us feel like we have nothing left to give. That feeling is real too. Becoming a parent did not remove our need to rest. Loving Duggu does not mean we are excited about every bath, every book, or every step of bedtime. Some nights, we are simply trying to make it to the end of the day. But then he gets a book, looks at us, and waits for the performance he already knows.
The expression. The action. The familiar voice. He pays attention to all of it. And when we give him our full attention, he talks. A lot. Not every word is clear, but that almost makes us listen more carefully. We slow down. We try to understand. He tries again.
For those few minutes, the tiredness is still there, but it is no longer the most important thing in the room.
I cannot make up for every missed moment
At first, I think part of me wanted our evening time to make up for the hours we spent apart. But that is too much pressure to place on a few hours after work. It is too much pressure for us, and it is not what Dugga is asking for. He does not need every evening to be special. He does not need an exhausted father trying to manufacture a perfect childhood memory before bedtime. He needs us to be with him in the ordinary parts of the day.
For our family, books make that easier. A story gives us a place to sit together. The familiar pages help him talk. His reactions show us what he remembers. Sometimes, hidden inside an ordinary book, we discover something new about him. Reading cannot return the first time he counted to ten. I may never know exactly when that happened. But it gave me the moment when he counted those butterflies for me.
That matters too.
If you feel like time is slipping away
If you are a working parent, you may know this feeling. You drop your child off, go through your workday, and come home to a child who seems just a little older than the one you left that morning. It can make you feel like you need to do more with the limited time you have. I am learning that “more” may not be the answer. Connection may be hiding inside something you already do: one book, a bath, a short walk, a song, or a few minutes sitting together before bed. The activity itself is not what makes the time meaningful. It is the moment when your child realizes you are really there with them.
I will not witness every milestone. That still hurts when I think about it. But at the end of the day, Duggu brings a book, sits with us, and lets us back into his world. For now, that is our way of finding each other again.
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