By Paul E. Skidmore III, Hillsborough County, FL
What Perfect Parenting Actually Costs
I think a lot of parents get stuck chasing a version of themselves that does not exist. The parent who never loses patience, who always says the right thing, who has an answer ready before the question is even finished. That version is not real, and chasing it costs you something. It costs you the actual moment in front of you, because you are too busy worrying about how you are doing to notice what your kid actually needs.
I grew up a latchkey kid. Both of my parents worked, and I spent a lot of hours figuring things out on my own. I am not saying that to complain about it. It is just the truth of how I was raised, and it shaped how I think about what my own kids need from me now. Nobody sat me down and walked me through life step by step. I learned a lot of it the hard way, through trial and error, through good decisions and bad ones. What I took from that is simple: a kid does not need a parent with all the answers. A kid needs a parent who is actually there when the questions come up.
Presence Is Not a Mood, It’s a Schedule
Being present is not about feeling warm and connected in a given moment. Anyone can feel that way for an hour on a Saturday. Being present is about whether you show up consistently, even on the days you do not feel like it, even when work was hard or you are tired or you would rather not deal with whatever is happening at that exact minute.
That is the part people skip over when they talk about being a good parent. They picture the big moments, the milestones, the photos. Real presence is mostly made up of small, unremarkable repetitions. Being around. Paying attention. Noticing when something is off before it becomes a bigger problem. None of that photographs well, but it is the actual job.
I would rather be the parent who is there for the boring Tuesday than the parent who shows up big for one event and disappears the rest of the time. Kids remember the pattern, not the highlight.
The Trap of Comparing Yourself to an Ideal
If you measure yourself against a perfect parent, you will always lose, because that parent does not exist outside of your own head. A more honest measure is whether you did something today, however small, that made your kid’s day a little better or a little safer. That is a bar you can actually clear, and clearing it repeatedly matters more than clearing some impossible bar once in a while.
Learning to Show up for a Child Who Needs Something Different
One of my kids is autistic, and that has changed how I think about presence more than anything else. You cannot parent an autistic child off a script you picked up watching everyone else raise their kids. A lot of what I thought I knew about parenting did not apply, and I had to go learn more. I have spent time educating myself on autism specifically because I did not want to be the parent who guesses. I wanted to understand what was actually going on so I could show up in a way that helped instead of a way that just looked like effort from the outside.
That kind of presence does not come from instinct alone. It comes from paying attention long enough to learn what your specific kid needs, not what parenting books say kids need in general. I also spend time volunteering at my kids’ school, partly because it puts me in the room where I can see how they are doing day to day, not just hear about it secondhand.
The Standard I Actually Hold Myself To
I am not trying to raise kids who think their dad never made a mistake. I am trying to raise kids who become good men with careers they are proud of, who know how to show up for the people in their own lives someday. That standard has nothing to do with being perfect. It has to do with being consistent, being honest about where I have fallen short, and still being there the next day to try again.
Church is part of that for me too, not as a performance, but as a reminder to keep trying to be better than I was the day before. Perfection is a moving target you will never hit. Presence is something you can choose again tomorrow morning, no matter how yesterday went.