24/05/2026
We moved five days ago and I am still running between two homes.
The new place is ours but still in boxes. The old place has a cleaner in it right now because I need it immaculate to get my deposit back. The gardener comes Thursday.
It is half term. I have an interview this week, a job application filed yesterday and a new role starting imminently.
And my daughter just wanted to play.
Not in a demanding way. In that honest, clear way that 8 year olds have of telling you exactly what they need without any filter on it.
Play with me. Just play with me.
I kept saying yes but it was a distracted yes. Body in the room, head somewhere else entirely. She sees straight through it. She always has.
She started acting out. Getting upset. And I want to be honest about something because I think so many mothers live in this exact gap and never say it out loud. I knew what her behaviour meant. I am a doctor. I understand co-regulation, attunement, what a child's nervous system needs when it is searching for its safe base. I could have written you a clinical essay on it.
And still I hadn't stopped.
Because when you are holding this many things at once, presence becomes the thing you promise yourself you will give properly once everything else is handled. But everything else is never fully handled. And children do not wait for the right moment. They just feel your absence in the one you are in.
Yesterday I stopped everything and gave her an hour. Properly. No phone, no lists, no half presence.
She went from upset and acting out to hugging me, kissing me, completely lit up. The transformation was so instant it almost made me cry. Not because it was hard to do. Because it was so simple. And I had been making it so complicated.
Thirty minutes to an hour every day this half term. Hers completely. Non negotiable.
Not to perform good motherhood. Just to actually do it.
Love Sham Xx