When ‘We’ Matters as Much as ‘Them’

 Every week, I meet children in classrooms and workshops -bright, articulate, and aware. They talk about YouTube trends, global issues, and the latest sneakers with surprising fluency. Yet when the conversation turns to their lives, their families, their days at home, an unsettling silence often follows.It’s in that silence that I’ve found the truth parents often overlook: our children aren’t craving more things. They’re craving us. When asked how they feel when their parents spend so much time on their gadgets, the words are unanimous across various classrooms:“We feel disappointed, ignored, like we don’t matter, like we did a wrong thing, unhappy,” they say.

 We’ve mistaken giving our children the best of everything for giving them enough of ourselves. We upgrade their gadgets, plan their birthdays, and sign them up for classes -all with the best intentions. But in doing so, we’ve unknowingly outsourced the very thing children value most: presence.We live in an age of constant connection but increasing emotional disconnection. Our children are growing up surrounded by people yet feeling alone. I’ve seen kids talk about playing online games for hours but not knowing the names of their children of the same age at school. Some confide that they can’t remember the last time their parents sat with them for dinner without glancing at a phone or simply played a game with them. 

Children laugh and tell me that their parents’ screen time must be 24 hours, 7 days a week.A 2023 Harvard Graduate School of Education study found that nearly 70% of middle-schoolers wished their parents would spend less time on their phones. Another survey by Common Sense Media reported that children now spend over seven hours a day on screens, while parents, on average, spend over four hours, leaving little space for genuine human connection.

The irony is almost poetic -the very tools meant to connect us have become barriers between us.This disconnection has a silent cost. Without consistent emotional attunement from parents, children struggle to develop empathy, resilience, and a healthy sense of self-worth. When real conversation fades, internal noise grows louder -bringing anxiety, loneliness, and a deep sense of “not being enough.”

In my workshops, I often ask children what they wish for most. Their answers are disarmingly simple:

“I wish my dad would come home before I sleep.”
“I wish my parents would play with me.”
“I wish we could eat together without anyone scrolling.”

Children don’t articulate emotional hunger in words -they act it out. They seek validation through likes, status, and competition. They fill the emptiness with gadgets, games, or consumerism because no one is filling it with presence, patience, or love.So what’s the antidote? It’s not grand gestures. It’s consistent attention.

It’s putting your phone away when your child speaks.
It’s saying “yes” to a walk or a board game even when you’re tired.
It’s creating unstructured moments -not to teach, correct, or fix -but simply to be.

Psychologist Dr Gordon Neufeld calls this “collecting” our children -re-establishing emotional connection so they feel seen and safe. When a child feels collected, guidance flows naturally. Without connection, even the best advice sounds like noise.We must remind ourselves that love isn’t something we give after we’ve finished work -it is the work. Emails can wait. Reels can pause. But childhood cannot.Because when they look back years from now, our children won’t remember the phone we gifted them. They’ll remember whether they looked up when they called, “Mumma, see this.”