Why I Feel Guilty About Being Away From My Kid (And What Actually Helps)
5:30 a.m., my rolling suitcase is catching on the edge of the entryway rug, and I’m twisting the doorknob one-handed while I tuck my lanyard into my tote. The house is still dark except for the nightlight down the hall that my 5-year-old Milo leaves on for the “monsters that don’t like light.” I’m about to leave for a three-day work conference out of state, and I already said my goodbyes the night before—he’d fallen asleep curled up with his dinosaur stuffed animal before I finished packing, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. That’s when I see it: a neon pink sticky note taped to the top of my hard shell, edge crinkled where he’d peeled it off the pad himself. It says COME HOME SOON MOM in blue crayon, with a T-Rex that has three extra legs. I stood there for five minutes holding that sticky note, and the familiar heavy guilt settled in my chest, the same way it does every time I leave.
I’ve had this job for two years, one that requires me to travel three, sometimes four days a month, plus a handful of late evenings at the office when a deadline hits. I used to scroll parenting forums late at night after I checked into my hotel room, reading takes about how consistent daily presence builds secure attachment, how every missed soccer practice or school party stacks up to permanent damage. Once, after I came home from a four-day trip, Milo’s preschool teacher mentioned he’d had three tantrums that week, more than usual, and I cried in the grocery store parking lot an hour later, convinced I was messing him up.
Last spring, I got a cold after back-to-back trips and had to take a few days off work to recover. I was curled up on the couch under a blanket, watching Milo dig through the toy bin for his puzzle, when he dragged out a beat-up cardboard shoebox from under his bed and plopped it right in my lap. It’s covered in stick figure drawings of our family, and when I opened it, I found all the tiny things I’d left him over the past year: a sticker from my airport iced coffee cup, a napkin I’d scribbled a car on during a work break, the plastic keychain from my first conference badge, even a cotton bandana I’d worn around my neck on a hike last fall. “This is my mom box,” he said, climbing up next to me. “I get one thing out every night when I miss you.”
A week later, I mentioned the box to Ms. Rita, his preschool’s head teacher who’s been doing this for almost 40 years. I expected her to pat my hand and say “it’s okay, working moms have it hard” but she said something that stuck with me. She said most parents think the problem with being away is the amount of time you’re gone, but for most kids, the problem is the uncertainty. If they know when you’re coming back, and they have small pieces of you to hold onto while you’re gone, they can handle it way better than we think they can. She also said that the guilt we carry when we’re home actually gets in the way of the time we do have, more than the time we’re gone ever does.
I started testing out small changes right after that. First, I leave one small “my thing” every time I go, not a new toy he’ll forget about in a week. It’s usually something that smells like me or has my handwriting on it—once it was my worn workout headband, once it was a note I drew a dinosaur on that he can keep in his cubby at school. It takes 10 seconds to grab it before I leave, no extra planning. Second, I stopped doing 20-minute FaceTimes every night before bed, which always ended with him getting upset and clingy on camera, and me feeling worse after. Now I send a 2-minute voice note every morning before he wakes up, that his dad plays after breakfast. I always mention one specific small thing from my day that connects back to something we did together: “I saw a squirrel today that was stealing french fries off a picnic table, just like the one that stole your cracker at the park last week.” “The hotel bed is way too soft, not like our bed where we pile all the stuffed animals on top.” No generic “I miss you” that leaves him hanging. Third, I stopped planning big fancy “make up” outings when I get home. I used to think I needed to take him to the zoo or get ice cream or a new toy to make up for the days I missed. But every time I did that, he’d end up overstimulated and have a meltdown by dinner. Now, the first thing I do when I walk in the door is put my suitcase by the door, turn my work phone on silent, and spend 20 minutes doing whatever he wants, no distractions. Usually it’s building block towers, or coloring, or just sitting next to him on the couch while he watches his favorite dinosaur show. I don’t unpack, I don’t answer emails, I don’t even make coffee. Then I jump back into our normal routine: making his favorite peanut butter toast for snack, helping him with his puzzle, the same as if I’d just been at the grocery store, not across the state.
What I’ve learned, that I don’t see talked about much, is that being away a little bit isn’t inherently bad for kids. Ms. Rita told me that learning to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of missing someone is actually a skill they need later. It helps them when they go to kindergarten, when they sleep over at a friend’s house, when they have to spend a week at grandma’s. The key isn’t to never leave them, it’s to make the time apart predictable, so they don’t have to wonder if you’re coming back. The guilt I carry doesn’t do anything for him—it just makes me distracted and tense when I’m home, which makes him tense too.
I still feel guilty, most of the time. I missed his fall harvest party at preschool last month because my flight got canceled, and I sat in the airport waiting area and cried while his dad sent me videos of him in his pumpkin costume. Next month I have a five-day trip, the longest I’ve ever been gone, and I already found myself scrolling flights last night to see if I can change it to come home a day early. This morning, we added a new sticker to his mom box, from the apple I ate at my work meeting yesterday. He tucked it right in next to the keychain, and said he’s going to sleep with the bandana I left under his pillow while I’m gone. Some nights he still cries when I remind him I’m leaving, and I still stop in the hallway on my way out to take a breath to keep from crying too. It’s not perfect. We don’t have it all figured out. But this works, for now.
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