I was driving to work early one morning, stopped at a red light. Next to the road I saw a father and son waiting for the daycare shuttle. The dad was on his phone; the son was just standing there next to him, staring off into space. The light was red for maybe two minutes. In those entire two minutes, the dad never once looked up from his phone.
What made it so sad, though, was this: that dad's going to put his kid on the bus and head to work. And he probably won't get home until 7:30, maybe 8 at night. Honestly, let's be real — there often isn't a lot of energetic playtime with his son after that. Which means their only real point of contact all day is those 10 to 15 minutes on the way to the bus. For the kid, that's the closest he gets to his dad the entire day.
So here's something worth thinking about. Once the bus pulls away, you can look at your phone all you want. Just for those two minutes, those ten minutes — put the phone in your pocket. And just talk about anything. "That car's red," "it's a little chilly today," "Dad's giving an important presentation at work today." Say things like that.
And the kid responds. "What's a presentation?" they'll ask. And from there, a conversation just starts flowing.
Here's one thing worth trying. Turn on the voice-memo app on your phone, and record from the moment you leave the house until you've put your kid on the bus and come back. See how much conversation actually happened between the two of you in that time. You might be shocked. And if it turns out there was a lot? Turn it into text with AI and save it. A year's worth of that would end up being an incredible archive of father and son.
At some point, I started cutting back on my phone during that time too. For exactly one reason. That short stretch of time holds a lot more than you'd expect.
Those two minutes waiting for the shuttle — give your phone a short break.