Life hack for busy parents

How to mentally navigate the eternal bedtime struggle

Photo by Beazy on Unsplash

This is all going to sound grim for a minute, but follow me to the end on this one.

My daughter insists I snuggle with her every night in bed before she falls asleep. The snuggle is one act — the final act — in an ever-lengthening nightly routine of her own making. The books. The story. Last trip to the potty. Feeding the fish. The fake tuck-in where I pretend to wrap her into an inescapable blanket burrito from which she always escapes. The real tuck-in. There’s more, but it always ends with the snuggle.

Of course, I oblige. I enjoy it, too. But sometimes as I lay there I find my mind wandering off to all the things I have to do — like wash the dishes, send work emails, etc., instead of enjoying the moment.

I eventually caught myself doing this one too many times, and I knew it wasn't healthy. I remembered something I read once in a book about stoicism (linked here). I know this will sound weird, but it works.

When I snuggle with my kids now, in the quiet and dark, I think about the me who is laying on his deathbed many years from now and is looking back at his life. I play out this scenario where that future me has a time machine and can go back in time and relive a moment from many years ago. And you absolutely cannot top snuggling with your kids while they fall asleep. It's hard to beat.

"This is the greatest moment of your life," I remind myself. Then I don't think about the dishes or the emails. I think about how fleeting this moment is. I’m a man on his deathbed snuggling with his daughter one last time, and it keeps me in the moment.