Rto made me feel less connected to my children, here’s how I faced

The first morning I had to Back to officeMy 4 year old daughter appeared in the kitchen, tightening a drawing with a stick figure from our house – her small hand insisting that I take it before leaving for work.

“Dad, will you come back before the sun disappears?” She asked, looking at the window where we usually count birds so early in the morning, at 6:30 am.

I had been work out For two years, from 2020 to 2021, but in March 2022, I was recalled in the office. It marked the start of an absence with my children that I did not know how to fill.

Return to the office stole me from precious time with my children

Between 2022 and 2023, I left at 6:30 am and returned under a dark sky.

My car became a guilt territory when it was stuck in traffic: my wife’s messages on Lucas, 7, writing “Dinosaur” for the first time was my only window on an important step that I missed.

I remember the second week of April 2022, when a Interrupted notification My afternoon in the office.

He was my son’s teacher, his tone concerned: “Today, during the free drawing time, he asked if you still lived at home.”

At night, I tried to reconnect. I rush into dinner and procure their day, but their stories came into fragments.

“Have you seen me climbing the park wall?” Asked my son once, chewing the eyes glued to his plate. I didn’t do it, and he knew it.

The afternoon outings – reserved for home office days when work was relaxed – had become rare. Now back to the office, even the evening sun has witnessed my absences.

I invented gestures that integrate into the cracks of time

I left a star -shaped cookie in their lunch boxes every Monday – our “secret signature” of the week.

I recorded quick vocal memos during my journey. One was: “Crossing the bridge! Someone sees a dragon here?”

On Friday, I would park at five houses from home and walked while replaying their messages. It was my ritual to leave work in the street.

However, none of these gestures fulfilled the void.

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At the beginning of 2024, I had an end of night at work too much

The trigger for the change was a night in February 2024. I returned at 9:30 p.m. to find my wife on the stairs, holding a cup of cold tea half empty.

My son had “cried today because you were not there to help his homework duties,” she said. “He told me that you could explain the problems.”

The next day, I offered my boss an idea that had already felt unthinkable: reduce my time in the office to focus on independent work This directly benefited the company. My boss accepted – “for a month.” A month has become 12.

The following week, I delivered an independent project in the half of the time I had defined and I proposed another proposal: “Give me two days at home, and I will double my outing.” It worked.

Since March 2024, I have been working three days from a distance and two days in the office

My new schedule is not the perfect solution but it made a huge difference

On office days, I am leaving at 7:15 a.m. – 45 minutes later than before. These additional minutes are revealing. When I left at 6:30 am, my attempts to connect to my children had drowned in the precipitation.

Now I have Breakfast with them. I prepare scrambled eggs with cheese, which I try to cut into heart shapes, and we discuss their school schedule, their activities after school and weekend plans.

In the two lunch boxes of my children, I enter a shirt button with a note: “Press this if you miss.” (At dinner one day, my son told me that he had pressed it 20 times.)

Then I drive them to school. Be there to hear their “Bye, dad!” As they jump from the car, that’s all. This alone rewrites the meaning of a “productive morning” for me.

What I lost and learned

Yes, I missed things while I was in the office: I was not there when my daughter overcome her fear of the big slide or when my son read his first sentence by himself.

In the end, however, I learned a precious lesson: children do not need parents who are still there – they need parents who can transform five minutes into memories.

For two years, I carried the weight of exhaustion and sorrow on my shoulders. Today, my children no longer remember the mornings I left at 6:30 am, but they keep the magic button in their treasure drawer.

In my wallet, I keep a crumpled drawing of this first morning in 2022: a scribbled sun labeled “dad, come back before nightfall.” I came back. Not always in time, but always with the same certainty: these are the only projects I will have for the rest of my life.