The Weight of the Unthought
I begin this Creative Family note from ByBa with mixed feelings.
A little while ago, I observed a group of young families and came across a reality that is rarely spoken about openly: a very high percentage of adults treated or referred to their children as a burden.
Not as small people discovering the world.
Not as children going through a moment of concentration, play or exploration.
Not as bonds that require presence, patience and emotional intelligence.
As a burden.
This left a question floating in the air: when we consider sharing our life with another person and, eventually, forming a family, are we truly aware of the depth of the decision we are making?
A portrait of disconnection
What I saw was not only an attitude of irritation. It was active disconnection.
And I want to be clear: this is not about being against the use of phones. Technology is part of our everyday life and we all use it. The problem is not that a screen exists. The real problem appears when the screen becomes a refuge from being present.
While the children were completely immersed in their world, focused, painting and exploring —moments in which the child’s brain weaves thousands of connections—, the response of many adults was to disappear behind their phone.
And worse still: when the child did not align with the adult’s rush, the threat appeared.
“Hurry up or I’ll leave you here.”
“We’re leaving now.”
“If you don’t come now, I’m going.”
Breaking a child’s concentration with fear is the opposite of educating.
In that moment, we are telling them two very dangerous things:
- What you do and enjoy has no value to me.
- My love and my presence are conditioned on you doing things at my pace.
We do not always say this intentionally. Very often we say it from tiredness, anxiety, lack of time or our own inability to regulate ourselves. But the child does not receive our internal justification. The child receives the sentence, the gesture, the threat, the withdrawal.
And with that, they build meaning.
Changing the mindset through creative parenting
Creative parenting is not about buying children the best art materials. Nor is it about filling their week with original activities or turning every family moment into a perfect experience.
It is, above all, about us, the adults, being creative in how we manage our own time, frustration, rush and presence.
Because creativity, in parenting, is not decoration. It is intelligence applied to connection.
It is the ability to find another form when the automatic form pushes us away.
It is the possibility of turning a reaction into a response.
It is the decision not to use fear when we could use anticipation.
It is learning to see what is happening in the child before imposing only what is happening in our agenda.
Changing the mindset involves three urgent steps.
1. Validate the child’s state of flow
When a child paints, builds, imagines or invents, they are working.
Their play is their work.
Not in the adult sense of productivity, performance or results, but in a much deeper sense: they are organizing thought, emotion, motor skills, language, memory, attention and identity.
They are testing the world.
They are testing themselves within the world.
They are creating connections.
That is why respecting those minutes of concentration, without abruptly interrupting them with adult rush, helps children develop autonomy, security and trust in what they are doing.
We will not always be able to wait as long as the child wants. Family life also has schedules, movements, obligations and limits. But even when we need to leave, we can recognize that something important is happening.
It is not the same to say “stop that now” as it is to say “I can see you are very focused on what you are doing”.
The first sentence cuts.
The second one sees.
2. The phone as a tool, not an escape
The phone has often become the anesthetic of patience.
We use it to get information, work, organize ourselves, reply, buy, solve problems and communicate. But we also use it to disappear a little.
If we are with them, let us be with them.
Watching a child paint may seem boring to an adult overstimulated by social media. Watching them repeat a line, choose a color, invent a tiny story or take much longer than we would like can activate our impatience.
But that moment can be the emotional nourishment the child needs.
Not because we have to watch every second with solemnity. Not because parenthood demands a perfect and impossible presence. But because childhood recognizes very quickly when we are truly there and when we are only physically nearby.
Being present does not mean doing everything right.
It means not disappearing completely.
3. Replace threat with creative anticipation
Instead of “I’m leaving and you’ll stay here alone”, creative parenting uses anticipation.
For example:
“I can see you are painting a beautiful tree and that you still need some time to finish adding the leaves. I think it would be wonderful to finish it at home, where you have many materials that are not here.”
This small change produces something enormous.
First, it reduces resistance. The child does not feel that we are cutting off their moment of inspiration, but that we are helping them move it to a better place.
Second, it values their creation. We show them that their drawing is so important that it deserves to be finished with more resources, more calm or more space.
Third, it keeps adult control without activating fear. We achieve the goal —leaving the place— without shouting, without unnecessary friction and without turning separation into a threat.
This is creativity too.
Not the spectacular creativity of someone inventing something brilliant to be admired, but the everyday creativity of someone finding a more human way to resolve tension.
A different sentence can change the entire climate of a family scene.
The weight of the unthought
Having a child is not adding an accessory to the weekend. Nor is it incorporating an obstacle into our agenda.
Having a child means accepting that our adult life will have to modify its speed in order to meet another temporality: that of someone who is learning how to be in the world.
And that temporality will often be slower.
More repetitive.
More uncomfortable.
More demanding.
More intense.
But also more revealing.
The question is not whether children interrupt our life. Of course they do. Every truly important presence interrupts something.
The question is what we do with that interruption.
We can experience it only as a burden, as an obstacle, as noise, as delay. Or we can understand that there is a deep invitation there to develop another intelligence: the intelligence of accompanying, anticipating, seeing, regulating ourselves and creating better responses.
This Friday in Creative Family, the invitation is simple: put the phone aside for a moment, look at what our children are creating and remember that the time we share with them is not wasted time.
It is planted time.
And very often, what is planted in those apparently small minutes is something children will carry inside them for the rest of their lives.