The Pressure of Being a Present Parent. When Doing Your Best Doesn't Feel Enough

There’s a kind of pressure parents rarely talk about — the quiet, relentless weight of trying to get everything right. We want to show up for our children, provide for them, protect them, and still hold everything else together. We do it instinctively, every day, without pause.

For years, I’ve stood on the sidelines at my son’s football training. Almost every day for eight years — through wind, rain, and cold — phone in hand, working between drills, typing emails while watching him play. It was my way of being there. I wanted him to see me, to know I was present, even when I couldn’t give him my full attention

Then one morning, he told me he had a headache. I had a big meeting that day — one I couldn’t miss — so I asked him a few questions, gave him paracetamol, told him to rest, and reassured myself I’d done the right thing before rushing to catch the 7 a.m. train to London.

Later, I found out he’d had a mild concussion from football training the night before — from heading the ball too many times. He hadn’t told me, because he knew I didn’t like him doing it. I’d missed that particular session because of meetings in London that week, and it still sits with me — that if I’d been there, or asked a few more questions, maybe I would have pieced it together.

The guilt hit hard. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did. Because I was trying so hard to hold everything together that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

And then came the spiral — the overthinking that so many parents know too well.
Did I miss his concussion because of the meeting?
Would I have noticed if I hadn’t been on the 7 a.m. train to meet Primark?
If I’d asked one more question, would it have changed anything?

Overthinkers live in this loop — questioning, replaying, analysing — turning guilt into something that lingers long after the moment has passed.

But with time, I began to see that guilt for what it really was: a signal, not a sentence. It was telling me something important — that I was stretched too thin, disconnected from what mattered most. That being “everywhere” had made me nowhere fully.

I started asking myself different questions. What does it actually mean to be present? Is it about showing up physically — or being mentally there when you do?

I still don’t have all the answers. Parenting rarely gives you any neat ones. But I do know that sometimes the moments that stay with us — the ones that make us stop, question, and ache a little — are the ones that quietly reshape who we are.

I know I’m a good mum. I always have been. But that experience taught me something profound: even when we get it wrong, even when we miss things, love has a way of pulling us back to what matters.

To every parent caught between meetings and moments — feeling guilty for the things you missed and exhausted from all the things you didn’t — please remember this:
You don’t have to do it all.
You just have to keep coming back to the ones you love, and to yourself, one imperfect moment at a time.