Derek Sivers has a wonderful post on parenting:
Whatever he’s doing right now, that’s the most important thing. So I encourage him to keep doing it as long as possible. I never say, “Come on! Let’s go!”
We’ll go to the beach or forest, and make things with sticks and sand for half a day before he’s ready to switch.
Other families come to the playground for twenty or thirty minutes, but we stay there for hours.
Nobody else can play with us like this. Everyone else gets so bored.
Of course my adult mind wanders to all the other things we could be doing. But I let it go, and return to that present focus.
Reading that made me realize how far I need to go before I can be a better parent myself. The ability to be truly present with your child is something I need to cultivate. The mind always leads you astray in such moments. The moment you are in is never good enough. The mind keeps searching and wants to do something else. In a way, it is just like meditation. As the mind deviates, you have to bring it back to the present moment.