The voice note arrived at 9:41 on a Wednesday night. Damilola saw the notification light up on his phone in the middle of a meeting on the fourteenth floor of an office in Victoria Island, where the quarterly figures were going badly and nobody was allowed to leave until they were fixed. He turned the phone face down.
He listened to it at a quarter past eleven, in the back of the company car crawling across Third Mainland Bridge, with the lagoon black on either side and the lights of the Makoko fishermen far out on the water. It was his son Kachi, who was ten. The boy’s voice was low, as though he was trying not to wake his sister.
“Daddy, are you coming home before I sleep? I want to tell you something. It’s important.”
By the time Damilola reached the house in Magodo it was past midnight, and Kachi was asleep with the light still on and a schoolbook open on his chest. Damilola stood in the doorway for a moment, switched off the light and went to bed.
The next morning was the usual rush. Damilola was out of the door at a quarter to five to beat the traffic. As he passed Kachi’s room he remembered, and pushed the door open. The boy was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed in his school vest.
“Kachi, what did you want to tell me last night?”
His son looked at him for a moment and then looked at the floor. “It doesn’t matter again, Daddy.”
Damilola told me later that he had heard many hard things in his career: board reprimands, redundancy announcements, a doctor’s voice on the phone the year his own father died. None of them had stayed with him like those four words from a ten-year-old. It doesn’t matter again. He realised, over the following weeks, that the voice notes had stopped. His son had quietly decided that what he had to say would have to wait, and then that it would not be said at all.
Punchline“I am doing all this for them,” Damilola said to me. “So why does it feel as if I am losing them?”
For whom do I labour?
I want to begin by honouring the labour. Damilola was not a careless man. He worked those hours so that his children could attend a good school, live in a safe neighbourhood and have the opportunities he had not had growing up in a face-me-I-face-you in Mushin. Many parents reading this are making similar sacrifices. You sell in the market from dawn, you drive a danfo through the heat, you run a clinic, you work shifts at the airport, you send money home from London or Toronto. Scripture honours that work. Provision is part of love.
But the Preacher in Ecclesiastes saw a danger in work that consumes everything:
Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit. Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone , and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he , For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
“Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.” The Preacher is not against work. Elsewhere he commends it as a gift of God. What he laments is labour that has lost its purpose, the man for whom “there is no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches.” He keeps working, and he never stops to ask the question that ought to govern it all: “For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good?”
The man in these verses has no child or brother. That is part of his tragedy. But a parent can fall into the same pattern with a house full of children. He labours for them, he would say, and yet the labour has expanded until there is no room left for them. His hands are full, and his children cannot get near enough to put anything into them.
For whom do I labour? If the answer is “for my children”, then the children themselves must be allowed to interrupt the labour. Otherwise the work has quietly taken their place.
Jesus made room for interruptions
The scene in Mark 10 is so familiar that we can miss how disruptive it was. Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem for the last time. He had been teaching on marriage and divorce, matters of public controversy. Crowds were pressing. Then parents began bringing their small children to Him.
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them . But when Jesus saw it , he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
The disciples were doing what many busy people do. They were protecting the important work from interruption. Children were a distraction from the real business of the kingdom. And Jesus “was much displeased.”
Look at what He did. He stopped. He spoke for the children, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” Then He went far beyond what the parents had asked. They wanted Him to touch the children. “He took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” He gave them His attention, His arms and His blessing, without hurrying.
Earlier in the same Gospel, when the disciples were arguing about who was greatest, Jesus “took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms” He taught them (Mark 9:36). Twice in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus takes a child into His arms. For the most important person who ever lived, with the heaviest assignment ever given, children were never an interruption to the work. They were part of it.
Children notice very quickly whether they are an interruption. They know whether a parent is listening or merely nodding while scrolling. They know whether “not now” means later today or never. And over time they draw conclusions, not only about their parents but about themselves. What I have to say does not matter. I am in the way.
Children quickly learn whether they are an interruption. Presence tells a child, in a way that provision cannot, that being heard matters.
Teaching happens along the way
When Moses described how faith was to be passed from parent to child, he did not describe a classroom. “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7).
The verse before sets the order: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6). What fills the parent’s heart is meant to reach the child, and the route it takes is shared life. Every one of those settings requires the parent to be there. Sitting in the house. Walking by the way. Lying down. Rising up. The teaching Moses describes happens in the middle of shared life, in conversations that arise naturally because parent and child are together.
There is a simple truth here that busy parents need to hear. You cannot talk “by the way” with a child you are never on the way with. The deepest conversations parents have with their children rarely happen at scheduled times. They happen in the car, at the kitchen counter, during a walk to the shop, on the edge of a bed at night. They happen because the parent is available when the child is ready to talk, and children are often ready at inconvenient moments.
This is why quantity of time cannot be entirely replaced by “quality time”. The idea of quality time has some truth in it: focused attention is worth more than distracted hours. But children rarely open up on command. A father who announces, “Right, we have thirty minutes, tell me about your life,” will often get a shrug. The same child, sitting beside him in traffic at Ojota for forty minutes the next week, may suddenly tell him something that matters enormously. Presence creates the space in which those moments become possible.
NuggetNone of this requires perfection or unlimited hours. It requires enough regular, shared, ordinary time that the child knows where to find you.
Swift to hear
Being physically present is not the same as being reachable. A parent can be in the same room every evening and still be impossible to talk to. James gives us the posture that makes presence real:
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
“Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” James wrote this to believers in general, but it applies with special force in the home. Many parents are slow to hear and swift to speak. A child begins to explain something, and before he is halfway through, the parent has diagnosed the problem, delivered the solution and added a warning. The child learns that conversations with Mummy or Daddy are really lectures with a short introduction.
Proverbs puts it bluntly: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13). And it describes the alternative: “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:5). Children often carry deep water. Fears, hurts, questions, confusion about what they have seen or heard. They rarely bring it straight to the surface. A wise parent draws it out patiently, with questions and silence and time.
“Slow to wrath” matters just as much. A child who has seen a parent explode at bad news will think carefully before bringing bad news again. If every confession of a broken plate or a low test score produces shouting, the child will learn to hide broken plates and low scores. James adds the reason: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Anger may silence a child. It will rarely teach him.
What does swift hearing look like in practice? It looks like putting the phone face down at the dinner table, the way you would in an important meeting. It looks like coming down to a small child’s eye level. It looks like asking a second question before offering an answer: “What happened next?” “How did that make you feel?” “What do you think you should do?” It looks like allowing a silence to last long enough for the real thing to come out. And sometimes it looks like saying, “I cannot listen properly right now, but I want to hear this. Can we talk at eight o’clock?” and then being there at eight o’clock.
Knowing the state of the flock
Presence also means taking an interest in the child’s world as it actually is. Proverbs gives a piece of advice to farmers that applies remarkably well to parents: “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds” (Proverbs 27:23). A good herdsman did not simply count the animals. He looked at them. He knew which ewe was limping, which lamb was thin, which one kept wandering towards the edge of the field.
Jesus gave His disciples that kind of attention. After He had sent them out two by two, “the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught” (Mark 6:30). He let them report. He heard everything, the successes and presumably the confusions too. Then He noticed something they may not have said aloud. “And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat” (Mark 6:31). He saw that they were exhausted, and He made room for them to recover.
That is a picture of attentive presence. First listening, then noticing what lies beneath the words, then responding to the real need. A child who comes home from school irritable and snapping at his siblings may need correction for his rudeness. He may also need someone to notice that he is exhausted, or that something happened at break time, or that the exam timetable has frightened him.
Knowing the state of the flock means knowing your children’s friends by name. It means knowing which teacher they like and which subject frightens them. It means knowing the name of the footballer on the poster or the singer whose songs are on repeat, and asking about them with genuine curiosity instead of contempt. A teenager’s world can seem trivial to an adult. To the teenager, it is the whole world. When a parent takes the trouble to enter it, the child learns that he himself is worth knowing.
Many of us grew up in homes where adults did not enquire much into children’s inner lives. The child’s job was to obey, and the parent’s job was to provide and direct. There was love in many of those homes, often fierce love. But some of us carry the effects of never having been asked what we thought. We can give our own children something different. We can be diligent to know them.
In the same city, and not seeing the king’s face
The Bible contains a painful example of a father who was close at hand and yet unreachable. After Absalom killed his brother Amnon in revenge for the rape of their sister Tamar, he fled and lived in exile for three years. Eventually David allowed him to return to Jerusalem, but with a condition: “Let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face” (2 Samuel 14:24). And so:
So Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, and saw not the king’s face. Therefore Absalom sent for Joab, to have sent him to the king; but he would not come to him: and when he sent again the second time, he would not come.
“So Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, and saw not the king’s face.” Father and son lived in the same city, perhaps within walking distance, and did not speak. Absalom sent for Joab to mediate, and Joab would not come. When eventually there was a meeting, it was brief and formal: Absalom bowed to the ground, “and the king kissed Absalom” (2 Samuel 14:33). Within a few years, Absalom had stolen the hearts of Israel and led a rebellion against his father.
We must be careful with this story. Absalom was responsible for his own sins, and they were great. David faced a genuinely difficult situation involving murder and justice. No one should read this passage and conclude that every rebellious child is simply the product of a distant parent.
But the pattern is worth noticing. Earlier, when David heard that Amnon had violated Tamar, “he was very wroth” (2 Samuel 13:21), and the text records nothing more. He did not act. He did not speak to his wounded daughter or to his furious son. Anger without engagement left a vacuum, and Absalom filled it with his own plans. Then, when Absalom returned, David kept him at a distance. The king was in Jerusalem. The father was not available.
There are homes like that. The father is in the house; the mother is in the house; and yet the children have not truly seen their faces in years. Conversations happen about fees and chores and results, but nothing gets through to the heart. The parent is present in body and absent in every way that matters to a child.
Small moments a child can count on
If presence matters this much, how does a busy parent provide it? Most of us cannot simply cut our working hours in half. The traffic in Lagos will not disappear. The shop must open. The night shift must be covered.
The answer, for most families, lies less in grand gestures and more in small, dependable moments. A child does not need a parent who is always available. He needs a parent who is reliably available at times he can count on. Predictability builds trust. When a child knows that Daddy always does the Saturday market run with him, or that Mummy always sits on the bed for ten minutes before lights out, or that the Sunday evening video call from abroad always happens at seven, he learns that there is a place where he will be heard. He can save up what matters and bring it there.
Here are a few such moments that families I know have found workable:
- A fixed school run, once or twice a week, with the phone in the glove compartment and the radio off.
- Ten minutes at bedtime with each child, even if the parent arrives home late and the child is already in bed.
- One meal a week, at least, where everyone eats together and nobody brings a device to the table.
- A weekly walk, errand or small outing with one child at a time, so that each gets undivided attention.
- For parents who live or work far away, a regular call at a set time that is protected like a business meeting.
These need not be elaborate. What matters is that they happen, and keep happening. Jesus told us, “But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay” (Matthew 5:37). A parent’s word should be reliable. If you promise to be at the inter-house sports, be there. If something unavoidable comes up, explain it honestly and make it up soon. A child who has been let down too often stops expecting anything, and that is when “it doesn’t matter again” becomes his settled conclusion.
Many Nigerian homes share the care of children with grandparents, aunties and house helps. That can be a great blessing, and many children have been loved deeply by these people. But it is worth asking honestly whether the shared care has quietly become a replacement. A grandmother’s love is precious, and a child also needs to know that his mother and father want to hear what happened at school.
To single parents, shift workers and those in seasons of severe financial pressure: hear this without guilt. You may have far less time than you would like, and God knows it. A few minutes of real attention given faithfully is worth a great deal. Do what you can, consistently, and trust God with what you cannot do.
The Father who hears and watches the road
Behind all of this stands the kind of Father God is. The psalmist wrote:
I love the LORD , because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
“Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” The psalmist kept praying because he had been heard. God bent down to listen. That is how prayer becomes a lifelong habit: through the experience of being heard. And it is how a child’s habit of talking to his parents is formed as well.
God is never too busy to listen. He neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4). His eyes “are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry” (Psalm 34:15). Through Zephaniah He says that He is “in the midst of thee”, and that “he will rejoice over thee with joy” (Zephaniah 3:17). The Father’s presence includes delight. He is not merely available to His children; He enjoys them.
The clearest picture Jesus gave of the Father’s heart is the father of the prodigal son:
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
“But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.” How did he see his son so far away? He must have been watching the road. The father had not stopped looking. And when he saw, he did not wait for a formal approach or a rehearsed apology. He ran.
Some of you reading this grew up with parents who were never available. You learned early that your voice did not matter. Now you find it hard to be present for your own children, because nobody showed you how. Others of you have realised, perhaps while reading this article, that you have missed years. The children are older now. The voice notes stopped long ago.
Hear the gospel. Your Father in heaven is the one who watches the road and runs. He has heard you, and He has not stopped listening. His presence with you is the source from which your presence with your children can grow. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). You do not have to manufacture what you never received. You can receive it from Him, and then give it.
And it is rarely too late to begin. Teenagers and grown children may be wary at first, but most still want to be heard by their parents. Start small. Say that you are sorry for the years of distance, if that is true. Then make a small promise and keep it. Then another.
Damilola did not resign from the bank. He could not afford to, and he did not believe God was asking him to. But a few weeks after that morning, he made two changes. On Tuesdays and Fridays he took Kachi to school himself, leaving the house later and accepting that he would reach the office at nine instead of seven. And he left his phone in the glove compartment for the whole drive.
The first two weeks, he said, were almost silent. Kachi looked out of the window. They talked about football and the traffic and a teacher with a funny accent. Damilola resisted the urge to fill the silence with questions about grades.
PunchlineOn the fourth Friday, stuck behind a broken-down trailer at Ketu, Kachi said without turning his head, “Daddy, there are some SS2 boys on the school bus who take my lunch money.”
It had been going on for two months. That was what the voice note had been about. Kachi had wanted to tell him, and then decided it would not matter.
Damilola dealt with it. He spoke to the school, and the matter was handled firmly. But what stayed with him was something else. “My son had been carrying that alone for two months,” he told me, “and the only thing he needed in order to tell me was a car and a closed phone and enough Fridays to believe I would still be there.”
Your provision matters. Keep working hard for your children. But do not let the work fill both hands so completely that your children cannot reach you. Be swift to hear. Find the small, dependable moments and protect them. Let your children know where to find you, and be there when they come. The Father has inclined His ear to you. Incline yours to them.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- If you asked yourself honestly, “For whom do I labour?”, what would the shape of your week say?
- Has a child of yours ever told you, in words or in silence, that something “doesn’t matter again”? What might lie behind it?
- Are you swift to hear or swift to speak when your children bring you something? What usually happens in the first thirty seconds?
- What small, dependable moment could you establish with each child this month, and protect?
- How has God’s attentive presence with you shaped, or failed to shape, your sense that you can be present for others?
This Week
Choose one small, repeatable moment this week, such as a school run, a bedtime visit or a weekly errand, and commit to it for the next six weeks. During that time, keep your phone out of reach and resist the urge to lecture or correct. Ask one open question and then wait. At the end of each moment, thank God silently for one thing you learned about your child, and keep a short note of them. At the end of six weeks, read the notes back.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You have inclined Your ear to me and that You have never been too busy to hear my voice. Forgive me for the times my children have felt like an interruption, and for the work that has filled both my hands. Teach me to be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath. Show me the small moments I can give my children faithfully, and give me the discipline to keep them. Where I have missed years, help me to begin again with humility. Let my presence with them be a small picture of Your presence with me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.