I had a revelation that I think belongs specifically to anxiety and to mindfulness.
The great tragedy of my childhood was that none of the grown-ups had any agency. They were all too anxious. They were all distracted. When my father was in the swimming pool with me and I was trying to form the attachment, he would drop into the experience for a moment, and then I could watch him drop back out. A distraction. A movement. Another conversation. The loss of eye contact.
I did not have words for it then, so I just absorbed it. That became my pattern, checking in and checking out. Or maybe it only reinforced what a young mind does naturally, locking onto whatever entertains us and going blank when we are bored. Either way, it was the thing I learned.
Presence and agency were not household words in modern society. Our role models were not mirroring them to us, and that was probably the most important thing we needed while we were still forming.
It is not a matter of having the right language. You cannot explain presence to a five-year-old. You can only be it. You live it. When you play with them, when you feed them, even when you correct them, that is when your presence and your agency are needed most.
I think about the moments when our children do something unbelievably annoying and the pressure explodes. Our reactions come out too intense. Even when we are not abusive, we are anxious and reacting.
Is there presence in that? Is there agency in that? Do we have free will as parents when we are only responding to an annoying moment?
Or is the more important thing to take the deep breath and ask ourselves what reaction would be of the most service. The one that does not lay down another pattern of anxiety in a child's brain.