I Have One Parenting Hack I Swear By, And It’s Benign Neglect

When other moms comment on how well-behaved or well-adjusted my 7-year-old daughter is, I tell them my secret: benign neglect.

They laugh, but I'm not kidding. Not really.

On any given day, with the long stretch of afternoon before me, I can be found in my home office, eyes squinted at my screen as I wade through interview notes or follow a daisy chain of academic citations or attempt to write a whole-*ss article that weaves together research and reportage and personal anecdotes into something coherent and powerful.

And sure, my 7-year-old daughter will slink into my office now and then and ask me to play pretend or color or build a fairy house. But at this point, she knows it's an exercise in futility. My workday is my workday, and unless I'm having a slow one, that child has to entertain herself.

Just the other week, my daughter spent at least an hour on the living room couch, cutting up an old pair of yellow tights, thread by thread, until she had a whole pile. To what end, I'm not sure.

The next day, having no sh*ts left to give and many deadlines on my plate, I let her paint in the kitchen — unattended. When I cleaned up later that evening, I discovered she had used up almost all the paint I'd recently purchased, layering each color until it was a thick, brown, three-dimensional soup on a raft of Popsicle sticks. In washing her hands in the bathroom sink, she'd left reddish-brown splotches everywhere, like a crime scene.

The real crime, I suspected, was my not being there.

I conduct an interview. She builds an odd contraption with cardboard and toilet paper tubes. I write a blog post. She creates an outfit using only paper and tape. I compile my monthly email newsletter. She draws her next superhero comic.

In being ignored, her creativity explodes. And if I try very, very hard, I get to be creative, too.

But that's how it goes. I conduct an interview. She builds an odd contraption with cardboard and toilet paper tubes. I write a blog post. She creates an outfit using only paper and tape. I compile my monthly email newsletter. She draws her next superhero comic.

In being ignored, her creativity explodes. And if I try very, very hard, I get to be creative, too.

Of course, some days, I try to do it all. There is the day, for example, when we finally open the DIY fairy lantern kit she received for Christmas. I spread glue and brushes and crystal stickers across the kitchen table. I punch holes in the lids of the glitter canisters with a pair of chopsticks. We upend an envelope of silk flowers and pastel ribbons and plastic butterflies and she squeals with excitement.

"Here. Like this," I say, showing her how to squeeze a dollop of glue onto the brush and spread it inside the jar.

She takes it from me.

"It's working, Mommy! It's working!" she says, smearing the glue against the glass.

"Yes. Maybe a little bit more," I say, leaning in to look, but there is a ding from my home office, and already, I am not completely there.

Even though I pinky swore that I would be there.

"Like this?" she asks, glancing up at me.

"One moment, sweets," I say, already moving away from her. "Let me just check one thing…"

When my daughter was born, I thought I'd never write again. My identity as Writer was quietly supplanted by the identity of Mother. It didn't seem there could possibly be room for both.

At first, I didn't mind.

I checked my emails while wearing a hands-free pumping bra. I sprinted back and forth between my laptop and the kitchen, filling bottles with breast milk, scheduling interviews, rocking my daughter's Rock 'n Play with my foot while composing new tweets.

I wrote copy to pay the bills, letting my personal projects languish. And if it took me twice as long to finish a single task or if I remembered a time when I wrote personal essays without the promise of a byline or a paycheck, all I had to do was look at my newborn's adorable old-man face to remind myself that I had a higher purpose now.

I could press her body close to mine, lay one hand flat against the gentle rise and fall of her back, curl the other one around her head, rub the fuzz of her hair with my fingers, feel her tiny fingers splayed across my collarbone. That was all I needed.

It took two months before I felt the itch again. The realization that I couldn't be just one thing.

But it was difficult to find my way back to writing. How could I find the space for it when it took me an entire week to write a single article? How could I make the space for something that felt so selfish in its purposelessness?

Still, eight months after Em was born, I left her for a writing retreat that took place over a long weekend, fired up with plans to revive the book I'd been working on before I'd gotten pregnant. In the before time (the time before motherhood swallowed me whole), I'd written a proposal. I'd written several chapters. I'd even landed an agent.

But when the book didn't sell, I put it to the side for later, and suddenly, there was a child growing inside of me, and, well, I got distracted.

When that itch came again — that itch to write — the path forward for my book became clear. So, I drove to Newport, Rhode Island, and I spent three days rewriting the first few chapters of what would eventually become my reported memoir, and in the evenings, I called my husband and I cooed into the phone at my daughter and I lay awake in that strange bed and I missed her, even as I felt exhilarated by the ability to write again.

Afterward, back home, in the thick of it, it took me a while to find a rhythm in which I was able to keep moving forward. Every couple of weeks, my writing partner and I swapped feedback about each other's manuscripts on Skype while our children napped, and in that way, I made a sort of slow-motion progress.

Did I miss my daughter? Sure. But I had found that the best way to maintain a sense of self that contained dimension and layers was to walk away from her.

But these calls always ended abruptly. I'd be telling my writing partner about my latest bout with impostor syndrome and she would be giving me a pep talk, and then there would be a wail in the background.

"This book is so important," she would be saying. "What you've written is… wait. Wait a second. Wait one second." She'd put up a finger and then turn.

"I'LL BE RIGHT THERE!" she'd shout.

A pause.

"So," she'd say, turning her attention back to me. "The work you've done on this book is..." I'd hear unintelligible words in the background. She'd sigh. Turn around again. "One second, sweetie. Mommy's in the middle of work."

She'd turn back to me. "What were we talking about?"

Instead of scheduling our next call, she'd promise to email later, and then she'd log off. I'd hold my breath, trying to sense what my own child was doing. Trying to discern by mind-meld alone whether she was stirring from her nap. I prayed for her to sleep just a little bit longer.

I soon realized that the best way to keep writing was to get the hell out of Dodge — even if only for a few hours. I attended weekly writing support group meetings on Tuesday mornings while she was at preschool. Shut Up & Write Meetups on Tuesday nights. Critique group meetings on Wednesday nights.

As my daughter grew older, I became more and more comfortable pulling her in close for a hug, kissing her goodbye, and driving away. I was out almost every night of the week, just so I could feel, for a little while, at least, that no one needed me.

Sometimes, a niggling little voice at the back of my head told me that my extracurriculars were just another form of parental neglect. I continued to indulge in them anyway.

I began going to an annual creative nonfiction writing conference, organized by the founders of a literary magazine in which I'd published a personal essay. I told the people I met there that I was vacationing from my family. They laughed, but it was true.

Did I miss my daughter? Sure. But I had found that the best way to maintain a sense of self that contained dimension and layers was to walk away from her.

As I wibble-wobbled on the sand in my tree pose and flashed other beachgoers in my downward dog, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. Gratitude that I had been given that opportunity. Gratitude that I had taken it.

Two summers ago, I went away for a weeklong writing residency in Martha's Vineyard. To leave my family behind for more than a long weekend was a thing that had previously felt impossible. But I had been floundering since the publication of my memoir and had finally started to get an inkling of what I wanted to write about next.

And so, I drove from New Jersey to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where I left my car and took a bus to the ferry in Falmouth and then took the boat over and dragged my suitcase behind me in blistering heat all the way to the small house in Oak Bluffs where I would be staying. And then, I sat on the small bed in my small room, where the air conditioning unit was on the fritz, and I sweat through my clothes and wondered if I had made a terrible mistake.

But every day was a gift. Every morning, after walking to the beach and doing water aerobics with the local Polar Bear club and buying an apple fritter as large as my head, I walked back to the house where I was staying, sat down with two other writers in the living room, and spent three hours silently working. In the afternoons, we toured the island as a group or I sat in bed with a book or I went shopping in the center of town. In the evenings, we ate dinner with a visiting artist who then led us in a workshop before dessert. And each day, I came closer to something.

Leaving my family behind for a full week was giving me a clarity I'd never been able to achieve at home. And six days into the residency, as I walked to the water, my bath towel slung over my shoulder, feeling very much at home, I realized that I couldn't know what or who I was writing for if I couldn't first clarify why I was writing it.

And, suddenly, I knew I had been approaching things all wrong.

That evening, after more critiques and more revisions, we drove to a beach on the other side of the island to eat lobsters and watch the sun set. Despite the fact that I was wearing a sundress and had a perpetual wedgie, I joined a group of women who were practicing yoga, and as I wibble-wobbled on the sand in my tree pose and flashed other beachgoers in my downward dog, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. Gratitude that I had been given that opportunity. Gratitude that I had taken it.

But here's the secret inside the secret. My child is the most important thing to me. In every moment. Sometimes, however, I have to choose myself. Just so I don't lose myself completely.

When the pandemic came just a couple months later, it wiped the slate clean. Which was a relief, despite the killed articles, the postponed projects, the lost income.

On sunny days, I sat outside on the driveway, doing chalk art with my daughter. When it rained, we baked cookies or cakes or loaves of green olive bread. One day, I cut out over a thousand tissue paper hearts in different colors and taped each one up, one by one, in my dining room's bow window. I started to wonder who I even was anymore.

When the fall came and the pandemic was still with us, my husband and I decided to keep our then-6-year-old fully remote from school. I lost more and more of myself.

Eventually, I had to recalibrate. I had to remind myself what the secret had been to all of my previous success, the secret I'd shared with all of those other mothers so long ago: benign neglect.

So, while my daughter was in her Google Meets, I drew up pitches, conducted interviews, broke writing projects into smaller and smaller pieces so I could feel I was accomplishing something.

And while we sometimes sat out on the back deck during her midmorning snack break, she with a Go-Gurt, me with my coffee, the sun and the breeze and the sound of the ducks next door making us feel like we could maybe sprawl on that couch forever, there were other times I told her no. I can't go outside with you. I have this thing I need to do. And it's very important.

In the evenings, I began rushing her off to bed a few minutes early so I could unravel the long cord on my headset and log into Zoom for one of three virtual book clubs or my new online writing critique group. My daughter and I would do "cheek kisses" — me kissing her cheek, her kissing mine — and then we'd hug each other tight and she'd say, "Mommy. I'm never letting you go."

And then I'd wrestle her down onto the bed and she'd giggle madly as I slid out of her grasp and it was all a big joke, but I was still walking away.

One day, between Google Meets, my daughter called me to her room, still tethered to her Chromebook via the cord on her blue headphones. "Mommy. I have to tell you something," she said, though I had already turned away to rush back down the stairs.

I turned back to her. Knelt before her so I could hear what she had to say.

"Mommy," she said. "The other kids have their parents there with them when they're in class, but I don't."

I felt my heart clench before I reminded myself that this was what her teacher wanted. My child. Independent. My child, free of all the outside distractions of home.

It can feel difficult to neglect your child when they're always there. Heartless, even, especially when they've been cut off from all their other social outlets, when they need you more than they've ever needed you before. How do you choose neglect in that scenario? How do you not choose them? How do you choose the thing that indicates your child is not the most important thing in the world to you at that moment?

But here's the secret inside the secret. My child is the most important thing to me. In every moment. Sometimes, however, I have to choose myself. Just so I don't lose myself completely.

"How do you write so much?" people ask me. "How do you get it all done?"

"Benign neglect," I tell them.

And they laugh.