Cell Phone Etiquette for Dads: Put Your Phone in a Drawer

When I meet a couple about to become parents for the first time I like to give them the same unsolicited advice:

Both of you take the longest, hottest shower of your lives {separately or whatever} right before the baby is born. During the first few months of your baby’s life you will think back fondly on being that clean and undisturbed…

That bit of wisdom still holds up. But as the years have gone by and our kids have morphed from babies to toddlers to teens, there’s another piece of advice I wish I would take as often as I give it. This one involves cell phone etiquette rules for home use:

Put your phone in a drawer when you get home to your family.

Cell Phone Etiquette for Home

The urge to be undisturbed never goes away, but when you become a dad, a legitimate reason to be undisturbed certainly does go away. Or should.

But here’s the problem. No matter what you do for a living, once you get home from work you’ll always find a reason to take out your phone to check an email or text or post or whatever’s so incredibly absorbing that when your daughter says “Daddy, do you want to play a game,” your knee-jerk response will be “Not at the moment.” I recall vividly the night my younger daughter asked me to play with her, and before I could answer she mimicked my saying, “Not at the moment” and walked away.

Because really, isn’t your need to do work at that moment legitimate? And aren’t they interrupting? Aren’t they disturbing you? The answer to those questions, of course, is yes. But that doesn’t mean work should win. At least not as often as it probably does or probably will.

Saying Yes

If I could go back in time, I would have said yes so much more often to both of my daughters. And even today to my son. The truth is, in case you don’t know, is that beyond however busy you think you are, there are times as a parent when you couldn’t be less interested in playing with your children. But it will reach a point pretty quickly when they’ll stop trying to involve you, either because they think you’ll say no or because they’ve outgrown their desire to spend time with you, at least in sharing in that particular pastime. What makes it a bit worse is that you may not notice how quickly the time is going. You’ll just look up one night and realize that they’ve stopped asking.

My kids are still relatively young and will still need me, but never again in exactly that same “will you play with me” way that only comes around once. If you’re about to be a first-time dad, you may not even be able to conceive of ever being negligent or as the saying goes, of not being present, despite the fact that you’re sitting right next to them. But it will happen.

Of course there will be times when you have to work instead of play. But when your children want you, for as long as they want you, say yes to them a lot more often than you say no. Parenting is an unending stream of being interrupted and being disturbed and whether you know it or not, that’s exactly what you signed up for.

Be their dad every second you can. Put your phone in a drawer.