Your children are watching — but what are they seeing?

Greetings,

My father gave up a lot to stay.

He had a career in Nigeria that most men would not walk away from. A company car. A driver. An executive title built over more than two decades. By every visible measure, he had arrived.

And then we moved to Canada, and three months in, I left home at 18. Angry, naive, and convinced I knew better.

He could have gone back. Nobody would have blamed him. He had a life waiting for him. Instead, he wrote a resignation letter, had the company car returned, and stayed — not because it was comfortable, but because he had already decided that a father’s presence was not something you outsource.

I didn’t understand what that cost him until I was much older.

That’s the thing about intentional fatherhood. The children rarely see it for what it is while it’s happening. They just feel the weight of a father who stayed, who showed up, who got on his knees at night and laid hands on them while they slept — not because he had it all figured out, but because he didn’t, and he knew it.

“A father’s drift doesn’t just cost him. It costs his children something they won’t be able to name until they’re grown.”

My dad once told me that whenever he went into our rooms at night to pray over us, he was broken. He knew where he had come from. He knew what he was capable of without God’s help. And so he prayed the only prayer a man in that position can honestly pray:

“God, they are yours. I’m just a caretaker. Tell me what to do.”

That disposition — broken, present, intentional — is what faithful fatherhood looks like. Not perfection. Not having all the answers. But refusing to let your absence become the loudest thing your children remember.

And a father’s presence — his real, unhurried, ego-crushed presence — lays a foundation that holds even when everything else shakes.

My dad used to ask himself one question whenever he made decisions about us: when my kids are in trouble, should they run to me or away from me?

That question is worth sitting with today.

When your children are in trouble — are you the first call they make?

Grace and peace, Seun