Why I Paused My Life for My Son: The Uncomfortable Truth I Learned From Spending One Month With Him Away From Daycare

There are Mondays when writing this column feels natural, effortless, even therapeutic.

Today is not one of those Mondays.

I do not lack words. I do not lack lessons.

What I lack is the emotional strength to arrange them neatly.

Parenting at fifty-plus, raising my first child at this age is a school no lifetime of wages can pay for, no matter your wealth. It is adventurous. It is demanding. It is overwhelming. And some days, it exposes the deepest parts of me.

Parenting in my twilight is the convergence of two worlds: the world I came from, and the world I am trying to build for my son.

My childhood was shaped by abuse.

My adulthood has been shaped by nearly three decades of fighting abuse, training parents, strengthening families, and repairing systems. Sometimes the very things I survived, and the things I have spent my life teaching, come together and frighten me. They remind me of how delicate, sacred, and heavy this responsibility is.

Some weeks ago, my wife and I evaluated how we were raising our son. We came to one conclusion that settled with the weight of revelation:

We are not trying to raise a perfect child.

We are trying to raise a balanced child.

Perfection is a prison.

Balance is a possibility.

We have never submitted to the bondage of “everything must go right.”

Everything will not go right.

But enough must go right for a child to grow in wisdom, stability, and confidence.

Every Monday, I sit through an editorial conference in my own head, deciding which of my experiences to share. These insights are not things I have mastered they are things I am learning, validating, wrestling with, refining, or just coming to terms with.

But this past month gave me one of the most defining lessons of my life.

For the entire month of November, I withdrew my son from daycare.

I cancelled meetings.

I rearranged programs.

I shifted timelines.

I sacrificed convenience.

I rewired my schedule in ways I had never imagined.

He followed me to meetings.

He appeared in my online sessions.

And when he popped up on the screen, I simply explained:

He is home with me.

For one month, we lived, moved, and breathed together.

Today, I took him back to daycare.

And I almost cried.

Even now, as I write, I feel the heaviness. I miss him already. Yesterday, his mummy and I agreed to give it one week. If what I spent one month sowing in him hasn’t taken root yet, I will pull him out again. My schedule can scatter. My plans can shift. But my son cannot be placed on the waiting list of my life.

I run multiple organizations in Nigeria.

I run multiple organizations in the United States.

My workload is not busy, it is amoeba-like.

People say they struggle to find time to eat; sometimes I struggle to find time to breathe.

But nothing, no program, no project, no vision, compares to the responsibility of raising my child.

That one-month immersion reminded me of a truth I have taught parents for decades, but this time it descended on me with brutal clarity:

The responsibility of raising a child cannot be delegated.

You may delegate support,

but you cannot delegate essence.

You may delegate tasks,

but you cannot delegate destiny.

You may outsource activities,

but you cannot outsource identity.

Any delegation that pushes the parent away from being the primary source of influence and inspiration is not delegation.

It is an attack on destiny.

Schools can assist.

Daycares can support.

Nannies can help.

Extended family can contribute.

But the parent must remain the driver, not the passenger.

That is the heart of my rant today.

I keep learning.

I keep watching.

I keep adjusting, with humility, with fear, with hope.

I do not beat my son.

I do not shout at him.

I reason with him.

I speak to him as a person not with the vocabulary of an adult, but with the dignity of a human being.

Children understand far more than adults allow.

Before my son ever spoke a word, he understood the language of the environment because the environment was teaching him.

If the environment can teach him, then I must teach him deliberately.

This is the labour of parenting in my fifties.

This is my classroom.

This is my curriculum.

And today, this is all I have to offer:

a vulnerable reflection from a father who is trying, who is learning, who is adjusting, and who refuses to surrender his son’s destiny to chance.

Do have an INSPIRED week ahead with the family.