You get them, increasingly, for only bits and pieces. A few minutes in the morning before school. The period after practice or the wind-down before bed. You get Saturday and Sunday mornings, sure, and those are lovely. You get a week or two here and there on vacation.

As your kids get older, you find you are getting them less and less—you are fighting with more and more things for even just a little of their time. You’re fighting against sports, against their friends, against summer jobs, against them wanting “everyone to just leave me alone!”

There’s not much we can do about this, except, as we said recently, enjoying those early years while you have them.

But you know what you can not do?

You can not waste these brief moments now on stupid things that don’t matter. You only get them for so many weekends and you’re spending it at the office? You’re insisting on running errands when what you need could easily be delivered for just a few dollars? You’re staying up late on your phone at night and then are grouchy on those weekend mornings? You’re dating or planning trips with your college buddies or going to conferences that are really just an excuse to golf?

C’mon. You only get so much time with them. This is how you’re going to spend it? You say you miss them, that it’s going by so fast, but this is what you’re doing? C’mon.