What 150 weeks of paying attention has taught.
A milestone — and what you've built by showing up
Week 150. Here we are.
One hundred and fifty weeks. Three years of Wednesdays. In my clinic in Vienna, I think about duration differently from the way I think about intensity. An intervention that lasts one afternoon — however good — leaves a different trace than a practice that continues, week after week, for three years.
What I've learned from working with families over many years is that the accumulation of small consistent attention is the most powerful parenting tool available — more powerful than the specific strategy, more powerful than the right book, more powerful than the most expertly timed conversation. The parent who has been paying attention, week after week, for three years is a different parent from the one who started. Not because they've been trained. Because attention compounds.
Two hundred and fifty thousand words, approximately, have gone into this newsletter over three years. That is not the point. The point is the attention you brought to each one — the week you read something that named something you'd been experiencing and didn't have a word for, the week you tried something in your kitchen or your car on the way home from school, the week you asked your child a question you wouldn't have thought to ask before.
The child of the parent who has been paying attention for three years is also different. Not because the parent got everything right — no one does. Because the sustained attention, over time, creates a specific kind of relationship: one where the child knows they have been noticed.