Modern parenting advice promises certainty but creates anxiety. Learn why less guidance, not more, helps parents raise calmer, healthier kids.
Any parent of young children knows the feeling: the day feels endless. The third tantrum before 9 a.m., the repetitive questions, the constant demands for attention, the interrupted sleep, the negotiations over vegetables, the millionth request to read the same book. Time moves slowly, sometimes excruciatingly so. You count down the minutes until bedtime, dream of uninterrupted silence, and wonder if this phase will ever end.
Then you blink, and your child is twelve. You blink again, and they’re leaving for college. You blink once more, and they’re bringing home their own children. And you’re left with a devastating realization: those long days that felt like they’d never end were actually shockingly short years that flew by in an instant.
This is the paradox that Sahil Bloom explores in “The 5 Types of Wealth”: the days of parenting are long, but the years are heartbreakingly short. And most parents don’t realize this truth until it’s too late to change how they spent those years. They spent the long days in survival mode—just trying to make it through—without recognizing that the years were their most precious, irreplaceable resource.
The tragedy, as Bloom reveals, is that by the time you understand this paradox viscerally, the window has largely closed. The math is brutal and unforgiving: by age twelve, you’ve already spent approximately 75% of the total time you’ll ever spend with your child. The years when they want your attention, need your presence, and consider you the center of their universe? Those years are shockingly brief, and they’re happening right now.
The Mathematics of Lost Time
One of the most powerful sections in “The 5 Types of Wealth” is Bloom’s exploration of what he calls “the mathematics of lost time” in parent-child relationships. The numbers are sobering:
Ages 0-12: This is when you spend the vast majority of time with your children. They’re home constantly, they seek your attention, they want to be with you. This period represents approximately 75% of all the time you’ll ever spend with your child across your entire lifetime.
Ages 12-18: Time together drops dramatically. They’re in school, with friends, developing independence, and actively seeking separation from parents (developmentally appropriate but still painful). You might still live together, but the actual engaged time—the conversations, the shared activities, the moments of real connection—has decreased by 60-70%.
Ages 18+: Once they leave home, you see them occasionally. Holidays, perhaps a weekly call, maybe some visits. If you’re fortunate, you might see them a few weeks per year. Over the remaining decades of your life, all of this time combined represents less than 25% of the total time you’ll ever spend together.
Bloom shares his own awakening to this mathematics through the story of a mother of three boys who told him: “Since they were young, I had been saying that you don’t get your children forever. They’re on loan to you for a brief period, and then they have their own lives.” Her middle son died suddenly at age 19, making the “brief period” even briefer than she’d imagined. The mathematics became tragically concrete.
The revelation that changes perspective is this: if you have young children right now, you’re in the 75% period. This isn’t the preparation phase for “real life” with your kids—this IS the real life with your kids. The long days you’re surviving through? These are the years you’ll desperately wish you could return to when they’re gone.
The Windows That Close Forever
Another devastating insight from “The 5 Types of Wealth” is what Bloom calls “the windows that close forever.” There are certain phases, certain opportunities, certain moments in a child’s development that exist only briefly and then close permanently.
The Window of Physical Affection: There’s a last time your child will ask to be picked up. A last time they’ll reach for your hand while walking. A last time they’ll crawl into bed with you for comfort. These moments feel burdensome when they’re happening—your back hurts from carrying them, you’re trying to get somewhere quickly, you need sleep. But one day, without announcement, the window closes. They stop asking. They become too big, too independent, too embarrassed. And you’d give anything for one more of those moments you rushed through.
The Window of Hero Worship: Young children think their parents are superheroes—capable of anything, knowing everything, fixing any problem. They watch you with admiration, mimic your behaviors, and consider your approval the ultimate achievement. This phase is intoxicating but exhausting. Then, gradually, they realize you’re human. Flawed. Limited. The window of being their hero closes, replaced by a more realistic but less magical understanding. Many parents are too busy during the hero phase to recognize how special it is.
The Window of “Why?”: The age of endless questions—why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? Why do we have to sleep? It’s exhausting answering the 73 questions per day that young children ask. But that curiosity, that trust that you have answers, that desire to understand the world through your explanations? It’s a window. Eventually, they stop asking you and start asking Google, or friends, or they stop asking at all. The window closes.
The Window of Bedtime Stories: There will be a last time you read your child a bedtime story. You don’t know when it is—there’s no announcement, no ceremony. One night, you read to them. And then, without realizing it, you never do again. They’re too old, too independent, too interested in other things. Parents rarely recognize the last bedtime story while it’s happening. Most would have been more present, more grateful, if they’d known.
Bloom emphasizes that recognizing these windows while they’re open is one of the most important aspects of building Social Wealth and Time Wealth simultaneously. The tragedy is that most parents spend the open windows in survival mode or distraction, then spend decades wishing they could return to moments they barely experienced the first time.
The Presence Problem in Modern Parenting
A significant theme in “The 5 Types of Wealth” is what Bloom identifies as the modern parent’s greatest failure: physical presence without emotional presence. Being there in body but absent in mind and attention.
The scene is painfully familiar: parent and child at the playground. The child calls out, “Watch me!” The parent looks up briefly from their phone, says “Great job!” and immediately returns to scrolling. The child performs, seeking connection and validation, while the parent provides the minimum acknowledgment required before returning to digital distraction.
Or: family dinner where everyone is physically present but emotionally absent. Parents thinking about work emails they need to send later. Kids wanting to share something that happened at school but getting perfunctory responses that make clear no one is actually listening. Everyone goes through the motions of “family time” without any genuine connection occurring.
Bloom argues that this physically-present-but-emotionally-absent parenting is worse than acknowledged absence. When a parent is honestly away—at work, traveling, otherwise occupied—the child at least understands why they don’t have the parent’s attention. But when the parent is right there yet unavailable, the child internalizes a more painful message: “Even when you’re here, I’m not worth your full attention.”
The days feel long partly because we’re not actually present in them. We’re physically going through the parenting motions while mentally being anywhere else—thinking about work, worrying about finances, scrolling social media, planning the future, ruminating about the past. We’re serving time rather than experiencing it. No wonder it feels like it drags—we’re not actually there.
Bloom contrasts this with what he calls “radical presence”—being fully, completely with your child when you’re with them. Phone away. Work worries set aside. Future planning deferred. Just being right here, right now, with this person in front of you. The paradox is that radical presence makes the days feel shorter (time flies when you’re engaged) while making the years feel richer (you actually experienced them).
The Career vs. Parenting False Choice
One of the most valuable sections in “The 5 Types of Wealth” addresses the perceived conflict between career success and parenting presence. Bloom challenges the conventional wisdom that you must choose: either be present for your children and sacrifice career ambitions, or pursue career success and accept that you’ll be absent from your children’s lives.
This false binary, Bloom argues, has caused tremendous unnecessary suffering. Parents feel torn between two essential aspects of life, believing they must sacrifice one for the other. Working parents feel guilty about time at work. Stay-at-home parents feel defensive about career opportunities foregone. Everyone feels they’re failing at something.
Bloom proposes a different framework: career and parenting aren’t competing priorities that must be balanced—they’re different seasons that can be sequenced. He introduces the concept of “deliberate seasons” where you consciously choose which dimension of wealth receives priority focus, knowing that the seasons will shift.
Season 1 (Early Career, Pre-Children): Focus on building capabilities, establishing yourself professionally, and creating financial foundation. Work intensity is highest. Social life is active but relationships are still forming. This is the season for concentrated career focus without guilt.
Season 2 (Young Children): Shift focus to family. Career continues but the intensity modulates. You make choices that preserve time and energy for parenting: turning down the promotion that requires constant travel, setting boundaries around evening and weekend work, choosing opportunities that allow presence. This doesn’t mean abandoning career—it means being selective about which opportunities align with being present during the open windows.
Season 3 (Adolescent Children): Recalibrate. Children need less constant attention but still need engaged presence. Career can intensify somewhat, but in different ways than Season 1—more strategic, less proving yourself, leveraging accumulated expertise rather than building it from scratch.
Season 4 (Adult Children): Freedom to intensify career focus again, but now with wisdom and perspective absent in Season 1. This can be the highest-impact career phase because you bring accumulated skills, emotional maturity, and clarity about what actually matters.
The key insight is that these seasons aren’t failures or compromises—they’re conscious choices that honor both career and family across the lifespan rather than trying to give 100% to both simultaneously. The parent who moderates career intensity during the young children season isn’t “falling behind”—they’re investing in the 75% period when they’ll never get that time back. They can intensify career later when the windows have closed and their children don’t need constant presence.
Practical Systems for Present Parenting
“The 5 Types of Wealth” provides concrete systems for being present during the long days that become short years:
The Sacred Hour: Every day, one hour that belongs completely to your children. No phones, no distractions, no multi-tasking. Whatever they want to do—play, talk, read, be silly—that’s what happens. Bloom emphasizes that this single hour of radical presence provides more connection and security than five hours of distracted proximity.
The Weekly Adventure: One activity per week that’s special—not extravagant, just intentional. Maybe it’s Saturday morning pancakes. Maybe it’s a walk after dinner. Maybe it’s a trip to the library. The content matters less than the consistency and presence. These repeated adventures become the memories children carry forever.
The Before-Bed Talk: Fifteen minutes before sleep when you’re fully present. Ask about their day, their thoughts, their feelings. Listen more than you talk. Don’t problem-solve or lecture—just be with them. This brief daily connection compounds over years into a relationship of deep trust and communication.
The Phone-Free Zones: Certain times and places where phones don’t exist: dinner table, car rides, morning routines, bedtime. These zones create space for actual connection rather than parallel existence in the same room.
The “Yes Damn Yes” Filter for Opportunities: Before accepting any opportunity (work commitment, social obligation, activity), ask: Does this align with being present during my children’s open windows? If not, it’s a no—regardless of how prestigious, lucrative, or “important” it seems. The urgent will always crowd out the important unless you protect the important with boundaries.
The Memory Documentation: Brief daily or weekly notes about memorable moments, funny things they said, milestones reached. Not for social media—for you. These notes become priceless when the windows close and your memory of the details fades. They help you recognize that the long days were actually filled with moments worth remembering.
The Grandparent Perspective
A particularly moving section of “The 5 Types of Wealth” explores what Bloom learned from talking with grandparents and elderly parents reflecting on their parenting years. Their perspective, unclouded by the exhaustion of living through long days, reveals important truths:
No One Regrets Being Present: Not a single grandparent Bloom interviewed said, “I wish I’d spent less time with my children.” But many said, “I wish I’d been more present when I was with them.” They recognize now that they were there physically but absent emotionally—distracted by work stress, focused on keeping the household running, but not actually experiencing the moments with their children.
The Memories That Matter: When elderly parents describe their most cherished memories with their children, they’re never about the elaborate vacations or expensive gifts. They’re about bedtime conversations, weekend adventures, silly jokes, quiet moments of connection. The simple things that required presence, not money.
The Distance That Develops: Many grandparents express sadness about the emotional distance with their adult children. Not conflict necessarily, but a lack of closeness. And they trace it back to absence during the formative years—being too focused on providing financially rather than providing emotionally, too concerned with discipline rather than connection, too busy climbing the career ladder to build the relationship.
The Speed of Time: Without exception, every elderly parent describes the shocking speed with which the years passed. “One day they were babies needing everything, and the next day they were adults with their own lives.” The long days coalesced into short years faster than seemed possible. They wish they’d understood this truth while the windows were still open.
Bloom emphasizes that we shouldn’t need to wait until we’re grandparents to have this perspective. The wisdom is available now, from those who’ve lived through it. The question is whether we’ll learn from their hindsight or repeat their regrets.
The Fifteen More Times Revelation Applied to Children
The conversation that changed Bloom’s life—”You’re going to see your parents fifteen more times before they die”—applies equally to the parent-child relationship, just from the opposite angle.
If you see your children (who live across the country) once per year after they leave home, and you have 30-40 years remaining, you’ll see them 30-40 more times. If they visit monthly, you’ll have 360-480 visits remaining. Either way, the number is finite and shockingly small compared to the daily presence during their childhood.
But the deeper revelation is about daily presence while they’re young. If your child is five years old, you have approximately 4,745 days remaining until they leave for college. That sounds like a lot. But how many of those days will involve genuine, undistracted presence? How many bedtimes will you be fully present for the bedtime story and conversation? How many dinners will be completely phone-free and engaged?
If you’re present for one truly engaged hour per day, you have 4,745 hours remaining—which is just 197 days of actual presence spread across 13 years. Suddenly, the number isn’t large at all. It’s devastatingly small. And it makes every single hour of presence precious.
This mathematics should change behavior immediately. The work email can wait. The social media scrolling is stealing irreplaceable moments. The exhaustion that makes you just want them to go to bed is wasting opportunities you’ll desperately want back later.
Savoring vs. Surviving
Perhaps the most powerful reframing in “The 5 Types of Wealth” is the distinction between “savoring” and “surviving” the parenting years. Most parents are in survival mode—just trying to make it through the day, keep everyone alive and relatively clean, handle the logistics of meals and bedtimes and schedules. They’re serving time until the kids are older and “things get easier.”
But as Bloom reveals through the grandparent interviews, things don’t get easier—they just get different. The challenges of parenting young children are replaced by different challenges of parenting teenagers, then adult children, then managing the sadness of the empty nest. There’s no future paradise where parenting is effortless and joyful.
The only moment you can savor is this one. The only day you can experience fully is today. The transition from surviving to savoring isn’t about changing circumstances—it’s about changing perspective and presence.
Savoring means recognizing that the bedtime routine you’re rushing through is one of a finite number remaining. Savoring means seeing the repetitive questions as curiosity rather than annoyance. Savoring means understanding that the child wanting to “help” cook dinner (thereby tripling the time and mess required) is a window that will close. Savoring means being fully present in the long days so that when they become short years, you actually experienced them.
Bloom shares his own transformation after becoming a father: “Before Roman was born, I thought parenting would be this phase I’d get through before ‘real life’ resumed. Now I understand that this IS real life—the most real, the most important, the most irreplaceable. The work can wait. The achievement can be deferred. The optimization can be paused. But my son’s childhood happens once, and every day I’m not present is a day I’ll never get back.”
Conclusion: The Gift of Awareness
The cruel paradox of the “days are long but years are short” truth is that most parents don’t understand it until it’s too late to change how they experienced those years. They survive the long days, and then mourn the short years. They wish for the phases to end, and then wish desperately to return to them. They prioritize everything except presence, and then realize too late that presence was all that actually mattered.
But as Sahil Bloom demonstrates in “The 5 Types of Wealth,” awareness of this paradox while the windows are still open is a gift. If you understand right now—while your children still want your attention, still consider you a hero, still ask you endless questions, still want bedtime stories—that these moments are finite and precious, you can change how you experience them.
You can choose presence over distraction. You can choose savoring over surviving. You can choose radical engagement over going-through-the-motions. You can make the long days meaningful so that when they become short years, you have no regrets about how you spent them.
The mathematics won’t change—the windows will still close, the years will still fly by, your children will still become adults with their own lives. But you can change whether you were present for the journey. Whether you actually experienced the long days or merely survived them. Whether the short years are filled with rich memories or vague recollections of being too busy to notice.
As Bloom writes in “The 5 Types of Wealth”: “Your children don’t need a perfect parent. They need a present one. They don’t need elaborate vacations or expensive toys. They need you, actually with them, actually seeing them, actually engaged. The days feel long because you’re not present in them. But when you learn to be radically present—to savor rather than survive—something magical happens: the days still pass quickly, but you actually experience them. And that presence, that engagement, that genuine connection creates the Social Wealth that makes life rich for both you and your children.”
The years are short. The windows are closing. Your children want you now, not someday when work calms down or finances are better or life is less chaotic. Now is when they’re young. Now is when the windows are open. Now is when the 75% of your lifetime together is happening.
The question isn’t whether the days are long—it’s whether you’ll be present enough in those long days to create short years you’ll cherish forever rather than mourn what you missed.
About “The 5 Types of Wealth”: Sahil Bloom’s “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life” (Ballantine Books, 2025) presents a comprehensive framework for understanding wealth across Time, Social, Mental, Physical, and Financial dimensions. The book explores parenting and family relationships as crucial aspects of Social Wealth and Time Wealth, providing both sobering mathematics about the brevity of key phases and practical systems for being present during the moments that matter most. Bloom draws on interviews with parents, grandparents, and experts, combined with his own experience as a father, to offer wisdom about experiencing rather than merely surviving the parenting years before the windows close forever.
