It is a truth universally acknowledged that every parent in possession of a child will, sooner or later, feel as though their life has become a blur of snacks, lunchboxes, lost shoes and low-level panic. There are emails to answer, washing that never ends, nursery runs done half-listening to a podcast and a creeping suspicion that everyone else online is managing all of this with more patience, better craft cupboards and markedly fewer meltdowns.

Personally, I think social media has a lot to answer for here. Scroll for long enough, and it’s easy to believe that good parenting requires constant presence, endless enrichment and a calm nervous system at all times – all of which is deeply unhelpful when you’re running on two hours of broken sleep and a series of cold cups of tea (hi, it’s me, writing this at 3:13am; send help).

I hit a wall around six months ago, when a well-meaning acquaintance suggested I should be setting up a craft activity each night for my children to come downstairs to in the morning while I made breakfast.

Reader, I tried. I tried… and I failed, obviously, because my children are tiny tornadoes who upend everything in the house before bedtime, then require me to lie beside them in the dark until they fall asleep. After that, I have, ooh… about three hours before my youngest wakes for a night feed. In that window, I usually tidy up the worst of the mess, prep lunches and bags for them to take to the childminder, do a load of laundry and write an article or two. Sometimes, if I’m very lucky, I may even squeeze in a shower.

The crafting activities didn’t stand a chance. And so, feeling terrible about myself and my apparent inability to be a perfect Instamum, I stumbled across a simple idea often attributed to neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp’s work on emotional bonding and security: there are nine minutes in your child’s day that matter more than most.

They’re not magical, and they won’t cancel out bad days. But they can anchor connection when time, energy and patience are in short supply.

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