Your little sister’s recital is forty minutes of recorders and pure bravery. Sit in the front row anyway.

Attendance is the whole gift at things like that. Forty minutes of children playing recorders is not good, and everybody present knows it is not good, which is exactly why being there means something. The performance is not the point. Standing on a stage while slightly terrified and finding a familiar face in the room is the point.

Go, sit near the front, and be visibly there rather than half watching from the back. Say something specific afterwards about a part you actually noticed. She will not remember the piece she played; she will remember scanning the room and finding you in it.