The Quiet Truth About “Doing Better”

Before we talk about children, we need to talk about us, because so many of the conversations we keep having about kids, their behavior, confidence, emotions, or attitude, are not really about them. They are about the stories we learned about ourselves long before we had language for what we were feeling. They are about who we were allowed to be and who we learned to hide in order to survive.

Most of us are trying.

Really trying.

We are parenting, mentoring, loving, and leading with intention. We are working hard to do better than what was done to us. And in many ways, we have. We give our children what we never had. More access. More opportunities. More protection. More experiences. We show up. We advocate. We pour in. And that matters, but here is the quiet truth we do not always say out loud...

What we needed growing up is not always what our children need now. Their world is different.

Many of us were raised in some form of lack. Emotional, physical, or relational. So, when we become adults, we overcorrect. We give more. We protect harder. We try to fill the gaps we remember. And without realizing it, we can miss the needs forming right in front of us. Not because we do not care, but because the pain looks different now.

Sometimes, we are so focused on not repeating our childhood that we do not notice the new wounds being created.

In our effort to be better, we can unintentionally withhold what our children actually need— emotional language, permission to feel, space to be seen, safety to be fully themselves. Not because we are careless or unloving, but because we were never taught how to give those things.

We were taught how to survive. So many of us live split in two lives. On one side, we are poised, capable, polished, dependable and holding everything together. On the other, our inner child is still there—behind a glass wall in our chest. Seen, but not heard. Present, but contained. Waiting for permission we never learned how to give.

So, we end up raising children who appear to have everything, yet still feel unseen. Children who are loved deeply, but do not know how to name what is happening inside of them. Children who learn how to perform, how to stay quiet, how to be strong, how to be easy, because those versions of themselves feel safest.

And that is hard to sit with, because none of us set out to do that.

Many of us are parenting from our own unhealed places. Not intentionally. Just honestly.

If you grew up having to be strong, you may struggle to sit with their softness.

If you grew up unseen, you may miss subtle emotional cues.

If you grew up learning to shrink, you may unknowingly teach them to do the same.

We do not pass down pain because we want to. We pass it down because it was never named, never tended to, never healed. And this is the part that matters most.

Healing does not start with our children. It starts with us.

Healing inner child wounds is not extra work or self-help language. It is necessary. Because unhealed adults often raise children who learn to adapt to wounds they did not create.

This is not about blame.

It is about awareness.

It is about repair.

It is about the courage to pause and ask ourselves, am I responding to my child’s need, or to my own history?

When we do that work, something shifts.

Joy becomes safer. Softness becomes allowed. Sensitivity stops being a problem and starts being information. And too much finally becomes exactly enough.

Call to Action

So, here is the invitation... Slow down long enough to listen to what is stirring in you. Pay attention to what feels tender. Begin the work of healing the child behind the glass. Not so you can be perfect, but so you can be present, because when we heal ourselves, we stop asking others to carry what was never theirs to hold.