I was a good provider.
That’s what I held onto for years.
The lights were always on.
There was food in the refrigerator.
If something broke, I fixed it.
If there was a problem with a teacher or a coach or a situation at school, I handled it.
I showed up to the things I was supposed to show up to.
I was reliable and present in all the ways I understood presence to mean.
What I didn’t understand—what it took me a long time to see—is that my kids were not primarily measuring my love by any of those things.
They were measuring it by something I didn’t know how to give, or maybe was afraid to give, or simply never thought of as the point.
Here’s what I think that was.
They needed me to ask how they were feeling
Not what happened—what was happening inside them. Those are different questions, and they lead to different conversations. I asked about school and sports and friends and grades. I asked about the external facts of their lives. What I rarely asked was how they were actually feeling about any of it—what the hard thing at school had cost them emotionally, what they were worried about underneath the worry they showed me, what they were carrying that they hadn’t told anyone yet.
I thought asking about the facts was enough. It wasn’t. The facts were on the surface. The feelings were what they needed someone to be genuinely curious about.
They needed me to sit in the feeling with them
When they were upset, I went into fix mode immediately. Someone hurt their feelings—I had a strategy. They were scared—I had reassurance. They were sad—I had a reframe or a reason why it would be okay. I was efficient with their pain, and efficiency felt like care.
What they actually needed was for someone to be in the feeling with them for a moment. Not to solve it—to witness it. That’s the thing I kept skipping: the moment before the solution, where they would have felt less alone.
They needed me to notice their emotions without making them smaller
I understood that feelings existed. What I didn’t do was treat them as important information. When they were upset about something that seemed small to me, I said so—gently, but I said so. When they cried about something I thought was manageable, I moved them through it quickly. Jonice Webb, Ph.D., who writes about emotional neglect for Psychology Today, says this is how the message gets sent without anyone meaning to send it—that their feelings are inconvenient, something to get through rather than sit with.
They needed me to be present, not just there
I was in the room. I was at the dinner table. I drove them to practice, sat in the stands, and showed up to the school events. Being there, I thought, was the thing.
But being there physically and being there emotionally are not the same thing, and my kids could tell the difference even if I couldn’t have named it at the time. There’s a kind of being-there that is actually a form of absence—when your body is present, but your attention is somewhere else, or you’re available for logistics but not for what actually matters.
They needed me to be curious about who they were inside
I was interested in their achievements and the external markers of how they were doing. Their interior life—their fears, their hopes, how they felt about themselves—I didn’t ask about enough. Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, writes that what children need most isn’t just care and provision—it’s a parent who is genuinely curious about who they are on the inside.
I was proud of what my kids did. But I’m not sure they ever felt I was curious about who they were.
They needed me to repair things when I got it wrong
I didn’t apologize much. Not because I thought I was always right, but because I didn’t understand that the repair mattered as much as the original moment. When I was short with them, I moved on. When I handled something badly, I hoped we’d all just quietly get past it. What I was missing is that kids need the repair, not the silence after a rupture, but the actual return and acknowledgment that something happened, and I see it, and I’m sorry.
The repair is part of how children learn that relationships survive difficulty. I didn’t model that enough. A parent who never says sorry is a parent who never shows them how.
They needed me to let them be upset with me
I was uncomfortable when they were angry at me. I moved to deflect it quickly, to explain myself, to make a case for why I’d been reasonable. I couldn’t just let the anger land and say: Okay, I can take that. The need to defend myself got in the way of the thing they actually needed—a parent who could be the target of their frustration without retreating.
They needed me to share something real about myself
I kept my inner life private. The struggles were mine to carry. The hard things—I handled those out of sight and presented only the resolved version. I thought this was protecting them. What it was actually doing was modeling a self-sufficiency that said: you handle things alone, you don’t show the process. I was teaching them to be as closed as I was, and calling it strength.
They needed me to enjoy them, not just manage them
There’s a difference between being a good manager of children and actually delighting in them—in who they are, in what they find funny, in the particular way their mind works. I was a good manager. I kept things running. I handled the logistics of childhood competently and without much drama.
What I didn’t do enough was just be with them for the pleasure of it. Follow their lead into something they cared about. Let them show me their world without an agenda. I was always slightly task-oriented, even in the moments that were supposed to be just for them.
They needed me to say the thing out loud
I assumed they knew. I assumed that, by providing, showing up, that doing everything I did communicated something so obvious it didn’t need to be said.
I’m proud of who you are, not just what you do.
You matter to me in a way that has nothing to do with how you perform.
I thought they could feel all of that without me naming it.
They couldn’t. Or if they could feel it, they needed to hear it too.
The words do something the actions don’t.
I said them too rarely, and too casually—not in the direct way that actually stays.
That’s the one I most want to go back and do differently.
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.
