Becoming a parent felt like a do-over of my childhood.
I thought I was just trying to give my kids what I didn’t get when I was growing up: a home where they didn’t have to be afraid. A home where mistakes weren’t met with violence, confusion wasn’t met with humiliation, and love didn’t disappear when they disappointed me.
What I didn’t realize was that every time I gave those things to my kids, I was also giving them to myself.
As I raised my daughter and son, I frequently found myself feeling anger, sadness, and jealousy.
I felt anger because I discovered that it’s not that hard to parent without using fear, shame, humiliation, or violence. When my son Aaron came home with a bad grade in math, I found him a tutor. My dad made me tape all my F papers to my bedroom wall so everyone could see how “stupid” I was. The older my kids got, the angrier I became at my parents, who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do better for me.
The sadness came from watching my kids grow up without the burden of constant vigilance. When my daughter Sami came home after being pulled over for speeding as a teenager, she wasn’t terrified of our reaction. She didn’t try to hide it. In fact, she came to us with a list of reasonable consequences. We chose number three: no car for a week.
What struck me was how naturally she expected understanding, support, and fairness. Afterwards, I found myself mourning the childhood I never knew—the quiet confidence that the adults in my life had my back.
And then there was jealousy. Not of my children, but of the childhood they got to have. I grew up watching The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, and Eight Is Enough and longed to be part of a family like I saw on TV. The parents weren’t perfect, but they seemed safe.
Somehow, I ended up raising the kind of family I used to envy. I’m grateful my kids got to grow up in it. Part of me just wished I had too.
Parenting was healing. Every time I comforted my kids, encouraged them, or helped them through a mistake, I was helping heal a part of myself.
I may not have been able to change my childhood, but I got something almost as valuable: the chance to parent myself. To prove that kindness and grace were possible. That mistakes didn’t have to be met with violence and shame. That there had always been another way.
In raising my kids, I helped raise the little girl inside me too.
