hot take: honesty isn't what steals childhood.

hot take:

i don't believe protecting my children means pretending hard things aren't happening.

i don't believe childhood innocence requires adults to lie.

and i don't believe using real words for real things somehow makes me less protective of their childhood.

my children have heard words i wish they never had to learn this young.

cancer.
surgery.
divorce.
custody.
grief.
fear.
change.

and somehow, they are still children.

they make jewelry.
they believe popsicles can fix almost anything.
they ask seventeen questions before breakfast.
they think boo boos deserve immediate medical attention and possibly a bandaid in a very specific color.

they are allowed to know that life can be hard while still being completely certain that the hard parts are not theirs to carry.

because there is a difference between allowing a child to understand their life and asking a child to emotionally manage it.

there is a difference between saying, "mommy is having surgery, and the doctors are taking very good care of me"

and making a child responsible for your fear.

there is a difference between explaining that a family looks different now

and asking a child to choose sides.

there is a difference between answering questions honestly

and giving children information their little hearts were never meant to hold.

i will protect their innocence fiercely.

but innocence and ignorance are not the same thing.

and if we're going to talk about what actually steals childhood, let's talk about that too.

being used as leverage steals childhood.

being made responsible for an adult's feelings steals childhood.

wondering why someone didn't call steals childhood.

feeling like you have to earn someone's attention steals childhood.

being made to feel like a second choice steals childhood.

hearing adults tear apart someone you love steals childhood.

being asked to carry messages between grown-ups steals childhood.

learning to read the emotional temperature of a room before you're old enough to read the clock steals childhood.

feeling responsible for keeping the peace steals childhood.

those are the things i am afraid of.

not the truth.

one of my best friends is a therapist, and she once told me something i don't think i'll ever forget:

"all of our children will need therapy. it's up to us to decide what they'll need it for."

and fuck.

that changed something in me.

because i am going to get things wrong.

i am going to have moments i wish i handled differently.

there will probably be things my children sit across from a therapist twenty years from now and unpack.

i don't need to raise children with nothing to unpack.

i don't think that's possible.

i want to raise children who never have to unpack whether they were loved.

whether they mattered.

whether home was safe.

whether their feelings were inconvenient.

whether they were responsible for keeping the adults around them happy.

whether they had to become smaller, quieter, easier or more impressive to deserve someone's attention.

i want them to unpack the fact that their mother occasionally overshared, swore too much, probably made every school project unnecessarily elaborate and told them the truth when maybe another parent would've chosen a prettier version.

fine.

i'll pay for that therapy myself.

but they will never have to spend years convincing themselves that someone's inability to show up for them was because they weren't worth showing up for.

not if i can help it.

because my job isn't to convince my children that the world is always beautiful.

my job is to make sure they know that when it isn't:

they are safe enough to talk about it.

they are allowed to ask questions.

they are allowed to be angry.

they are allowed to be sad.

they are allowed to love people who disappoint them.

they are allowed to have complicated feelings without protecting the adults in the room from those feelings.

and above everything else,

they will know that none of it was ever their fault to carry.

childhood isn't protected by silence.

childhood is protected when the adults do the adult work.

tell them the truth.

make it small enough for their hands.

and then carry the heavy parts yourself.