Mar 21 • Perspective & Meaning
Parenting: Show Up, Don’t Screw Them Up
One of the hardest, most important jobs you’ll ever do doesn’t come with a manual, a salary, or much sleep. Parenting is brutal, beautiful, boring, and relentless. It’s also one of the clearest mirrors you’ll ever hold up to your own life.
When you struggle with depression, parenting can become one of the biggest triggers.
I once heard a line I’ve never forgotten, though I can’t remember who said it:
“If you screw up bringing up your children, you can forget being good at anything else.”
It felt true to me. But it can also hang over your head like a sword of Damocles. Self-loathing gets louder when you start thinking of yourself as a bad parent.
There’s no such thing as a perfect parent, but there is such a thing as a consistent one.
Turn up.
That’s most of it. Not every moment. Just enough of them.
Studies suggest that children with at least one consistently supportive adult in their life are significantly more resilient in the face of stress, trauma, and mental health struggles. You don’t have to be brilliant. Just be there.
When you feel low, try to explain to your children that you are not just sad, you are ill. If they are too young to understand, explain it simply. Say your brain has a cold. Don’t hide it. Explain that it is an illness and that treatment helps.
Get to them before the prejudice does. Prejudice is mostly learned. It does not start fully formed.
And never hit. No matter how angry, how overwhelmed, or how out of your depth you feel. Violence creates fear, not respect. Fear shuts down trust. You cannot build anything solid from that.
They Are Not You
It’s tempting to project your own path onto your children. To steer them away from the mistakes you made, to relive the moments you missed.
But they are not you.
They will not want what you wanted. They will fall in love with things you don’t understand, and struggle in ways you never did.
The best you can do is recognise the patterns, the pitfalls you know all too well, and offer them the tools to climb out when they fall in.
Don’t try to live through them. Your unfinished business is yours to deal with. They are not here to complete your story.
Be Interested in the Nonsense
One of the simplest life hacks for connection is this. Pretend to care until you do.
Minecraft worlds. Bug facts. Terrible knock knock jokes. Show up with curiosity, even if it feels ridiculous. You are not evaluating the content. You are showing them they matter.
The things they bring you, drawings, questions, scraps of their inner world, are not tests. They are offerings. Treat them with respect.
Play until you are exhausted. Wrestle on the carpet. Get muddy. Be the monster, the sidekick, the pillow fort engineer.
This is the stuff they will remember. Not what you earned or what you fixed. Just that you made time.
You’re Not Their Friend
You are their parent. That means being unpopular sometimes. It means boundaries, structure, and consequences. And it means sticking to them when it would be easier to give in.
Here’s the paradox. When you do this right, they feel safer, not stifled. They know someone is steering the ship. That counts for more than you realise, especially when their own emotions feel chaotic.
Preparing Them for the World
Your job is not to protect them from everything. It is to equip them.
Resilience. Empathy. Emotional vocabulary. A sense of self worth that does not depend on winning, achieving, or fitting in. These are your gifts to them.
Research from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child shows that children who learn coping skills early are more likely to become resilient adults. That work starts at home, and it starts with you.
The Practical Life Hack: Model What You Want Them to Learn
Children learn by watching, not listening.
You can lecture them all day long, but they will follow what you do.
That means:
• Own your mistakes• Apologise when you lose it• Say “I don’t know” sometimes• Let them see you rest• Let them see you try again
The goal is not to raise perfect kids. It is to raise people who know how to survive being human.
Final Thought
Parenting will break your heart, your routines, and your sense of control, then rebuild them in ways that are hard to describe.
If you are doing it while carrying depression, it is even harder. But sometimes showing up for someone else helps you learn how to show up for yourself.
You will not get it all right. But if you show up, listen, and love them without condition, you will be doing better than most.
And one day, when the world comes for them, as it always does, they will hear your voice in their head.
Make it a kind one.
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Parenting: Show Up, Don’t Screw Them Up
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