Do Our Children Owe Us?
For anyone who prefers listening to reading, this AI-generated audio (created with Google NotebookLM) offers a gentle summary of the key ideas in my blog.
If you're a parent, have you ever found yourself saying something like: "After everything I've done for you, this is how you treat me?" Or perhaps: "I sacrificed so much so you could have everything I never had. I gave you food, a home, a great education..."
It's such a common message.
Yet there's so much to unpack beneath it.
What Our Children Never Asked For
The truth is that our children never asked to be born.
We made that choice.
And because we made that choice, providing food, shelter, safety, love and care isn't something extraordinary. It's our responsibility. Human beings are among the most vulnerable species on earth. A child literally cannot survive without a caregiver meeting those basic needs.
When we remind our children of everything we've given them, we're often pointing to things that were never optional.
And then there are all the extras…The sports, the music lessons, the tutoring, the endless driving, the packed schedules.
Most children never asked for those either.
Many of those decisions come from our own dreams, our hopes for their future, or the pressure we feel from society about what a "good parent" should provide.
Parenting Was Never Meant To Be A Transaction
Children are not meant to spend their lives paying us back.
In fact, they never could.
No child will ever be able to repay the countless hours, sleepless nights, sacrifices, and emotional investment that parenting requires. That's because the parent-child relationship was never designed as a transaction. It was designed to help another human being become fully themselves.
I shouldn't expect my daughters to return everything I've poured into them.
My role is to give. Their role is to grow.
I once heard Trevor Noah say something that has stayed with me ever since. He shared the idea that many parents unconsciously believe their children owe them simply because they brought them into the world. But perhaps it's the opposite. If we choose to bring a child into existence, then we are the ones who owe them the opportunity to become who they came here to be.
That shift changes everything.
The Goodnight Kiss That Changed Something in Me
One example that completely transformed my own parenting happened around something very small. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, every night before bed we would go kiss our parents goodnight and ask for their blessing.
"Bendición, papi."
"Bendición, mami."
It was such a beautiful cultural tradition that I never questioned it.
Naturally, I expected the same from my daughters.
One evening, as I reminded one of them to come kiss me goodnight, she looked at me and simply said, "Mom... if you want to give me a kiss, why don't you come kiss me?"
I still remember that moment. She was absolutely right.
I wasn't asking because she needed it. I was asking because I needed it.
Without realizing it, I had made her responsible for meeting one of my emotional needs.
It's such a small example. Yet it illustrates something much bigger. How often do we expect our children to give us the reassurance, affection, comfort, or validation that we're longing for?
The Needs That Belong to Us
There is, of course, a difference between caring for aging parents as they need physical or financial support, and making our children responsible for our emotional wellbeing.
Our children are not responsible for making us feel happy. They are not responsible for making us feel loved. They are not responsible for regulating our emotions or filling the places within us that still ache.
That work belongs to us.
When a child begins worrying about a parent's emotional wellbeing, trying to soothe their pain and suffering, keeping the peace, mediating conflict or feeling responsible for holding the family together, something quietly shifts.
They stop fully occupying the space of being a child.
Little by little, they learn that other people's needs matter more than their own. That their feelings can wait. That love means carrying someone else's emotional load.
Unfortunately, those lessons rarely stay in childhood. As adults, they often struggle to set boundaries. They feel guilty when they prioritize themselves. They constantly monitor how everyone else is feeling before checking in with themselves. They find themselves in relationships where they once again become the emotional caretaker.
It's almost as if they grew up too soon.
And sometimes growing up too early simply means a child learned how to care for everyone else long before they learned how to care for themselves.
So What Does This Look Like In Practice?
It means remembering that it is never our child's responsibility to carry the relationship.
Maybe you're disagreeing with your child. Maybe you've grown distant. Maybe they've stopped calling as often, or the relationship simply feels different than it once did. Whether your child is five or fifty, the invitation remains the same.
If something feels off, don't wait.
Reach out. Call them. Go looking for them. Get curious instead of defensive.
Rather than asking, "Why aren't they calling me?", perhaps ask yourself, "I wonder what's making this feel difficult for them?"
Our job as parents is to keep showing up with love. If something inside of us is making that difficult, then that's where our work begins.
What is stopping me from taking the first step?
What part of me needs my child to come to me first?
What expectation am I holding that is getting in the way of love?
Those are powerful questions worth exploring.
Choosing Love Over Pride
Our children are not responsible for making sure the relationship works. We are.
Even if the relationship doesn't unfold exactly as we hope, there is a profound peace that comes from knowing you showed up. That you reached out. That you chose love over pride, fear or hurt.
Our children don't owe us that first step. We chose to bring them into this world. So let's keep choosing them.
We won't get this right every time. None of us will. Parenting has a way of touching our deepest wounds, our biggest fears, and the parts of us that are still longing to be loved. But every moment offers us another opportunity to choose differently.
And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is this:
To let them simply be children. To allow them to love us freely, not out of obligation. To meet our own emotional needs so they don't have to carry them.
And to remember that our love was never meant to create debt. It was always meant to create freedom.
