The grades are good. The work gets done. The appointments are kept, the emails are answered, and everyone seems to be managing. It all gets done. Until something changes. Someone adds one more request. Plans shift unexpectedly. A task takes longer than expected. Suddenly, the person snaps, cries, becomes angry, or seems to fall apart. Those around them are bewildered: “Why is this such a big deal?” Sometimes this is the first visible clue that keeping up has been costing more

I spend a lot of time talking with parents who want their children to feel good. Of course they do. We want our children to be happy, confident, successful, included, and capable. When something hurts them, we want to make it better. When they are anxious, we want to reassure them. When they are frustrated, we want to help. And when we see an obstacle coming, almost every instinct we have tells us to move it out of the way.

We are remarkably quick storytellers. Someone is late, and we think they don’t respect our time. A child doesn’t do what we asked, and we decide they weren’t listening. A teenager shrugs when we ask about school, and we assume they don’t care. A colleague asks question after question, and we decide they’re difficult. Someone doesn’t return a text, and before long, we’ve created an explanation for that, too.