Ivana Poku Are you often worried your actions will mess up your children?
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend that really stopped me in my tracks.
She was telling me about something that happened when her son was little.
One day, he bit her, and she jokingly said, “You bite like a giraffe.”
A totally harmless comment from our perspective, right?
But here’s the interesting part years later, her son told her that this comment deeply hurt his feelings, and that it had stayed with him ever since.
She admitted she’d said much “worse” things to him during his childhood (you know those “mum moments” where tempers ran high), but this was the only one that stuck.
Not the moments where she lost it. Not the harsh words during tantrums or meltdowns. Only the giraffe comment.
That hit me hard. Because it made me realise something we as parents often miss.
We beat ourselves up for the times we yelled.
For the things we did or said in frustration.
We lie in bed replaying the moments we wish we could undo, thinking surely this is what they’ll remember.
This will be what messes them up.
But the truth?
We have no way of knowing what sticks – and what doesn’t.
And it’s not always the big, dramatic moments.
Sometimes it’s the tiniest, most seemingly innocent ones that land the hardest.
I remember something like that from my own childhood.
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My parents had visitors over.
I must’ve been around five or six.
I drew a picture for my mum and proudly walked up to her, waiting for her to light up, to be moved, to show me that what I created mattered.
She looked at it, said a polite thank you, and set it aside.
I was crushed. The little girl in me felt invisible, unimportant, unseen.
And even now, as a grown woman who knows my mum probably just needed a break at that moment, the sting still lingers inside me.
It’s wild, isn’t it?
We can spend hours or days obsessing over a harsh word we regret, thinking this will scar them forever – meanwhile, they’ve already forgotten it.
But one offhand comment, said with no malice at all, somehow pierces straight through and lodges itself deep in their little hearts.
The truth is, we will mess up our kids. One way or another.
No matter how gentle, conscious, or loving we try to be, we’re still human – and so are they.
We never truly know how things will impact them.
We can do something that seems “perfect”, and still create a trauma. One we never saw coming.
Remember that not each trauma has a capital T.
Sometimes it’s just a short moment that made them feel small, confused, or unseen.
And it’s not always the things we think will damage them that do.
Often, it’s the things we agonise over – the moments we believe only a “bad mum” would have – that they don’t even remember.
So what do we do with this?
We stop overthinking.
We stop obsessing over being “perfect”.
We stop drowning in guilt and second-guessing every choice.
And instead – we talk to them. We connect. We create space for the hard conversations.
Because the one thing we can do is build a relationship where they feel safe enough to come to us, even when we get it wrong.
That’s what matters.
Not shielding them from every bump and bruise life throws their way, but showing them that they’re never alone in it.
Apologise when you mess up.
Let them see you repair, reflect, grow.
That teaches them more than perfection ever could.
Because if they learn that it’s okay to feel hurt and okay to talk about it – they won’t carry it silently for years like my friend’s son did.
They’ll know that even when their parent gets it wrong… they’re still loved, heard, and safe.
And that?
That’s what creates happy, secure, emotionally intelligent kids.
Not a flawless parent.
But a real one.
