A little story about an evening that changed me as a mother in no small way.

Sam was little – four. He was having his very first sleepover with his best friend Molly – it was such a milestone that Molly’s mom had made them matching pajamas. Paul and I had friends over for dinner. It should’ve been – could’ve been – a sweet, ordinary night.

At bedtime, Molly got homesick and needed to go home. Paul drove her. And Sam – heartbroken, losing his best friend on his first ever sleepover – desperately wanted to go with his dad to drive her home.

It was raining out.

I said no.

I said no again…and again. Soon no became NO! And when Sam kept climbing out of bed, I kept putting him back – not so gently. A loud, angry voice within was saying “Sam needs to learn that when Mommy says no, she means no.” There was also a quieter voice too, whispering, “… what are you doing, Sally?” Loud and angry drowned out quiet and soft.

Eventually, Sam grabbed a container of crayons and smashed it into my face. My nose bled. I was crying…Sam too. When Paul got back, he and our dinner guests were horrified that Sam had hit me.

I didn’t know what to do.

I picked Sam up, held him, took him to sleep with us. I held him until he was sound asleep. I fell asleep with a bruised, messy face. Worried beyond belief about all that happened and what it meant…about Sam.

—

The next morning, luckily, I had an appointment with my therapist Dan Siegel and walked into his office with my bruised face.

He listened to my whole story without alarm – he always listened that way, which was its own kind of teaching. Then he leaned back and said,

“You do need to talk to Sam about how hitting is never a good option. But Sally, I want to ask you, why couldn’t Sam go with his dad to take Molly home?”

Wow…that option never once occurred to me. Sheepishly I said,

“…Because when Mommy says no, no means no…”

He was quiet for a moment, then… “No doesn’t have to always mean no. It’s okay to be flexible as a parent. Sam was showing you he was really struggling. It would’ve been okay to change your mind.”

Of course. Of course.

What hit me in that moment – what I write about in my memoir, A Brilliant Adaptation, was that I’d been operating on implicit mental models that were the very opposite of who I wanted to be as a mother. My childhood had hijacked my brain and tried to drag Sam’s childhood back into mine.

Dr. Siegel said something I’ve never forgotten, “Nothing was wrong with Sam, Sally. It was something that was very wrong in your childhood. Not Sam’s. Sam’s having a good childhood.”

Sam’s having a good childhood.

And after a quite a bit self-blame and beating up on myself about it, Dr.Siegel added, “We all make mistakes as parents Sally…remember you’re only human. The important thing here really is to repair the rupture.

The relationship that night had suffered not because of anything Sam brought to it. It suffered because of what I brought – fear disguised as authority, and the memory of my mother’s voice dressed up as a parenting truth.

—

This is what I mean when I say, from the field of attachment, that the relationship between a parent and child reflects what the parent offers the child, not what the child offers the parent.

This isn’t meant as criticism of parents. It’s actually the most illuminating and liberating thing I know. Because it means the door to change is always on our side. We don’t have to wait for our children to become easier, clearer, more manageable, and listening to us. Our challenge is to become more curious about their internal world. More able to ask what our child is wanting to communicate to us right now. Sam wasn’t defying me. Sam was heartbroken. Those are completely different things, and I almost missed it entirely.

What a loss that would’ve been.

A child never has to earn their way to safety. That’s never their job.

I left Dr. Siegel’s office…picked Sam up from school…and told him it’s never okay to hit, and we’re going to work on that…and that I was sorry I was so scary…that I was wrong to be so angry….he told me how sorry he was he hit me with the crayons.

Rupture…repair.

I love you Sammy.

I love you mommy.

—

I know this now, yes, as a clinician…I learned it though as a mother out of the long, necessary, often brutally painful work of making sense of my story before I could understand what my son was going through.

I know it’s a lifelong process…and never too late to start…

Not so long ago, Sam, now in his thirties, called to tell me he and his wife and daughter were leaving that afternoon for a mountain weekend.

I felt it immediately…That familiar tightening…He’s never driven in the mountains…It will be dark by the time they get there.

My mind went exactly where you might imagine it went….

…until I caught it.

At first I thought, I’ll just make sure he calls when he arrives. And then I heard myself – really heard myself – and understood that him calling me would have nothing to do with his safety. It would be entirely about my worry. My anxiety, handed to him to manage. My need…dressed up as a reasonable concern.

So all I said was…

“…have a great time.”

(I may have added…”and drive safe…”)…a lifelong process…

That evening, my phone rang. Sam…calling to tell me they’d arrived safely.

He called because he wanted to. Not because I’d insisted. Not because I’d made my fear his responsibility.

That’s IPNB in action – not as theory on a page, but as moments in life. The nervous system that once couldn’t tell the difference between my childhood and my son’s. The slow, hard-won capacity to hold my own experience without putting it in his hands…

…Most of the time…I am after all – only human.