Keeping the love, changing the tools

Becoming a mother at eighteen, I had no grand parenting philosophy.

What I had was practice. My younger sister had been born when I was thirteen, so by the time Art arrived, I already knew how to feed a baby, rock one to sleep, and change a diaper at two in the morning without fully waking up. The mechanics were familiar enough.

The principles? Entirely absent. I knew one thing with complete certainty: I wanted to do some things differently than I was raised to. This was not about blame. I love my parents. They raised me the way they were raised, using the tools their world gave them. But I decided, quietly and without drama, to leave some of those tools behind.

Physical punishment, for one. I won’t speak for everyone’s experience, but in mine, and in what I heard from friends growing up, it was not uncommon. What stayed with me was not the pain. It was the humiliation. That particular combination of smallness and powerlessness that no child should have to organize themselves around.

“Dumb” was the mildest word used when I made mistakes. Perhaps it was meant to toughen me up. I can think of kinder ways to build resilience, and I have spent considerable time finding them.

Sharing something vulnerable only to have it returned to you later as ridicule or ammunition in an argument. That cut in a way that is hard to describe accurately. The closest I can get is this: it felt like skin being peeled away in a room where you were supposed to be safe. I vowed never to do that.

Straight A’s were expected. A B earned criticism. Accomplishments were received with a shrug and a “Good, what’s next?” Success was assumed rather than acknowledged, and the joy of effort was erased before it had a chance to land.

Sadness was weakness. Disappointment was weakness. Tears invited scolding rather than comfort, and consolation hardly happened in our house—not because nobody cared, but because nobody had been taught how.

So, my parenting manual was thin. But what it said was clear. No physical punishment. No broken trust. More warmth, more praise, more room to make mistakes without the mistake becoming the whole story of who you were.

With intention,

Nadia Granski

I chose to give the empathy I didn’t receive. This story is from chapter 4 of Parenting: Return on Intention, where empathy is part of Impact, the I in the ROI Framework.