You don't have to be a perfect parent. You have to be one who comes back.

In healthy families, parents are perfectly "in tune" with their children only about a third of the time. The rest is mismatch, missing each other, and then repair, the coming-back-into-connection.

Here's the part that changes everything: the repair is where security gets built. Which means the thing we fear most, that we rupture, that we lose our patience, that we get it wrong, is not what harms children. Unrepaired rupture harms children. Repaired rupture builds them.

So you don't have to be a calm, organised, never-overwhelmed parent. No such parent exists. You have to be a parent who comes back, warm, sorry, and loving, again and again.

That, you can be. Starting today.