This last week of school, I am going to be radically honest and brutally unfiltered.
I had two ruptures with my children this week. Two moments where I did not show up the way I wanted to. Where the exhaustion of the school year, the heat, the incessant rains, the moving schedules due to wet weather, the emotional weight of all of us being at the end of our reserves came spilling out sideways onto the people I love most.
I know the theory. I sit with this material every day in my practice. I have read Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate’s Hold On to Your Kids more times than I can count. And still, on a Monday evening after a long day and a homework battle and a conversation that went wrong before I even understood what was happening, I raised my voice.
And then again on Thursday. Twice in one week.
This post is about what happened after.
Rupture is not the problem. Every relationship has rupture. It is what we do next that determines what our children learn about love.
What rupture actually is
Neufeld and Mate write about the attachment relationship between parent and child as something that needs to be both strong and flexible. Strong enough to hold tension. Flexible enough to survive it.
Rupture is the moment the tension wins. The raised voice. The sharp word. The withdrawal of warmth because we are too depleted to offer it. The look that communicated something we did not actually mean.
It happens in every family. It happens more in June in Hong Kong, when all of us, parents and children alike, are running on fumes. When the school year has asked everything of us and has not quite finished asking.
The rupture is not the failure. It is in my opinion the most human part. The part that is honest about the limits of what we can carry.
What we do after the rupture is where real life parenting, living, role modelling is defined.
Why repair matters more than you think
When I went back to my child that evening, it was not comfortable. My instinct, honestly, was to let it go. To hope that by morning it would smooth over on its own and nobody would have to do the uncomfortable work of naming what happened.
But I know from my practice, and from everything the research tells us, that unaddressed ruptures do not disappear. They settle. They become part of the texture of the relationship. They accumulate, quietly, into a pattern of disconnection that neither parent nor child can quite name but both can feel.
So I went back. And here is what repair does that nothing else can.
What repair gives our children
01 We are human. We make mistakes. Children who watch their parents repair learn that imperfection is survivable. That love does not require performance. That the people they trust most are also doing their best and getting it wrong sometimes. That is not a disappointing lesson. It is a relieving one.
02 We model what repair looks like. Most adults were never taught how to apologise unconditionally. How to say I was wrong without adding a “but”. How to take responsibility without making the other person responsible for receiving it gracefully. When we repair with our children, we are giving them a script they will carry into every significant relationship of their lives.
03 We show them the relationship is worth more than our pride. This is the one that lands deepest, in my opinion. When a parent goes back to a child and says I am sorry, I got that wrong, what they are really saying is: you matter more to me than being right. The relationship matters more to me than my comfort. That message, received in the body of a child, does something that no amount of perfect parenting can replicate.
What I actually said
I want to give you the words, because I think that is sometimes the most useful thing I can offer.
I sat down next to my child. Not across from them. Next to them. I waited until I had their attention and then I said something like this:
I want to talk to you about what happened earlier.
I got it wrong. I was tired and I let that come out in a way that was not fair to you. That was not okay.
That is definitely not the version of mum I want to be (ever). I was scary I know.
You did not deserve that. I am sorry.
I love you. And I am going to keep trying to do better.
No but. No explanation of why I was tired. No pivot to what they had done that contributed. Just the apology, clean and complete.
The relief on their face was immediate. The loosening of something that had been held tightly since the rupture. That is repair. That is what it looks like in real life, at the end of a very long week, in a kitchen in Hong Kong.
Repair relieves the pressure
I want to name something that I think gets missed when we talk about repair.
It is not just good for the child. It is good for you.
The guilt that follows a rupture is real and it is heavy. The loop of replaying what happened, the worry about what it means, the exhaustion of carrying it without resolution. Repair cuts through all of that. It does not require the moment to have been perfect. It just requires honesty and the willingness to go back.
Going back is the brave part. Everything else is just words.
You do not need to have been a perfect parent this week. You need to have gone back.
If you had a rupture this week, and most of us did, this is your invitation. Go back. Sit next to them. Say what is true. You will feel it lift.
And so will they.
With so much love,
Lisel