It’s hard to say why some children grow into kindness, curiosity, or strength. We like to pretend there’s a formula—books, methods, systems—but in truth, there isn’t. It’s more like a web of many things: some genetic, some environmental, some just chance.
What a parent can do isn’t so much teaching in the strict sense, but being there. Not as a professor delivering lessons, but as a person living their life—reading, thinking, being kind, messing up sometimes, but showing up again the next day. That atmosphere, that daily presence, is what a child absorbs.
Still, it only works if the child is open to it. Some kids, for reasons no one fully understands, tune into it and flourish. Others turn away, even with the best parents. That mystery is humbling.
Montaigne once said we never really know why someone recovers from an illness—was it the medicine, prayer, or just the body healing itself? Parenting feels the same. You can’t point to a single cause.
So maybe the best rule is not to chase the perfect method but to avoid doing harm. Less about pushing or correcting all the time, more about keeping space open for what’s already there to grow.
In the end, what happens between parent and child isn’t something you can package or hand over like a manual. It’s something unique to that relationship, created in the moment, and impossible to replicate.