Chapter 2 — The Scars We Pass On

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my journey.

Last time we spoke, I was back in 1990, unpacking how I failed — and what made that failure quietly become a success. Today I want to take that lesson to a contextual level and explore what it actually means in our day-to-day lives as grown-ups. If you missed Part 1 — My Introduction to Life — I'd encourage you to read it first for the full picture.

So, that 10-year-old didn't get exactly what he was looking for. But he needed a win — so he accepted a small thread of control as his victory and moved on. Honestly, if you look at it from his perspective, it was a significant compromise. But the question I keep coming back to now is: what made that boy seek control in the first place? Why did he need attention from complete strangers — or as I'd rather call them now, people he was just beginning to know?

Because if you look around, not every child at that age demands things go their way. Not everyone that age expects something in return. So yes, it comes down to expectations — but the deeper question is why those expectations existed at all. And the answer, I believe, is hidden somewhere in the family.

As Jodi Picoult said: "There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations." But do we actually apply this in daily life? That 10-year-old had enormous expectations and very little understanding of reality — and that gap didn't come from nowhere. It came from home.

We as parents, as older siblings, as caregivers — we all carry scars. Deep ones. And as we grow, we learn to ignore them, to work around them, because that's what being civilized means. That's how society functions. But the real problem begins when we stop resolving those wounds and simply learn to live around them. This doesn't mean confronting people aggressively or burning bridges. Boundaries matter — for yourself and for others. But the truth is, by the time that awareness arrives, we already look like wounded soldiers on the inside.

And then the overprotecting begins. We start projecting our past pain onto the people we love most — the ones we idolize, the ones we want to shield. We compare every hardship they face to our own unresolved moments of loneliness and vulnerability, and without realizing it, we steal their fair share of failure. We try to tell ourselves we're letting them grow — but when it counts, those old buried emotions take over our actions, quietly teaching them the bitter parts of our story without us ever saying a word.

Here's what the research tells us, and what my own life confirms: when children don't navigate small setbacks on their own, they never fully build emotional regulation skills. That 10-year-old boy was a perfect example — raised by parents whose love was real but whose protection was fear in disguise. What if he goes to bed hungry? What if someone bullies him? Can he find his way back from the park? Each of those small rescues robbed him of a lesson he needed to learn himself.

There is no right or wrong in parenting — setting aside outright neglect, of course. But the single biggest trap is mapping our own failures onto our children's futures and acting in advance to prevent what we think we already know is coming.

And I say this because I am living this exact situation right now — in my own home, with my own son.

My boy is 7 years old, a first grader. Some mornings I can tell just from his body language and his emotional state on the drive to school that he's carrying something heavy. That something isn't easy for him. And like any father, my instinct was to step in — to take control, to solve it for him. I'll tell you why I almost did that in the next chapter, because that story involves scars I've never really spoken about to anyone.

But this time, I paused.

When I approached him, the first thing he said was: "I don't want to talk about it." And then — "Promise me you're not calling my teacher, writing an email, or telling Mummy about it."

That last sentence stopped me completely.

I took a step back. Instead of offering him a solution, I decided to offer him tools. Let him stumble over small things now, while the stakes are still low — rather than face life unprepared when it one day comes to him directly, alone.

So I simply told him: "If you ever want to talk about how you're feeling, and you think you could use a little advice — come to me."

To my surprise, it worked almost immediately. After a quiet moment, he popped his first question: "Daddy, what if I hit them back?"

Now, I still don't have the full context of what happened — what the situation was, who was involved. But what I asked him in return was: "What do you think is the most powerful part of your body?"

And without a moment's hesitation, he said: "My brain."

That answer made me prouder than anything I could have felt had I simply solved his problem for him.

This story at home is still evolving, and I intend to weave it together with my own failures as we move forward. But I'd love to know — has any of this stirred something in you? A question, a memory, a moment of recognition? Write to me. Leave a comment. Let's make this a conversation, not just a story.

And stay tuned — because the boarding school of 1990 is waiting. Where awareness was scarce, boundaries were blurry, and the rules were made up as we went along. I promise you — the journey ahead is going to be thrilling, honest, and well worth the ride.

See you next time. Stay tuned.