Victor Cabrera explains how infants depend on parents for survival and instinctively see them as perfect, even when they're not. A tired mother snaps at her crying baby, leaving an emotional mark the child won't consciously remember. Recognizing this childhood bias lets adults love their parents more honestly, flaws and all.
Even if you had the most perfect parents, there was a time, probably when you were about a year old, where your mom, if you were a nurse, your mom's like, you've bit my nipple enough. Times, like, you're done nursing, and you're a little baby, you're one years old. You don't know what the heck is going on in the world. And you're like, I'm screaming and I didn't get what I wanted. And if that day, your mom's like, for God's sake, right? Maybe that was something. And you don't remember this, at least not right away. And maybe it left a mark. So your parents didn't do anything wrong. And your parents always do their best. But the story that Mother Nature wants us to have, that our parents were perfect, because when you're three years old and you're entirely dependent on your parents for survival, you feel best believing they're perfect. And then you keep that picture. So anything they do cannot be questioned. And what happens now, ideally, is that you can look at your parents and you can love them more deeply and authentically than before. And when she says those things like that, you can just say, I love you too, mom, instead of like, I'm going to be something someday.
