What My Daughter Taught Me About Love and Boundaries

During the early months of motherhood, I often felt like I couldn’t trust myself. Sleep deprivation, postpartum depression, and an endless stream of advice made it hard to know which instincts were mine and which belonged to the books I was reading.

Years later, watching my daughter grow up, I’m realizing something unexpected: Children sometimes show us a kind of emotional clarity adults spend years trying to relearn.

My daughter recently asked my husband how to spell the word love.

It happened on the front porch. I watched through the family room window as he taught her how to spell “mom,” then “dad,” and then “love.”

“Do you want me to teach you how to spell love?” he asked.

“Just write it for me,” she said, all wiggly and giggly.

“Okay, okay,” he conceded.

I loved watching them together. Especially because lately she’s been asking me how Daddy and I met.

It’s always in the quiet moments—when we’re sharing a slice of pizza, drinking soda, or curled up watching The Golden Girls.

“How did you meet Daddy?” she asks.

“I met Daddy when I was with someone else,” I say, hesitant to go too far into dating talk with a six-year-old.

She smiles. “But Daddy was cuter?”

“Yes,” I laugh. “Daddy was cuter.”

“And nicer.” She squeezes my cheeks together—something she does when her love for me feels too big to contain.

I hesitate to tell her that Daddy wasn’t always this great. That the early days of our relationship were unpredictable. That he couldn’t decide whether he loved me. That I once took him back after he showed up at our apartment crying in the rain.

I want to tell her that liking someone isn’t always enough.

What I never quite know how to explain is that love can look very different when you’re an adult. Sometimes it looks like waiting by the phone, forgiving too quickly, or hoping someone will change even when they’ve shown you who they are.

The love she sees now—steady and gentle—was something I didn’t always recognize. It took years for me to believe I deserved it.

How do we teach our children about love when our own lessons came the hard way?

I was raised to fix things, to absorb other people’s emotions before my own. I don’t want that to be Lily’s inheritance.

Sometimes I wonder if children arrive already knowing more about love than we do. Maybe our job isn’t to teach them what love is, but to protect the parts of them that already know.

Because Lily moves through the world with a certainty I never had at her age.

“Mom, can I tell you something?” she asks one afternoon.

“Always.”

“Nathaniel in my class told me he has a crush on me.”

I wasn’t ready for that—just like I wasn’t ready to answer questions about Daddy.

“How did that make you feel?”

She shrugs. “I told him I don’t like him like that.”

I think back to when my husband and I were first dating. One night, drunk and walking through the rain, I told him I loved him.

“I love you,” he said, “but I’m not in love with you.”

I should have left. I didn’t.

As Lily talks about Nathaniel, she keeps smiling each time she says his name.

“He also likes Lucy,” she adds, giggling.

“And how does that make you feel?” I ask, half joking.

“He likes Penny, Noah, and Avery too.”

Already, Lily has spotted a red flag it took me decades to recognize.

“Then he likes everyone,” I say.

“That’s why I’ll keep him as a friend,” she answers simply.

It’s such a small moment, but it stops me. At six years old, she already understands something it took me most of my life to learn: It’s not enough that someone likes you. They have to be all in.

I wish I had trusted my instincts like that when I was young.

Instead, I spent years letting people walk over my boundaries because I wanted to be liked. I stayed in a relationship throughout my twenties with a man who drifted in and out of my life—dating other women, disappearing, returning with declarations of love, always keeping me just close enough that I couldn’t fully walk away.

Every time I stayed, I was teaching him—and myself—that my boundaries didn’t matter.

I want something different for my daughter. I want her to know she never has to bend herself into someone else’s comfort, never has to accept crumbs, and deserves a steady, certain love.

When Lily was a newborn, I spent months questioning my instincts. Nights blurred together as I read sleep-training books promising that if I followed the right routine or schedule, everything would fall into place.

Instead, I doubted the very instincts motherhood depends on.

Looking back, the pattern is clear. The same voice that once told me to ignore red flags in relationships was now telling me to ignore my responses to my baby. Both asked me to override what I felt in order to trust a system instead.

That night on the porch, Lily traced the word again, pressing her pencil into the paper with complete certainty.

She didn’t ask if she was doing it right. She didn’t look to me for approval.

She just wrote.

I envied that ease.

She assumes love is something she deserves—something she can define for herself.

At six years old, she already knows not to accept less than she wants.

Maybe that’s the whole point.

She’s learning how to spell love.

And I’m still unlearning everything that once convinced me I didn’t deserve it.