No one will ever regret the kindness and love they showed their children. No one will ever look back and think they did too much of that. On the contrary, history is replete—with famous and ordinary examples alike—of parents looking back with profound pain at the things they didn’t say, at the love they did not convey.
Montaigne, in his famous Essays (and if you haven’t read Sarah Bakewell’s biography of him, you must!) writes of one such example—a noble Frenchman whose child was taken from him all too soon. “The late Monsieur de Monluc,” Montaigne writes, “when talking to me of the loss of his son, among other regrets emphasized the grief and heartbreak he felt at never having revealed himself to his son and at having lost the pleasure of knowing and savoring him, all because of his fancy to appear with the gravity of a stern father; he had never told him of the immense love he felt for him and how worthy he rated him for his virtue.”
We’ve talked about this so many times before. All the parents who waited, who out of fear of spoiling their kids declined to celebrate them, or followed their achievements with detachment (or worse, from afar).
You cannot wait.
Do it now. Tell them now. Tell them over and over again. Tell them how you feel. Tell them how proud you are. Tell them how much they impress you. Celebrate what’s special about them (and so much is special about them).
Don’t hide behind the mask of the stern father, or the costume of the critical mother. Be vulnerable. Let them see the real you. Admit to them how you really feel. Before it’s too late.