Something that changed the way I parent was realizing that my kids had been communicating with me long before I recognized some of it as communication. And I do not just mean talking.

Kids communicate through behavior, humor, silence, texting, proximity, avoidance, memes, random information dumps, and occasionally walking into your room at the exact moment you have finally gotten comfortable. Ask me how I know.

Sometimes my kids come into my bedroom when I am winding down for the night, climb onto the bed next to me, and start showing me TikToks. They are 22 and 19 now, so these are not little kids looking for bedtime stories. These are grown-ish people bringing me whatever nonsense their algorithms have decided belongs in our home. Do I always understand what I am watching? Absolutely not. Sometimes I am apparently missing twelve layers of context, three internet scandals, and somebody named Inde Navarette, who everyone else apparently already knows. But that is not really the point.

They came into my room. They wanted to show me something. They wanted me in on the joke, or the story, or whatever strange corner of the internet they had wandered into that day. THAT is communication. “I want to be near you” is communication. “I thought you would think this was funny” is communication. “I trust you with my unhinged For You Page” is definitely communication.

And once I started seeing those moments differently, I started noticing how often adults expect kids to communicate in a very particular way before we take them seriously. We want the calm explanation. We want the complete sentence. We want the teenager to sit down across from us and say, “Mother, I am currently experiencing emotional dysregulation and would appreciate connection without problem-solving.” Good luck with that.

Sometimes the kid who needs connection sends you a meme. Sometimes the overwhelmed kid gets quiet. Sometimes the neurodivergent kid cannot explain what is wrong while they are still inside battling with whatever is overwhelming them. Sometimes what looks like resistance is a nervous system saying, “I cannot do this the way you are asking me to do it right now.”

That doesn’t mean we have to diagnose every behavior from across the room or turn parenting into a never-ending game of emotional charades. It means we can get curious before we decide what something means. A lot of us were trained to respond quickly when behavior made us uncomfortable. We wanted it stopped, corrected, explained, or brought under control. That impulse can move faster than understanding.

So one of the questions I have learned to ask myself is: What am I seeing here that I might be misreading? Maybe my kid needs space. Maybe they need help finding words. Maybe they need me to sit next to them without interrogating them. Maybe they need five minutes before we try this conversation again. And sometimes they genuinely need a boundary.

Understanding what is happening does not mean children never hear “no.” It means I want to know what I am responding to before I respond. This matters a lot with neurodivergent kids because communication, regulation, eye contact, processing time, tone, and body language may not look the way adults were taught to expect.

A child can be listening without looking at you. A teenager can care deeply and still need to text something they cannot say out loud. Someone can need connection and still need physical space. There are a lot of ways to be in relationship with another human being. Our job is to learn the ones our kids are actually using.

And yes, sometimes you are going to get it wrong. Sometimes you are going to think they need space when they wanted you to stay. Sometimes you are going to offer advice when they wanted sympathy. Or empathy. Or quiet. Sometimes you are going to sit through six TikToks before realizing there was apparently going to be a seventh. This is parenting. We adjust.

The goal is not to become a perfect translator of every facial expression your child has ever made. The goal is to become somebody they trust enough to keep communicating with. Even when the language is TikTok.

That’s all for now. For more, please visit rainbowrootsmedia.com. And don’t forget to take good care of yourself today.