Until recently, Debbie never thought of her mom as a superhero. She was just a mom. But now that Debbie has kids of her own, she’s come to realize just how amazing her mother was. No, it wasn’t her ability to coordinate everyone’s sport’s schedules or her knack to add the precise amount of nutmeg to everyone’s favorite Christmas cookies. What really stood out were those superhuman skills she summoned at just the right moment.
There was her ability to spot when someone was about to become impossibly exhausted, so she could intervene with a mandatory nap. Her instant discernment between normal fidgeting and a potty dance. A lie detector more precise than any polygraph. Healing lips capable of evaporating pain from scraped knees. A sixth sense for detecting hidden objects more effectively than a squad of TSA agents. Telepathy that alerted her whenever unseen kids were up to something they shouldn’t be doing. And, of course, her critically important instinct for recognizing that vomit was imminent, so she could keep it off the upholstery.
Debbie has been surprised to discover she has inherited many of her mom’s superhuman traits, but she isn’t even aware of the most important among them: a talent for nurturing and sustaining healthy relationships, and for protecting her children from those that were unhealthy — like gently creating distance from that grade-school “friend” of hers who proved to be a budding pathological liar or using “that look” to discourage that eighth-grade boy who gazed at Debbie in inappropriate ways.
Debbie knew her parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. No relationship is. But as she watched her parents interact and handle the inevitable conflicts, she intuitively acquired skills she brought to her own adult relationships.
As Debbie moved from toddler, to child, to tween, to teen, and to young adult, what she witnessed taught her how to communicate expectations without becoming demanding. She learned how to establish healthy boundaries, and how to resolve differences through quiet negotiation instead of screaming arguments. She learned many ways to express affection and appreciation, how to cope with minor slights and more serious hurts, and the importance of knowing how to forgive.
Just as important, she learned how to enter all kinds of interpersonal relationships with expectations about how she deserves to be treated, and about how she’ll treat the others. When some of the young men she dated failed to live up to those expectations, she ended the relationships before things could get worse.
Debbie doesn’t know it, but she’s in the process of passing those superhero skills along to her three kids. As they watch their parents interact, they’re developing their own expectations of how people are supposed to behave in family and romantic relationships. Those skills may not be foolproof, but they’ll dramatically reduce the possibility her kids will end up on either side of an abusive relationship.
