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A few summers ago, my daughter went camping on an island with friends. Normally, she lets me know when she’s traveling and when she arrives—a quick text, a photo from the road, or what our family calls “destination calling.” When my kids first started venturing around New York City on their own, I asked them to text when they got where they were going. Somehow, that ritual survived their teen years and early adulthood, a small but sacred gesture of reassurance for everyone involved.
But that weekend, no text came. Not after a few hours. Not after a day. Not after two.
At first, I told myself, Of course she’s fine. Take a breath. But by the third day, my mind began to race down that familiar, terrifying parental path of what ifs. What if they’re hurt? What if they’re lost? Within minutes, my worry had morphed into panic.
I called my son; I knew she would have told him where she was going. Then, in full “worried mom mode,” I called the park ranger and asked, Could you just check if my daughter, Melissa, arrived safely? I imagined he’d look at a list and call me back with reassurance.
Instead, as I learned 45 minutes later, he jumped into a boat, rowed to the island where she was camping, and called out her name through a megaphone: “Melissa! Your mother is looking for you!”
Moments later, my phone rang. Melissa was fine: safe, happy, and, as she put it, “mortified.”
I was flooded first with relief, then with shame. My 34-year-old daughter was humiliated that her overly worried mom had literally sent a ranger in a boat to tell her to call home. And I felt awful, not just because I’d embarrassed her, but because my fear had spilled so far beyond reason.
This year, before she and her partner left for a trip to the same park, I received a video. In it, Melissa looked straight into the camera, her voice calm, steady, and full of the gentle patience only my amazing daughter can summon.
“Hi Mom, just want you to know we’re going camping. We’ll be off the grid for four days. That means no phone service. We’re going with a group, and the park staff checks in twice a day. We have a radio if we need it. We’ll be very, very safe. So, all that is to say, Mom… please don’t send the nice ranger in a boat to check on me.”
Then she and her partner broke into laughter. “We love you so much.”
I laughed too, though there were tears in my eyes.
This time, I could see what was really happening: My daughter wasn’t mocking me. She was co-regulating—gently soothing my anxiety while affirming our bond. She was doing for me what I had spent years teaching others to do for their children: respond to emotion with compassion instead of judgment.
That’s the thing about parenting—it humbles us. We care so deeply that our love sometimes gets hijacked by fear. We tell ourselves we’re acting out of concern for our child’s safety, but often, we’re really trying to calm the storm inside ourselves.
There’s useful worry: Bring your raincoat. Charge your phone. Wear your helmet.
And then there’s spinning worry: the kind that multiplies until we act out of panic instead of presence.
At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where I teach skills for managing emotions, we often introduce the Meta-Moment. It’s the pause between being triggered and responding, a slim but sacred space where wisdom can slip in. In that pause, you call to mind your Best Self in a particular role.
For me, that means asking: Who is my ideal self as a mom right now? How do I want my daughter to see me—and remember me—in this moment?
That pause doesn’t erase fear; it just gives you room to meet it with grace and to text a friend, write the worry down, take a deep breath, or simply wait. And in that waiting, something shifts. You give your child—and yourself—the gift of calm.
When I watched Melissa’s video, I smiled through tears of gratitude, not just for her kindness, but for her emotional wisdom. She had learned to meet worry with warmth, fear with patience, and love with laughter.
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Her message was clear: We know you care. Show us you trust us.
And that, I realized, is the quiet power of the Meta-Moment. Our emotions don’t just shape who we are; they shape the people we love.
If you’ve ever found yourself panicking over a child who didn’t text back, you’re not alone. Beneath every frantic phone call and sleepless night is love trying to find its footing. The real work—and the real gift—is learning to love with a little more trust, and to let our children’s steadiness remind us that we can weather the storm without passing it on.
