What parents carry that nobody sees
Your kid stopped going to practice. You haven’t explained it to anyone because you’re not even sure you really understand it yourself right now.
But you are already anticipating the questions and the judgment that is heading your way.
The coach sends a text that’s friendly on the surface, but you feel like there is something underneath it. Another parent mentions at pickup that they noticed your kid hasn’t been around. You haven’t said a word to anyone, but that feeling of being judged begins to creep in.
I don’t feel like enough people talk about this part of parenting a struggling child or teen. You are already exhausted and afraid of what is going on inside your home, but now the judgment, whether real or imagined, starts to creep in from the outside. As much as you want to ignore it, or say it does not bother you, it still exists and is an added burden when you are already handling a lot.
It Shows Up Almost Everywhere
When your child’s struggles start to creep into public view, judgment seems to come from all around. It isn’t just extended family or people who don’t know you well. It’s almost anywhere your family exists in the world.
Sports teams notice when a kid stops showing up or when their behavior shifts. Schools see changes in attendance, grades, and behavior. Family gatherings change because they are sometimes just too much for your child to handle right now. Close friends ask how things are going in a tone that tells you they’ve already noticed something.
And while you resort to “everything’s fine,” people know it is not. And when there’s no explanation, people fill that silence themselves. And that story often lands on some sort of critique of the parent. You’re not getting them there. You’re not taking it seriously. You’re too easy on them. You’re not pushing hard enough. The narrative that is often written says that you’re at least part of the problem.
The Silence Has More Than One Shape
Most parents who go through something like this say very little about what’s happening, especially early on. But that decision to keep things close and not talk about it widely comes from a lot of different places.
Some parents stay quiet because they’re scared that it may label their child and that may shape how teachers, coaches, family, or peers see them. Some worry about being seen as a parent who can’t handle their own family. Some are protecting their child’s and family’s privacy the best way they know how.
And some parents are quiet because they genuinely don’t know what to say yet. They don’t have a name for what’s happening. They don’t have a story that feels complete enough to tell. That’s a different kind of silence than choosing privacy because it’s the silence of not knowing yet. Parents in that place often feel like they should have answers they simply don’t have.
Fear often sits underneath most of these choices. That may be fear of the label landing on your child, fear of the label landing on you, fear of what fills the silence if you say nothing, fear of being misunderstood if you try to say something, and fear of calling it something and then having it change later on. Fear in every direction. And that fear is a normal response to what can feel like an impossible situation.
The truth is, you don’t owe anyone an explanation. And when some parents reach that place of clarity, they hold it like armor: this is none of your business. And that is totally okay as well.
What People Actually Say — And What It Does
The hardest version of judgment isn’t always from someone who means harm. A lot of it comes from people who care about you and are trying to help.
You know how when you share hard news, some people immediately respond with the worst story they know about something adjacent? Their cousin’s kid, a cautionary tale, delivered with total confidence that this is what you needed. Or the breezy dismissal: all kids go through phases, they’ll grow out of it. Or the fix: have you tried more structure? Or the one that can really tick you off: if that were my kid, I would…(as if you have not already tried everything imaginable)
What all of these have in common is that they skip right over what you are actually feeling. In trying to reassure you, they erase the fear, the complexity, and the sheer difficulty of parenting without a clear answer. I truly believe that most people aren’t trying to minimize you. But they do. And it hurts.
I think it is worth saying that not everyone gets it wrong. Some people have genuinely useful things to offer. Some show up exactly right, quiet, present, not flinching. But you can’t always predict which kind of person or reaction you’re going to get. And that unpredictability is hard and makes you hesitant to share. When you don’t know what’s coming, it feels safer to say less.
Things like anxiety and depression have more cultural script now. It seems to be everywhere, so most people have some language for them, even if they don’t really understand what it is like. But when you’re navigating something that drifts into what feels like more serious territory (e.g., self-harm, eating disorders, substance use, school refusal), the script disappears. People don’t know what to say, and the support gets thinner exactly when the need is greatest, and the judgment gets sharper exactly when you may be most fearful.
The Judgment You’re Waiting For
Some of the hardest judgment isn’t the kind that you may already be experiencing. It’s the kind you’re bracing for.
You know your child is not at their best right now. You know things have changed. You know people in your life have noticed, because of course they have. And so you live in a kind of low-grade readiness, waiting for the moment when a casual comment will come flying in, not sure when or from whom.
In your mind, you rehearse explanations you may never give. You scan the room at family events. You avoid certain people for a while, not because you don’t care about them, but because you don’t have the energy for the conversation that might happen. You do the math before every gathering: who will be there, what might come up, what you will and won’t say.
Most parents in this situation end up building a version of your story that is truthful but not completely transparent. You’re not lying. You’re managing information under uncertainty, protecting your child and yourself, giving people enough to work with without handing over more than you’re ready to share. It is careful, constant, exhausting work. And it sits on top of everything else that’s already exhausting.
When It Comes From Someone You Love
There is a particular kind of pain that comes when the judgment, real or imagined, comes from someone you’ve trusted for years. Family. A close friend. Someone you would have called in any other kind of crisis.
You want to ask: do you even know me? Do you even know my child? You’ve been through things together. You thought they knew you. And now they’re filling in the gaps with something that doesn’t recognize either of you.
Part of what makes this so hard is generational. The people parents most want support from are sometimes the least equipped to give it. I am convinced that this is not because they don’t love you, but because they are working from a completely different map. They raised kids at a different time, with different tools and different expectations. “We didn’t have all of this when I was growing up” isn’t something said to be intentionally mean; it’s genuinely how they see it and experienced it. Although I think we know that these things existed, they were just not addressed.
This often results in a difficult push and pull between how much you care for someone and the realization that they may be unable to offer you the support you need right now. And there’s a cycle that’s hard to get out of. When you know this, you don’t tell them what’s really happening. They form their own conclusions. Those conclusions feel like judgment. You trust them a little less. You tell them even less the next time. There’s no clean exit from that loop.
Some relationships survive it. But unfortunately, some get quieter or disappear altogether. And some change in ways that are hard to name. It is its own kind of grief that hurts, but you often don’t have the time to acknowledge it because you have more pressing issues you are dealing with.
What It Does to You Over Time
Sustained judgment, from multiple directions, over time, adds fuel to a fire you’re already consumed by. It compounds the self-doubt. It makes you second-guess decisions you already felt good, or at least okay, about.
You made a hard call. You pulled your child from an activity, said no to a family event, started therapy, changed something that needed to change. And then someone says something, or you imagine what they’d say, and suddenly you’re back at the beginning.
There’s also the performance of fine. You smile when people ask how things are going. You say everything is okay. You show up and act normal, because explaining would take more than you have right now. And you do this over and over, in parking lots and school hallways and family dinners and at work, until the gap between what you’re showing and what you’re actually feeling becomes its own kind of exhausting.
And quietly, without meaning to, you start to pull back. Not dramatically, just a little less each time. You skip the event you used to go to. You stop reaching out as much. You let a few friendships go quieter than they used to be. It isn’t a decision exactly. It’s just what happens when managing the judgement takes more energy than you have left for anything else. And then one day, you realize you’ve been carrying this mostly alone for longer than you meant to.
Sometimes the judgement you’re most worn down by isn’t even real yet. You’re not sure if the coach’s text meant something or if you’re reading into it. You replay a comment from a family member trying to figure out if it was meant to land the way it did. You wonder if you’re being too sensitive, or if you’re not being sensitive enough. That hypervigilance, always scanning, always second-guessing your own read of things, is its own kind of weight that never really goes away.
You Were Never Meant to Carry This Alone
Here’s something I think about. How many of us have sat in the same rooms, carrying the same things, and none of us knew it. Because nobody wears a badge that says my kid is struggling. We just kept it close. We kept showing up to the same school events, the same family dinners, the same sidelines. Each of us holding it quietly, none of us knowing the person next to us was doing the same thing.
I didn’t find out until years later that some of the people I would have turned to were going through versions of this at the same time. We just didn’t talk about it. It was not until an encounter in the grocery store that something was said, and there was an epiphany that we had both been struggling for years, but it went unsaid.
You get to decide what you share, with whom, and when. That’s yours. No one gets to take it from you.
But if you can find even one person who gets it without needing the full explanation, on person who won’t flinch, won’t offer their worst-case story, won’t tell you it’s probably just a phase, it can be a lifeline. Another parent who has been here, or is here right now. A support group. An online community where people are saying the quiet part out loud. A therapist of your own, separate from everything happening with your child.
People like that exist.
And if I am honest, that is why Together We Navigate exists. Because parenting this particular thing in silence should never be the only option.
You’re not alone in keeping this quiet. And you’re not alone in wishing you didn’t have to.
You’re not alone in this.
– Laurie
Judgement often doesn’t just come from the outside, it often comes from the inside as well. Be sure to check out my piece on why parents often blame themselves for their child’s struggles, and how to stop the shame spiral that many of us feel.
Laurie Hinnant is a parent who spent years navigating the professional support system for her family, and found it far more confusing, inconsistent, and exhausting than it needed to be. She founded Together We Navigate to give other parents the real-talk guidance she wished she’d had. She also holds a PhD in Community Psychology and brings 25 years of health research experience to everything she writes, but she writes here as a parent first.