When a child is diagnosed with an illness, intrusive thoughts often surface, such as: *Could I have done something differently to prevent this?* or *What if I had paid more attention to this?*

Along with these or similar questions, a sense of guilt emerges, causing a block that prevents us from moving forward and leaves us with a constant feeling of self-punishment.

If we think of it in terms of a calculator, does this feeling of guilt add to or subtract from our ability to support our children? Guilt can paralyze us, while responsibility encourages us to take action and engage with certain situations.

What can help in many of these moments is not to amplify and perpetuate this sense of guilt, but to replace it with a sense of responsibility. Raising a child is a living process, full of ups and downs, and one that requires our individual and collective responsibility as partners, as a community, and as a society.

And I repeat the term “shared responsibility” because no, we cannot take responsibility for everything our child says, does, or experiences. We need to understand in which areas we are the main agents in our children’s lives and development and in which areas we play a more secondary role, leaving the responsibility to those who are the main actors in that moment.

It may be easy to write but harder to execute. Am I always responsible for making sure my daughter takes her medication or follows certain advice because of her condition?

My responsibility is to explain it and find mechanisms and tools to ensure that these messages are effectively communicated and understood. However, I cannot always remind her to take her medication or bring her everything she might need at every moment. Over time, and if we’ve explained things properly from the start, we must trust in her abilities, for ultimately, she will be the one living with the illness or situation at hand.

These dynamics strengthen the bond with ourselves and between parents and children. On the one hand, it helps parents focus on the things that really need attention, and on the other hand, it fosters the autonomy of children and adolescents. Nothing frustrates a child more than when their parents make decisions for them and do not allow them to take responsibility for their own actions.

The importance of community

As we’ve been discussing, this responsibility is ours as parents, but we must know when to set limits and understand where we may be doing more harm than good. We live in an increasingly individualistic society that discourages showing vulnerability and accepting that, as parents and as people, we have fears and don’t have all the answers. We can accept that we don’t have a magic wand, and that it is healthy to ask for help and lean on those around us, as well as on other people and communities who have gone through or are going through similar experiences.

In closing, I would like the predominant feelings to be relief, responsibility, and motivation. Relief because no one has an instruction manual on how to be the perfect parent—it depends not only on you but also on your child and your family unit. Responsibility because it drives us to improve in parenting. And motivation because parenting is a process of accompaniment, helping our children learn to live in society.