That is a lie about love, and it is a particularly dangerous one to plant in a small child, because it can grow, quietly, into the organizing principle of a whole life: the belief that you must earn your place, perform for your welcome, stay useful and quiet and good or risk being left in the dark.

I have known adults who never recovered from being taught that lie in childhood, who spend their whole lives auditioning for a love they believe is conditional, terrified that one wrong move will cost them everything.

I was not going to let that lie take root in my daughter.

So I set about, deliberately, over months, teaching her the opposite, not with speeches but with the thousand small daily proofs a child actually learns from: that she was loved just as much when she was difficult as when she was easy, just as much when she failed as when she succeeded, just as much on her worst day as on her best.

That there was no performance she could give that would earn more of my love and none she could give that would lose any, because it was not that kind of thing.