It was learning to listen — to that small, stubborn voice of unease we so often hush to keep the peace, and to a child who tells us a thing that won’t fit inside the safe, comfortable world we’re desperate to keep.

There is an irony in this that I sit with often.

My whole profession is listening to children — to the ones too young for words, reading the pitch of a cry, trusting a parent who says something is wrong, I don’t know what, but something is wrong. I built a career on the principle that the people we are tempted to dismiss are often the ones seeing most clearly, and that the cost of not listening is measured in lives.

And then I went home each night and, without noticing, practiced the exact opposite on my own son — soothing his alarm, explaining his instincts away, teaching him that his discomfort was a thing to be managed rather than heard.