Will My Kids Still Turn To Me When They’re 40?

In my Too Tired Mums conversation with Jassmin, there was a moment that stayed with me.

We were talking about how parenting has changed with our generation. Many of us are no longer raising children to simply obey. We want them to trust us. To feel that home is not just where the rules are, but where they can return when life gets confusing, messy or hard to explain.

Then Jassmin shared how she keeps conversations open at home.

If her son were to come home one day and say he was in a same-sex relationship, she said, he would be accepted.

In fact, it was something they had already touched on.

“We will say, ‘Next time if you have a girlfriend or if you have a boyfriend,’ so that they know even at this age that it is accepted in our house,” she told me.

I asked her, almost instinctively: “You have already told this to your son?”

Her son is 11.

Many of us grew up in homes where certain things were not said unless they had to be. Some conversations only happened when there was a problem. Some never happened at all.

Jassmin was not waiting for a crisis before letting her child know where home stands.

And it made me wonder: what am I laying the groundwork for in my own home?

As a mum, I say I want my children to tell me anything. I want them to come to me when they are scared, confused, angry, embarrassed or ashamed.

But it is one thing to say that. It is another thing to live it out when the timing is terrible.

Children don’t choose the perfect times to open up. They come to us when we are rushing out the door, mentally stuck at work, trying to settle dinner, check homework, answer messages, and hold the day together.

It could be a friendship problem, a careless comment, an irrational worry, or an unexpected question.

In those moments, I do not always respond like the calm, emotionally available mother I aspire to be. Sometimes I brush them off with a “can we talk about this later?”, knowing that “later” might not come. Sometimes I jump into fixing because I’m impatient. Sometimes I overreact.

So while we want to be safe places for our children, we are also human beings with our own limits, triggers and unfinished parts.

Still, I keep coming back to this: I do not need my children to think I am perfect. I just hope they see me as someone they can return to.

Maybe this feels especially important now because families are getting smaller, and many of us do not have a big village around us. My children do not have dozens of aunties, uncles and cousins orbiting their lives. Their world, in some ways, is smaller than I imagined it would be.

Perhaps that’s why our role as parents feels heavier now.

I think about my children growing older — graduating from school, landing their first jobs, navigating relationships, mistakes, heartbreaks, and private struggles I may not be able to solve.

By then, I may not be the first person they call. They will have their own friends, partners and chosen family.

But if they are 30 or 40 and something in them still thinks, “I can tell Mum,” I think I would feel that I had done something right.

Not because I have all the answers. But because they trust that I am available. That I will listen before judging. That they still have a safe space with me, no matter how old they are.

That is the kind of parent I hope to be.

Jassmin said it so matter-of-factly. This is what acceptance looks like in her home. This is what her child is allowed to know early.

And perhaps that is where it starts.

Not with one big, perfect talk when the stakes are high. But with the small signals we send now.

You can talk to me.

You may not always like my answer, but you will not lose me.

Years from now, when my children are grown and living lives I cannot control, I hope some part of them still believes that.

I hope they still turn to me.

Watch the Too Tired Mums episode here.

Too Tired Mums is The Singapore Women’s Weekly’s original talk show series that gives motherhood its most honest voice — where real mums open up about the things we don’t always say out loud, reminding us that we’re never truly alone.

Host: Estelle Low
Guest: Jassmin Vaanee Peter-Berntzen
Producer: Maya Eman
Art director: Michelle Lee
Videography, studio setup and editing: Studio+65
Makeup: Dorcas Yam, using Dior
Hairstyling: Pattama Phumriew, using Schwarzkopf Osis+
Fashion styling: Angela Chu
Outfits: Top on Estelle, Etro