I Went and Got a Cookie

What Parents in This Community Are Really Asking

When I learned my father had taken his life, I went and got a cookie. I was eleven.

That’s what we do when something is too big to look at directly. We find the small thing. The manageable thing. The thing that makes the unbearable feel, for a moment, normal.

In the past several months, families in Great Falls and McLean have lost young people to suicide. And in the wake of that, parents are reaching for their cookies. Research. Conversations. Tutors or coaches to make sure kids feel good about themselves.

All of it coming from love. None of it quite reaching the fear underneath: am I close enough to my child that I would know?

I know this from my own kitchen, where I was the mom reaching for every cookie I could find — ‘helping’ with homework, checking texts. Another therapist. All of it from the place in me still trying to make the chaos feel manageable.

Crises don’t start with tragedy. They often start in our own histories. And, without realizing it, these histories reveal themselves in our most ordinary interactions — the homework struggle, cheering from the sideline, the five seconds after your kid says something hard and then watches to see what you do with it.

This isn’t about blame, it’s about biology. When stress hits, we don’t always rise to our intentions. We often fall back on what we’ve carried from childhood.

And in that moment, our kids don’t think: mom is having a hard day. They think: something must be wrong with me.

That’s what’s at stake in the small moments.

For some parents, shifting that comes quickly. For others, and I was one of them, something older keeps getting in the way. The urge to fix, to control, to make it stop. Not because we don’t know better. Because for years, cookies worked. And sometimes it’s hard for our intentions to catch up.

The good news is that when we get it wrong and try again — and let them see us do it — we’re not failing our kids. We’re showing them what it looks like to be human. That hard moments don’t have to be faced alone and that big emotions and confusion are not the same as being lost.

And here’s what the research tells us — and what I’ve seen over and over in the families I work with: you don’t have to get it right all the time. Getting it right 20–30% of the time is enough to outweigh the misses. That’s not a consolation prize. That’s neuroscience. And those small moments compound.

There are plenty of moments still in front of you. So the next time you’re in one of those five seconds — after your kid says something hard and watches to see what you do — try one question: “Is this about them or about me?”

And if the answer isn’t clear right away, that’s okay. None of us learned how to do this perfectly. We’re all still learning. The important thing is staying close enough to keep trying again. Because the small moments — the pauses, the listening, the willingness to repair — are what build the bridge our children walk across when life feels too big.

And sometimes, when the moment is overwhelming, it’s okay to start with the cookie.