Staying With the Pain – So Our Children Don’t Have To

An interview with Adelina Dondorici, Co-Founder/Owner of Parenting Ads.

In a time when adult lives are increasingly complex-emotionally, professionally, relationally, the quiet question many parents carry is this: How do we ensure our children do not pay for choices they never made?

In this candid Q&A, Adelina Dondorici reflects on pain, responsibility, and what it truly means to stay present as a parent. Her answers are not about perfection. They are about courage, awareness, and love that remains, even when everything else changes.

How can we ensure that our children do not end up bearing the emotional cost of choices they never made?

The truth, however difficult it may be to bear, is that children live with the consequences of every choice we make.

As much as we would like to believe that we can protect them completely, that we can separate our lives from theirs, the reality is that they feel everything. Our need for external validation, family secrets, extramarital affairs, addictions, small or big escapes-all come at a price. And if we don’t pay it, our children will.

Most of the time, we don’t even consider the impact. When we cheat, when we cling to roles and positions to feel valuable, when we numb our pain through various forms of addiction, we are not bad people. We are, most likely, people who do not know how to deal with our own pain because we have not learned how to do it.

I once heard that no therapist can take their client further than they themselves have gone. I think the same is true for us as parents. We cannot take our children further than we ourselves have gone. And this truth is not a condemnation, but an invitation.

Because when we run away from pain, when we lie or deceive ourselves, when we seek escape, we don’t yet have the resources to stay with ourselves, with our burdens. And if we can’t stay with our own pain, how can we stay with theirs? How can we be the anchors they need when their world is shaking?

A child who grows up with an addicted parent learns, without knowing it, that addiction is bearable. A child who lives in an abusive environment learns that abuse is normal. If you grew up with an alcoholic father, a partner who “crosses the line only once a month” may seem acceptable. But if you grew up in a family where your father never drank alcohol, that “just once a month” becomes intolerable. This is how our thresholds are built. And it applies not only to alcohol or abuse, but also to infidelity, lying, and any mechanism we use to numb the pain.

How does a child learn to endure pain? Never alone. They need co-regulation. They need our arms, our calm voice, our reassuring presence. They learn to endure pain when we can hold them in our arms and say, “I know it hurts. It’s hard. But I’m here. And it will pass.” They learn when their parent feels the pain with them but stays. If we can’t do that, if our own pain scares us, the child will believe that pain is eternal and unbearable. And then they will do exactly what we do: first, they will block it; then, they will try to calm it from the outside.

What should we do? Stop running away. Stay.

We cannot change patterns learned over a lifetime overnight. We cannot suddenly become completely aware. But we can start today. We can take a step back when we reach for a cookie and ask ourselves: what am I actually looking for? Is it a feeling of hunger or a feeling of emptiness? And maybe we eat half. And with the other half, we are left with the pain that the taste would have covered up.

We can start giving ourselves what we never received: containment, gentleness, acceptance, compassion. We can start looking at ourselves without judgment. And slowly, our tolerance for pain increases. And when tolerance increases, healing begins. Healing does not mean that it no longer hurts. Pain is inevitable. Healing means being able to stay with it without collapsing, knowing that it is temporary, that it is bearable.

Without this ability to sit with our own pain, we cannot talk about safety, responsibility, integrity, or stability. A parent who cannot offer these things to themselves cannot fully offer them to their child.

The good news is that you don’t need two perfect or completely healed parents. Children don’t need perfection; they need parents who are “good enough.” If at least one parent learns to stay, to be present, to take on and contain their pain, the child can grow up feeling that the world is a safe place.

And I believe something else. Love never fails. Relationships can break down. People can separate. Structures can change. But love does not disappear. It transforms.

For me, love is the universal glue. If it disappeared, everything would fall apart. But it does not disappear, and it never fails. And I think that’s the most important message for children: love never disappears and never fails. It doesn’t disappear when mom and dad separate. It doesn’t disappear when a brother or sister arrives. It doesn’t even disappear when one of the parents chooses to no longer be involved.

Relationships can end. But bonds remain for life.

Closing Reflection

Adelina Dondorici’s message is both sobering and hopeful. Children cannot be shielded from reality, but they can be anchored within it. The work begins not with controlling outcomes, but with learning to sit with our own discomfort, our own wounds, our own unfinished stories.

We may not be able to undo the past. But we can decide, today, to stay.

And sometimes, one parent who chooses presence over escape is enough to change the emotional legacy of a child’s life.