Another example of parental miscommunication: for years, I have told the boys that ‘hurt people hurt people’, whenever the subject of general cruelty or bullying or just basic nasty human behavior would come up. They have always understood my underlying message about how unaddressed trauma can lead a person to traumatize others, but today my 8 year old made it clear to me that—although he has understood and internalized that message (he feels bad for the president, that he’s lived so long and is still hurting people)—he has always understood ‘hurt people hurt people’ to be a kind of mantra that damaged people repeat in their minds as they go about their lives, as in, ‘I must hurt people!’, rather than what that saying actually means, which is that people who have hurts they won’t or can’t address will often hurt other people. I saw the lightbulb go off over his head when I explained it. We say things, and we assume those things are understood in the way we meant them, but it is critical to appreciate how different each person’s context is.