Your parents are probably younger than you think when it comes to figuring things out. Everyone’s learning on the job.

Adults are improvising far more than they let on. Whoever runs your house is the same age on the inside as they have always been, making calls on partial information, often for the first time, with no guide to the particular family they ended up in. Authority looks like certainty from below and feels like guessing from inside.

Ask a parent how they decided something hard, rather than assuming they simply knew. The answer is usually more honest than you expect. It makes them easier to talk to, and it takes some weight off the idea that you should have it worked out already.