A child can inherit the task of completing an adult’s unfinished explanation.

Children are sometimes left to complete an explanation an adult never finished. Why a parent left, why the atmosphere changed, why someone stopped visiting. Without the facts, a child constructs a version, and the version they build is almost always one in which they had something to do with it.

If you carry a story like this from childhood, it is worth asking as an adult whether it was ever true. And if you are raising children, give them an age-appropriate honest account of hard things, because the version they invent to fill the silence is usually worse than the truth.