On Trust

I became a mother almost thirteen years ago for the first time. Two months before my son’s due date, we moved from Russia to America. We landed in San Francisco carrying all the excitement, uncertainty, and idealism that comes with starting over in a new country. Part of the reason we chose the Bay Area was because I wanted a home birth. I had researched how common and accepted it was here, and I imagined a calm, natural entrance into motherhood.

Instead, two weeks after arriving, I had an emergency C-section, and my son was born prematurely.

Looking back now, I can see that the C-section was likely unnecessary. But at the time, fear completely overrode my intuition. I didn’t question the authority of the medical staff. I trusted that they knew better, that this was the right thing to do, that I was being safe and responsible.

Two years later, my second son was born, and the experience was completely different.

I prepared deeply for that birth. Since I could not legally have a home birth after a C-section, I focused instead on creating a birth plan with very clear intentions for how I wanted the experience to unfold. My son was born within five hours from the beginning of labor.

For the first three hours, I was learning how to trust.

Not trust doctors. Not trust numbers. Trust the process itself. Trust my body.

I remember trying to control everything mentally. I kept asking my doula how much longer was left, how many centimeters I was dilated, as if the numbers could reassure me that things were progressing correctly. But without anesthesia, fully feeling every sensation, there came a point where I could no longer stay in my rational mind. I had to let go of the expectation of how birth should look, how long it should take, how I should handle it.

And somewhere in that surrender, trust appeared.

Not as certainty, but as acceptance. A deep knowing that this human being would be born when he was supposed to be born, in the way he was supposed to be born.

I vividly remember the moment my son arrived and we cut the cord—not even something I had included in my birth plan. And I remember thinking: That’s it. He is a separate human now. I have no control over his life. I have to learn to trust.

Trust, if I put it in my own words, is a deep feeling that everything is unfolding the way it’s supposed to. It feels like the opposite of fear. It’s a calm space of surrender and belief—but not naivety or obliviousness. Merriam-Webster defines trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” But when do we actually learn to trust, and when does that trust begin to break?

As little kids, we trust the world. More specifically, we trust our parents to provide safety, love, food, warmth, and care. Developmental psychology has been talking about this for decades. In the earliest stage of life, what Erik Erikson called the stage of “trust vs. mistrust,” a child is not intellectually deciding whether the world is safe. They experience safety through consistency. When needs are met over and over again, the nervous system learns that the world is safe enough. Attachment theory expands on this idea. Secure attachment forms when caregivers are responsive and emotionally available—not perfect, but consistent enough for the child to feel held by their environment.

And secure attachment is not just about closeness. It is actually what allows separation.

When a child trusts that their caregivers will be there, they can move into the next developmental stage: exploration. They begin to move beyond the mother, beyond the home, beyond the immediate safety of the caregiver, and become curious about the larger world. Trust slowly becomes internalized. It shifts from “I trust you” into “I trust myself in the world.”

Insecure attachment changes that process. Separation feels threatening instead of exciting. Exploration becomes charged with fear and anxiety. Instead of approaching the world openly, the child learns to expect danger, disappointment, instability, or rejection. And these early patterns often continue far into adulthood, shaping relationships, self-worth, and the ability to tolerate uncertainty.

I think around age three something very important happens developmentally, and this is where a new kind of trust begins to form. This is the stage where children naturally become more autonomous. Curiosity starts leading them outward. They want to climb, test, touch, wander, experiment, and understand the world through direct experience. Parents still play a key role, but now the question becomes different. It is no longer only “Can I trust you to care for me?” but also “Can I trust myself out there?”

And this is where modern parenting gets complicated.

A lot of parents today are deeply informed about attachment parenting. They are emotionally attuned, responsive, intentional. Many are consciously trying to heal what they themselves lacked growing up. But what often seems to happen is that healthy attachment quietly turns into difficulty with separation. When the child is developmentally ready to expand into the world, some parents tighten their grip instead. Not because they do not love their children, but because fear enters the picture. Fear disguised as care. Anxiety disguised as protection.

And in many ways, helicopter parenting reflects a lack of trust—not only in the child, but in the world itself.

You can see this in very ordinary moments. A caregiver comes to a playground with a three-and-a-half-year-old. At first, the child clings to them, observing. Then curiosity takes over, and they move toward the play structure and start climbing. There are older kids there too, running fast through the structure, making the environment feel unpredictable.

In that moment, the parent faces their own nervous system.

Some stay where they are and observe. Some immediately get up, intervene, and repeat “Be careful” every few seconds. And then there is a more balanced response, where the parent stays nearby, spots if needed, but also asks questions like, “How does that feel?” or “What’s your plan?”

That kind of response requires a lot from a parent in a very short moment. They have to assess actual risk while also noticing their own irrational fear. They have to regulate themselves enough not to interfere unnecessarily. They have to tolerate uncertainty. They have to “chill,” in the deepest sense of the word, so the child can actually explore, fail, adjust, and learn to trust their own developing abilities.

Because this is how confidence is built. This is how children develop risk assessment, resilience, and internal feedback systems. The more adults constantly step in and outsource judgment for them, the less children learn to trust themselves.

There is a joke in Russia. A child is outside playing and yells, “Mom! Mom!” The mother answers, “What?” And the child asks, “Am I hungry or am I cold?”

It’s funny because it points to something real. Children slowly lose trust in their own feelings, desires, and bodily sensations when adults constantly override them. Parents, grandparents, caregivers, preschool teachers, school teachers—all projecting their fears, beliefs, anxieties, and assumptions onto children instead of staying curious about who the child actually is.

“Put on a jacket.”
“Eat now.”
“Don’t climb that.”
“Be careful.”
“You’re tired.”
“You’re shy.”
“You’re too sensitive.”

Eventually, the child stops checking inward and starts looking outward for answers about themselves.

And by the time many children enter school, they are already well-practiced in exchanging trust for obedience.

This is where trust takes another turn. Early on, trust in authority begins with parents. Later it expands to teachers, schools, experts, and institutions. But obedience is not the same thing as trust, even though the two are often confused. Obedience is much closer to surrendering your own internal compass in favor of external direction.

Traditional schooling often reinforces this dynamic structurally. Sitting still, following instructions, meeting expectations, complying with schedules and evaluation systems—these become markers of being a “good” student. Meanwhile questioning, resisting, moving differently, needing more freedom, or learning outside standardized structures can become pathologized.

At the same time, parents are going through their own trust test.

After carrying so much responsibility during the early years, many parents seem almost relieved to hand that responsibility over to institutions. They trust that teachers are professionals who know better. They trust that the system will prepare their child for life. They trust that private schools, better rankings, stricter academics, or more structure will somehow guarantee future success.

And sometimes this trust in authority becomes stronger than trust in their own child.

A five-year-old says they cannot sit through class. A twelve-year-old says they are being bullied every day. A teenager says they are burned out and have no idea what they want from life. And instead of deeply listening, many adults immediately search for external evaluation, correction, diagnosis, or management.

So when someone introduces a self-directed approach to learning—an approach rooted deeply in trust—it can feel threatening or unrealistic. Not because it lacks value, but because it requires something very difficult from adults. It requires personal work. It requires examining what trust actually means to us. It requires tolerating uncertainty instead of constantly trying to control outcomes. It asks whether we can trust life itself enough to allow another human being to unfold in their own way, rather than forcing certainty onto them out of our own fear.