Your child is not a project.
Read time: 3 minutes
Welcome to issue #033 of Unicorn Parents. Each week, I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.
A few nights ago, after the kids were finally asleep, I sat on the edge of the couch and realized something uncomfortable.
I was thinking about my child the way a founder thinks about a company.
Milestones.
Trajectory.
Optionality.
Risk.
None of it malicious.
None of it conscious.
Just…subtle.
The kind of mental shift that happens when you’re ambitious, well-intentioned, and surrounded by people who are optimizing everything.
Same home.
Same love.
Same parents.
And yet, two very different children.
Every parent knows this. We laugh about it. We say it out loud. And then, quietly, we forget.
Because the world has a way of turning persons into projects.
Years ago, I came across a passage from Oswald Chambers that I couldn’t shake. He made a distinction I didn’t fully understand at the time, but I feel it more and more now.
He shared:
Individuality is about separateness—independence, self-definition, boundaries.
But personality is something deeper. Something relational. Something that only fully exists in communion.
Personality is like an island. You can see the surface. But underneath is a vast mountain; depths you will never fully know.
Only the Creator sees the whole thing.
That line hit me harder once I became a parent.
Because parenting humbles you in a way nothing else does.
You can’t reverse-engineer a child.
You can’t systematize a soul.
You can’t optimize mystery.
And yet, so much of modern parenting quietly tries.
I think founders feel this tension too.
At some point, your company stops being an experiment and starts being a brand. Expectations form. Pressure sets in. You’re no longer allowed to change your mind publicly. You’re supposed to “know.”
Parenting can slip into the same trap.
Your child becomes:
the athlete
the artist
the gifted one
the responsible one
the difficult one
Not because you said it out loud.
But because labels make uncertainty manageable.
And uncertainty is uncomfortable.
Chambers wrote something else that feels almost offensive to our culture:
You only reach your real identity when you are merged with another person.
That doesn’t mean losing yourself.
It means you discover who you are in relationship, not isolation.
Children don’t become secure by standing on their own early.
They become secure by being held—by presence, by love, by knowing they are seen beyond performance.
Parents don’t become wise by controlling outcomes.
They become wise by surrendering the illusion of control.
Love, Chambers says, is the force that transfigures individuality into personality.
Love dissolves the need to manage identity.
And here’s the quiet truth I don’t hear enough people say out loud:
Most parents don’t need more strategies.
They need more space.
Space to:
talk honestly
admit fear without shame
say “I don’t know” without being corrected
be present with other parents who aren’t posturing
Not a crowd.
Not an audience.
Not another expert telling you what to do.
A circle.
Over the past few months, I’ve felt a growing conviction to keep something intentionally small.
An inner circle.
A weekly gathering.
A handful of Unicorn Parents—builders, thinkers, believers, strivers—who care deeply about their children and their calling, and don’t want either to become casualties of the other.
No curriculum.
No optimization.
No performance.
Just presence.
Conversation.
Prayer, if you want it.
Silence, if you need it.
Because identity is not forged in noise.
And calling doesn’t emerge under pressure.
It emerges in relationship.
So I’ll leave you with the question I’ve been sitting with lately:
Where in your life has growth quietly cost you personhood?
And what might happen if you chose depth over scale…at least somewhere?
If this resonates, you’re welcome to sit closer.
Just reply and say hello.
I’ll share more of what I’ve been quietly thinking.