You know you were loved as a child if you experienced these 10 things growing up

Love in childhood rarely feels like a movie moment.

Most of the time it’s ordinary, repeatable, and easy to overlook—bedtime stories, predictable rules, someone who shows up even when it’s inconvenient.

As a grown-up, you can usually tell you had it because certain strengths stick with you: steadiness, empathy, the ability to repair after conflict, a sense that you matter. If you’re sorting through your past and wondering, “Was I really loved?”, look for these ten experiences.

1. Boundaries that held

Kids test fences because fences are how we learn where safety lives. If you grew up with rules that were clear and mostly consistent—curfew meant curfew, “no” meant no, and consequences weren’t revenge—you got the quiet message: the world is navigable. That kind of structure doesn’t shrink a child; it frees them to play inside a known field.

I still remember the boredom of having to check in at the same kitchen clock before dark. I hated it. Then I noticed I never worried about whether home would be open to me. Boundaries don’t always feel like love in the moment. Looking back, they’re one of the clearest signals.

Boundaries are how loving adults keep finding you.

2. Feelings that were named, not minimized

When you scraped a knee or lost a game, did someone meet your face and say, “That looks like it hurts,” or “You seem frustrated”? Being mirrored teaches your nervous system that emotions are information, not problems. It’s how “big feelings” shrink back to size.

If you grew up being told to toughen up, you probably learned to hide. If you grew up being helped to label what you felt—and then guided toward what to do next—you learned to navigate. That difference echoes for decades.

I once cried at a fourth-grade recital when my part went sideways. My dad waited until we got to the car and said, “You’re allowed to be disappointed. What do you want to try differently next time?” That sentence made the feeling safe and the future possible.

3. Ruptures that ended in repair

Love isn’t the absence of conflict; it’s the presence of repair. A slammed door followed by a calm knock. An adult who says, “I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.” A kid who learns, by example, that mistakes don’t destroy relationships when apologies and changed behavior follow.

If you were loved, you probably experienced a lot of small ruptures that ended with reconnection. That taught you not to panic when tension shows up later in life. You expect relationships to wobble and recover, which means you can stay in the room long enough to make them better.

4. Permission to say no

Consent starts at home. Loved kids are allowed to decline a hug, to finish a story before answering a question, to have a private drawer. When “no” is treated as data rather than defiance, you learn that your body and attention are yours to offer.

That carries forward. You answer emails on your schedule. You negotiate deadlines. You notice when you’re overcommitted and adjust. People sometimes call this confidence. A lot of the time it’s just early practice with boundaries that were respected.

Knowing how to say no cleanly is one of the most generous skills you can have. It prevents resentment and keeps the yeses meaningful.

5. Delight in your quirks

A parent or caregiver who lights up at your weird hobby—that’s love in its most joyful uniform. Someone who laughs at your offbeat joke, hangs your lopsided clay turtle on the fridge, asks to hear the song you wrote again. “You” weren’t a project to be optimized but a person to be discovered.

If you were loved, you probably have a memory of a small talent being taken seriously. For me it was a hand-me-down point-and-shoot and a Saturday morning spent shooting crooked photos of street signs.

No one said, “Do something useful.” Someone said, “Show me your favorites.” That attention turns experiments into identities.

6. Rituals that repeated

Rituals look boring from the outside: Friday pancakes, the same goodbye at the school gate, bedtime stories even when the adult is tired.

Inside a child’s brain, they’re anchors. Predictability tells the body when to upshift and downshift. It hardwires the idea that life has rhythms and you’re allowed to rest inside them.

If you can still smell your family’s weekend breakfast, or you know the exact hand squeeze a grandparent gave you before crossing a street, that’s evidence. Love often sounds like, “Again?”

One of my clearest memories is my mom reading the same book three nights in a row because I asked. She didn’t make a speech about it. She just turned the page.

7. Play that was protected

Play is how children metabolize the world. When adults defend it—by keeping schedules from getting crushed, by joining in without turning it into a lesson, by letting a kid lead—you learn that joy isn’t a reward at the end of the to-do list; it’s part of being alive.

Loved kids get time to build pillow forts, make up rules, and abandon them mid-game. They get to be loud sometimes and muddy sometimes. They also see adults who can be silly without needing to be the star, which teaches you later how to bring lightness into heavy rooms.

Fred Rogers said, “Play is the work of childhood.” If someone cleared the table so you could build, that was a love letter.

8. Effort that mattered more than outcomes

Did the adults in your life praise how hard you tried, how you handled setbacks, how you treated others? That emphasis builds a growth mindset. You stop anchoring your worth to trophies and start caring about process. Failures become feedback rather than identity.

I grew up in a family where report cards got a quick glance and the conversation moved to, “What did you learn the most from?” That question still lives in my head when a project flops. If your people celebrated the way you showed up, you learned to keep showing up.

When effort is valued, potential expands. Many of us learned that long before we had a name for it.

9. A voice that counted

Being asked, “What do you think?” is oxygen for a child. Family decisions you could weigh in on—what to cook on Sundays, which park to visit, where the chair should go—teach you that your perspective has weight. Being heard doesn’t mean getting your way. It means you belong to the conversation.

As a California kid with roots in music blogging, I remember the first time an adult asked for my playlist on a road trip and actually played it. Tiny as that seems, it told me my taste mattered. Later, it made it easier to take creative risks and to listen when other people shared what they love.

Voice in childhood becomes agency in adulthood.

10. Love that showed up in actions, not just words

“I love you” is wonderful. “I’m here,” backed by behavior, is what sticks. Rides to practices. Someone in the bleachers. A person who sits through the boring parts because you’re on the stage for three minutes. Food that appears when you’re cranky. A blanket handed over during the scary part of a storm.

Boring, repetitive, generous presence.

If you felt secure as a kid, it wasn’t because everything was perfect. It was because someone kept choosing you with their time. You can feel that even now when you handle your own life: you show up for people without making a fuss about it. You return the favor you were taught.

I still think about the night my camera jammed at a high school show I was covering. My uncle drove across town at 9 p.m. with a spare battery he didn’t know how to use. He handed it to me through the venue’s side door, grinned, and left. That’s love in a thirty-second cameo.

A few final thoughts 

None of these experiences require money, perfection, or Instagram.

They require attention and repetition. If you recognize even a handful, chances are good you were loved.

You learned that the world can be steady, your feelings have names, “sorry” isn’t a weakness, “no” is allowed, your weirdness is welcome, rituals keep you safe, play belongs in the schedule, effort beats outcome, your voice matters, and love is something people do, not just something they say.

And if you didn’t get all ten? Many of us didn’t.

The good news is that every single one is learnable and offerable. You can do for your friends, your partner, your kids, or your future self what you wish had been done for you. Love is a practice, not a time capsule.

Quick experiment for the week: pick one ritual to bring back (a standing call, a Sunday walk), one boundary to honor (a bedtime you actually keep), and one person to ask, “What do you think?” See how different your days feel when you rebuild the signals you might have missed—or double down on the ones you were lucky to have.

Bottom line? If the everyday parts of your childhood said, “You’re safe, you’re seen, you’re allowed to be you,” you were loved. What’s one small way you can pass that message on today?