How exactly do we define parametric polymorphism?
An informal, but better way of explaining parametric polymorphism is that the term has a uniform definiton/semantics for all types. A simple example is the identity function:

$$λ x. x$$

This is one term that can be reasonably given the type $ℕ → ℕ$, $\mathsf{Bool} → \mathsf{Bool}$, etc. Therefore, we also consider it reasonable for it to give it the type $∀a. a → a$, because it is a single term that works for every type.

If you want to talk about terms where types are explicitly talked about, then this becomes somewhat less clear. However, an informal idea of what must be going on in those definitions is that the type variables are completely unknown to the definition. So in:

$$Λa. λ(x : a). x$$

even though we get syntactically different terms for each choice of $a$, the definition didn't specify what happens for particular choices of $a$, or something of that sort.

The more formal/precise way of explaining all of this is usually relational parametricity. That's kind of complicated to get into, but it says that there are ways of interpreting our definitions into relations in addition to the normal semantics. In this explanation, parametric polymorphism is about preserving relatedness. So, if you instantiate a polymorphic value to related types, the values you get are related in a coherent way. And the reason why relations are used is that they give a precise (but general) way of talking about what it means for things to be 'uniform' like above.