WHAT TYPE OF MOM ARE YOU?
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 103.
Hello, my friends. I've said before that I love working with moms. What an incredible force of nature we are.
Loving, selfless, dedicated, always trying our best. It makes me think of how teachers must feel, teaching the most motivated and interested students. Being in a classroom with a group of people who care so much about doing their best, it's such a privilege.
Which is why it's heartbreaking for me to see on such a broad scale how hard we are on ourselves as moms. Raising teens is definitely hard. I'm convinced there's no one right way to approach it.
Each of our children, even within each of our families, is different. Different personalities, different gifts, different challenges. Each of our kids is unique.
And then the challenges they face, or we face as our kids become teens, seem way harder. The stakes seem so much higher. We're so much more aware of the risks as well.
We have access to so much more information, both about our teens and the risks in the world they're facing. There's a part of me that wonders if this is a generational thing. Like, if it's harder now to raise teens than in previous generations.
A little research into the question taught me this. Moms of teens have been struggling and being hard on themselves for a really long time. There's even literature dating back to ancient Greece and Rome about the challenges of raising teens, believe it or not.
Every generation of moms faces this challenge with a different set of societal standards that influences what we generally think of as a good mom. Think about how hard it must have been during the Victorian era, when there was so much pressure to keep up moral and social standards. In the 50s and 60s, when our parents were growing up, there was a focus on creating the perfect nuclear family.
The perfect mom was an ideal caregiver for her children and her spouse. I can imagine it might've been easy to feel inadequate in the face of these idealistic expectations fueled by television and magazines. I remember my own mom talking about Dr. Spock's book on parenting, which I understand only fueled mother's feelings of inadequacy when it came to their own parenting skills.
Today, although I think we've come a long way from the leave-it-to-beaver model of motherhood, we face a whole new set of challenges. For decades, we've battled the challenge to have it all, to work or not to work, how to balance our career with raising kids, or make the decision to be a full-time work-at-home mom. No matter what choice you made, I can imagine that there have been times when you've questioned yourself.
Even if you fully embraced the role of motherhood and opted not to work outside of the house, you can find yourself caught wondering if you might dread the approaching empty nest a little bit less if you had just kept a toe in the workforce. You can get caught thinking that at least that would have given you something to do. There's the concept we have of ourselves as mothers that can be challenging, but on top of that, there are so many challenges our teens face that we feel responsible to help them navigate.
None of it is easy. Social media is something we didn't have to deal with when we were growing up. Now our teens are constantly connected and faced with social comparison, peer pressure, and even cyberbullying.
Let's face it, we feel these pressures as adults on social media, but can you imagine how stressful it is as a teen still trying to figure out who they are? Teens have always struggled with peer pressure and the process of developing their sense of identity, but all of this is made so much more challenging when you're watching other kids your age online looking beautiful, going out with lots of friends, and accomplishing big things, and not necessarily always sharing the hardship they're facing behind the scenes. When it comes to education, our kids are facing so much more academic pressure to be successful with college admission rates in the single digits in many schools. Even if your child doesn't love school, they all face the pressure to do their absolute best.
While today we're more aware of the importance of mental health and the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and ADHD, the solutions to these challenges aren't always straightforward. How can you know when your child's okay and has received the help and the support that they need? Of course, our kids are also navigating the age-old challenges of friendship dynamics, pressure to try alcohol and drugs, to engage in sex. There are so many things our kids are trying to navigate.
And meanwhile, all we want as moms is to keep them safe, to help them be happy and well-adjusted, to be able to work through their difficult emotions. We want to help them reach their potential, and it can seem impossible at times. So this being a mom of teen business is hard.
And again, the privilege for me as a coach of moms of teens is that I see you. I see how much you love your kids and how hard you're trying to support them and do the right thing. I'm right there with you, and I know from personal experience how hard it is.
On this podcast, I've spent some time on mindset traps that everyone on this planet frankly falls into. It's not just about mindset traps of moms, but I realize that I've been missing a big piece of the picture, and that's in reflecting on the full picture of who we are as moms, the strength we bring to the job of raising teens, the skills and positive mindset that have made us successful in so many areas of our lives, including parenting. We are often so quick to notice our flaws and shortcomings, to reflect on how we wish we were different, how we wish we didn't have to feel so anxious or get so angry and react at times, how often we think that if we could just be a better mom that somehow our kids would open up to us, want to spend time with us, or just simply listen to us once in a while.
It's no fun to do anything when you approach the task already feeling defeated, and that's often where we are. So today I want to celebrate us moms. I want to celebrate how beautiful and powerful we are, how amazing it is that we never give up on our kids, but we are all also unique in how we approach motherhood.
So I thought I'd put together a bit of a Myers-Briggs or Enneagram-style view of mom archetypes that offer a more holistic view of who we are as moms. With each of the types, I'm going to present today, I'm taking as a given that every one of these types are the kind of mom who loves her kids and tries her best. And like with any archetypal model, while we might lean in the direction of one of these particular types, we all have the potential to have an element of any one of them.
The first mom archetype is the guardian. This type of woman, of course, loves her children as we all do. She wants more than anything to ensure her child's safety, happiness, and success.
This mom's love is fierce and unwavering. She would move mountains to protect her children. Her strengths are her unyielding dedication, her ability and desire to truly understand and empathize with her children.
She's meticulous in her attention to detail and she has incredible protective instincts. So what does this look like in practice? The guardian mom's commitment to her teen's well-being is exceptional. This mom is always there for her kids when they need her.
She's always at the ready with support and guidance. When her kids are struggling, she has an innate ability to understand her teen's feelings and needs, often sensing when something is wrong even before they tell her a thing. This mom is able to keep track of all of the little details of life that keep her teen and family on track.
Deadlines, important dates, doctor's appointments, and milestones. This mom keeps track of all of it. Finally, this mom's desire to protect her teens drives her to be vigilant and proactive in anticipating potential dangers and problems.
Let's take a moment to celebrate this woman, this mom, who has been watching out for her children since the moment they were conceived and every single day of their life up to now. The protector, facilitator, shoulder to cry on, vigilant guardian. I'm willing to bet there's a portion of the guardian mom in each and every one of us.
But as much as these strengths are an absolute blessing to our kids, there's a flip side. Being a constant guardian, anticipating our kids' needs, being in a constant state of vigilance, it has the clear potential to create a lot of anxiety and stress for the guardian mom. This is where the worry mindset comes in.
The guardian can catastrophize, imagining worst-case scenarios and believing that any misstep could lead to disaster. The guardian can also fall into all-or-nothing thinking, seeing the world in black and white, seeing the world as if there are only two possible outcomes. Everything is okay or everything is terrible.
The guardian can also feel overwhelmed when faced by the uncertainty of the future. How can you protect those you love from this uncertainty? This relates to everything from how things will turn out with a boyfriend or girlfriend to college outcomes and what it will be like for your teen when they transition to college or what it will be like for you when you're faced with the empty nest. Often what happens when the averting danger, trying to get her kids to change so that they can avoid the worst-case scenario she's imagined.
At times this leads to conflict of her teen's buck against her need to keep them safe and on track. Everyone at all ages is prone to falling into mindset traps like catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, and the fear of the unknown. But notice how in this archetype it's actually the guardian's strengths, her vigilance and desire to protect and empathize.
It's these very strengths that also makes this type of mom fall into these mindset traps. It's not that there's something wrong with her that she catastrophizes or feels anxious. It's literally a function of her fearless love and desire to protect her kids.
Of course she worries. It's only because her kids are so precious that she's so committed to their safety and well-being. I've worked with many women who have attributes of being the guardian and what I've seen is that the one thing makes the guardian so beautiful is how much she focuses on the well-being of her children while at the same time not giving herself compassion and credit for doing her absolute best.
The guardian mom puts so much pressure on herself to protect and the weight of this responsibility can feel so heavy. On top of this these women often beat themselves up for their anxiety as if they're doing something wrong. I think there's a bit of the guardian in all of us as moms.
Our fierce love can go hand in hand sometimes with the worry and uncertainty particularly as we raise our teens. So the opportunity here is to be able to celebrate the many strengths we bring in our role as guardians while also finding peace amidst the uncertainty. Finding the ability to trust that we've done everything we can to support our kids and that's the absolute best we can do.
Let's talk about the second mom archetype, the achiever mom. As with the guardian the achiever loves her children deeply and wants them to be safe, happy, and successful. This mom type also embodies success and high achievement.
She approaches life with a high degree of confidence and her innate ability to tackle problems and find solutions has made her successful in so many areas of her life. She channels these strengths into parenting driven by a profound love for her kids and a desire to see them thrive. When working with women who fall into the achiever archetype, I'm often blown away by these women's personal and professional achievements.
They set a powerful example for their teens and demonstrate the value of hard work and dedication to working towards goals. And achievers can be successful professionally or in volunteer roles or even the degree to which they care for their home and other personal pursuits. The achiever is also proactive.
In many areas of her life she's confident and thinks of herself as a problem solver, a fixer. If she doesn't know the answer, she'll do the work to figure it out. The achiever mom is an incredible source of support for her teens because if her children face challenges, the achiever mom will be the first to start researching and finding solutions.
The achiever leads by example. She demonstrates initiative and drive in everything she does. She moves the family forward and addresses problems right away.
She's also resilient and models the ability to persevere and overcome obstacles. On the other hand, as the achiever's teens grow up, she begins to face challenges that are honestly no longer in her control or within her ability to fix. As a result, the achiever can find herself facing the discomfort of being unsuccessful.
For example, when her teens push back or resist the achiever's efforts to help support them or fix problems, the achiever can feel like she's failed. This relates to the mindset trap of personalization, when we put the blame on ourselves even when the problem has nothing to do with us. The achiever has likely had a high degree of control and influence in her children's lives as they grow up, but when her teens begin to exert independence, the rules of the game change.
She is definitely no longer in control, if she ever was. The achiever is used to being able to swoop in and problem solve to fix, but that's no longer easy or even possible. She can't force her kids to be safe.
She can't just flip a switch and make her kids happy or take away the struggles they're facing. Her kids may not even want her help. But because the achiever is so used to being able to fix, she feels increasingly frustrated when her efforts aren't successful, or when she realizes how much of her teen's life isn't in her control.
It's a really uncomfortable place to be for the achiever. When she feels anxious or frustrated, it's hard to navigate what to do next, because doing nothing doesn't seem like an option. The achiever is the part of each one of us who will literally do whatever she needs to do to help her kids, like a superhero suit we're all wearing in our hearts.
We believe in our kids and their potential so fully that we would move mountains to help them be everything that they can be. But it can be hard to transition to the understanding that there's little we can do to guide our kids' success other than be there when they need us. The third mom archetype is the nurturer.
This mom type's strengths include unconditional love, empathy, compassion, and adaptability. The role of motherhood has given this mom a deep sense of fulfillment and purpose, which she cherishes. The nurturer has a remarkable ability to empathize deeply with others, especially her teen.
She can sense and understand her teen's emotions and provides a safe space for them to express themselves without judgment. The nurturer is patient. She has compassion for her teen's developmental growth, and she's willing to wade through the challenges with her teen.
The nurturer is flexible in her approach to parenting, willing to change as her kids' needs change. She tries her best to be the mom her kids need. The nurturer is also strong.
She's willing to stand by those she loves no matter how big the challenge. She exhibits grace, resilience, and unwavering strength for her teen in times of need. Above all, the nurturer loves unconditionally.
You could even think of unconditional love as the cornerstone of the nurturer's parenting philosophy. Their love knows no bounds. It transcends obstacles and challenges and serves as a guiding light for her as her teens navigate the complexities of their life.
If unconditional love is the cornerstone of the nurturer's approach to motherhood, purpose and fulfillment are the gifts she gets in return. This is a beautiful thing. Yet, the challenges of raising teens and the inevitable shift to the empty nest can present challenges to the nurturer.
She has to grapple with feeling disconnected or losing her purpose as her teens pull away and eventually leave. Often this leads to feelings of sadness, insecurity, and hurt. While the nurturer isn't necessarily a validation seeker, their view of the importance of their role as a mother has given them a personal sense of fulfillment and, yes, validation.
So as their role as a mom shifts in the teen years, the nurturer can begin to feel insecure about their role, feeling like they need their kid's approval or affection, or even leaving them wondering if they've done something wrong when their teen is pushing back or pulling away. This can be true even when the nurturer knows deep down that she's doing her best. The nurturer can also fall into the comparison trap, measuring her own parenting or the connection she has with her teens against what she sees on the outside with other families.
The nurturer might begin to question if she's doing enough. She can even fall into the trap of perfectionism, holding herself to such a high standard when it comes to her relationship with her teens in particular. She values this connection above all else and so when it's threatened or seems to be changing, she feels a deep sense of loss.
She may feel like she's failing, may internalize criticism, especially when this criticism is being given by the teen she loves so much. Finally, as the nurturer's teens grow up, she finds herself grappling with an identity crisis. It's like a piece of her slips away with every milestone her teen achieves.
She might be grappling with questions like, who am I without my role as a mom? As with the guardian and the achiever, I can see some of the nurturer in all of us moms. Despite the struggles we may face, we bring to the challenge of raising teens so many strengths. Empathy, the desire to connect deeply with our teens, the ability to create a safe space for them with our unconditional love.
Last but not least, the fourth mom archetype is the mentor. This mom again loves her children with all of her heart and wants them to be safe, happy, and successful. This is true with every single one of these archetypes.
The beautiful thing about the mentor is that she is pragmatic, efficient, confident, and assertive, and she uses these skills to support her children in every conceivable way. This is the mom that gets things done. She's able to make decisions quickly.
She takes action. The mentor nurtures and guides her teen, serving as a source of wisdom, support, and encouragement. She helps her teen navigate challenges and helps them make good informed decisions.
She's a role model, demonstrating empathy, resilience, and unconditional love. She looks to empower her teen to reach their full potential, constantly offering encouragement and pointing her teen toward opportunities for growth. She wholeheartedly supports her teen's interests and goals and looks to help them overcome obstacles they face along the way.
She also provides emotional support and validation to her teen. The mentor also has deep intuition and insight. She is a natural gift for sensing her teen's needs and emotions without them having to say a thing.
She's resilient, facing every challenge with determination. So overall, like a mentor, this type of mom is a supporter, a cheerleader, and a role model. I mentioned the mentor's belief in her children's potential combined with her efficiency and pragmatism are great strengths, but when it comes to raising teens, this can sometimes create anxiety and frustration.
For example, the mentor could be prone to labeling. Like if her teen struggles socially, she might label him socially awkward. She might label herself a bad mom if she feels she's made a mistake.
Overgeneralization is a related mindset trap that the mentor might fall into. This is when we draw broad conclusions about something. Like if a teen gets a low grade on a test, she may overgeneralize to believe the teen might fail the class.
This type of labeling and overgeneralization can contribute to a mom's feeling of anxiety and frustration. The mentor might feel that her teen is destined to struggle, with the underlying concern that it's her fault. While the mentor's intuition is a strength, it can also lead to mind reading, or assuming that she knows what's going on in her teen's head without really knowing.
This can lead to misunderstandings and conflict, particularly when the mentor acts on her assumptions about what her child is thinking or feeling. It's so fascinating to see that every strength has a correlating downside, or vice versa. It's only because we love our teens so much that we feel so much pain when they struggle.
It's only because we have such big hopes and dreams for them that we feel such a sense of anxiety and frustration when our teens struggle in moving towards those goals. We try so hard every single day. Failure at times is guaranteed.
By painting the more holistic picture of these four mom archetypes, the guardian, the achiever, the nurturer, and the mentor, I wanted to highlight for you how much beauty and love I see in each one of us as moms. It goes beyond even just doing our best. This is our life's work.
Every single day we dedicate every ounce of our being to supporting our kids, sometimes as the guardian, seeking to protect our kids, staying vigilant about obstacles and dangers ahead. Sometimes we act as the achiever, believing in our children and their potential, wanting so desperately for them to live up to what we see them capable of. Sometimes we're the nurturer, loving our children unconditionally and finding so much purpose and fulfillment in this role.
And sometimes we're the mentor, leading by example, providing support and getting things done. This is what I see when I coach moms who struggle with anxiety, frustration, sadness, and guilt as they manage the challenge of raising their teen. The guardian, the achiever, the nurturer, and the mentor.
Do these resonate with you? Can you see the strengths reflected in the dedication and effort you put into loving and supporting your teen? I hope you'll take a moment to reflect on how powerful these strengths are, how they've shaped who you are as a mother, and most importantly, how much your children have been loved and supported their entire lives. The challenges we face today are not easy, my friends, but I've found that in finding compassion and appreciation for the strengths I bring to this crazy journey, I have so much more compassion for my subconscious reactions, for the mindset traps my beautiful mind falls into in an effort to keep me safe. My friend, you can find the power of the guardian, the achiever, the nurturer, and the mentor inside of you.
I can see it in you already. Finding compassion for ourselves and finding peace and confidence in moving forward, embracing our beautiful strengths. This is the work we do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. You already know the best version of yourself as a mom.
She's already within you. Even when you feel stuck in anxiety, sadness, and frustration, these are just the reflection of the strength inside of you. Mom 2.0 embraces all of it.
Until next time, my friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0, at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
