THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I’M AFRAID I MESSED MY KID UP.” | EP. 164
Thoughts moms parenting teens and adult kids are ashamed they think. "I'm afraid I really messed my kid up."
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Welcome to Things Moms Are Ashamed They Think, a special series inside the Almost Empty Nest Podcast. If you've ever had a thought about your teen or adult kid that makes you feel like a terrible person, this series is for you. In every episode, I'll be naming one of those honest but unspoken thoughts out loud, and I'll unpack what's really going on underneath. Because these thoughts don't make you a bad mom. They make you human. And when you learn how to shift the way you relate to these thoughts inside your head, everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
Have you ever thought, "I'm afraid I really messed my kid up?" Or maybe you've thought something like, "I've pushed too hard." Or maybe "I didn't push them hard enough." Or, "Did I make the wrong choices when it mattered the most?"
I want to share a personal story about my son when he was in high school. Now, this kid was so academically curious as he was growing up and really always pushed himself to do the best he could in school. And he studied really hard. And to be honest, I think during those times, I really felt like I was doing something right.
I don't know that I took credit for having created this academically motivated kid, but it definitely felt good as a mom to see him going down a path that I wanted for him. But somewhere along the way, I think I started having these expectations around what his success should look like. So as he got into high school and started pushing himself with harder and harder classes, I got on the bandwagon and wanted to support him.
But there was a point along the way where it started to become clear that the level of courses that he was taking on were so challenging, almost to the point of being crushing, that I had this terrible feeling in my gut that somehow I had pushed him too hard. And then we went through a period of time where he got into a relationship where he started pulling away from me and even started to express some feelings around how I had in fact pushed him too hard and had such high expectations of him. It was almost like he was articulating the exact fears I had always had around pushing him too hard and having too high expectations.
It was like a punch in the gut to hear him voice these very same concerns. And so especially when we were going through that hard time in our relationship, I felt so much shame and regret in the way I had shown up for my son. And it was almost like I'm sorry wasn't good enough, because everything I had done in the past, no matter how well-intentioned it was, was something that I couldn't change.
And I think this reality in itself that we can't change the past can become such a heavy weight for us when we see our kids struggling in any way. I've had clients who have gone through so many different variations of this. I've had moms say to me that their kid is anxious or depressed in some way, or maybe emotionally dysregulated, and they wonder if they had been modeling bad patterns of emotional regulations because of the way they showed up with their kids.
It's almost like I never learned how to emotionally regulate myself, and so my kid has obviously picked up these same bad habits, and I've missed the opportunity to model a better way for them. Or maybe we just worry that our kids absorbed the stress or the tension that we felt, maybe if we were going through a difficult divorce, or we had other challenges that we were facing, and so we were going through hard times, and we fear that that somehow has been reflected on them. I've had so many other clients talk to me about how their kids are making choices that they didn't want them to make, like they're skipping classes in college, or staying out late, or drinking.
And then you start to question how you parented them as if their choices reflect bad mistakes you made in the past. What often comes up is maybe I was too lenient with them, and I let them get away with too much. Or maybe I didn't set the right boundaries for them growing up.
Maybe I just didn't prepare them to be responsible out there in the real world. Some of my clients have spent years over-functioning, trying to fix everything, trying to be the one who swoops in and save their kids. And then when they see their kids being unmotivated and dependent on them to help fix their mistakes or to ease them through challenges, we wonder if maybe we enabled this behavior by making life too easy for them.
Like maybe we took away their ability to figure things out on their own. So what's really going on here when you think this thought, I'm scared that I messed my kid up? Well, first of all, let's just look at the circumstances here. You've got your kids struggling in some way.
Maybe they're getting poor grades in school or they're breaking rules or they're basically just doing things or making choices that you don't want them to make. Now, clearly, you can feel frustrated and angry in the face of these circumstances. But if you're thinking, I'm scared I messed my kid up, you're probably feeling guilt or shame, essentially taking responsibility for what's happening.
And these feelings are coming from thoughts like, this is my fault. I must have failed them somewhere along the way. But underneath the guilt and the blame are actually so many other emotions.
And one is fear. And what I found with my clients is that we often project out what our kids are doing into the future and what that will mean for them. So that if they're behaving this way right now, we start to paint a scenario where things are only going to get worse for them in the future.
So you start to build these worst case scenarios, like what if this spirals into something worse? Like if our kids are using drugs or alcohol, we can start to project that they'll develop an addiction over time. Or we worry that maybe they're lying to us and whatever's happening with them is even worse than we think it is. We can also worry about what their behavior means for our relationship in the future.
So we feel afraid, not only for what's happening to our kids now, but what we think will happen to them in the future. We can also have a lot of judgment and frustration, basically looking at who our kids are right now and thinking they're being so irresponsible. They don't care about consequences.
Or they're throwing away their opportunities. And typically what happens is we spend a lot of effort and energy trying to help guide our kids and try to give them consequences to get them to see the error of their ways. And when that doesn't work, we start to feel hopeless.
Like nothing I say makes a difference. Or they never listen to me. You essentially don't feel like you have any control.
We can also start comparing that other kids don't act like this. Or what are other parents doing right that I'm doing wrong? It can feel so painful to think other people are figuring this out and I'm just not. I have no idea what to do here.
Now, all of these thoughts are just examples of what might come up for us when we're observing our kids doing something that we don't want them to do. But all of these thoughts are also our brain's way of trying to protect us, trying to find certainty in the midst of what feels very uncertain, trying to avoid pain in the midst of some very stressful circumstances and situations that our kids are in. Now, I've talked before about the motivational triad, basically our instinct to avoid pain, to seek comfort and conserve energy.
And essentially, when our kids are struggling in any way, our brains interpret this as dangerous. It's not safe. And this could be something that they're literally doing that's unsafe, or it could just feel unsafe in the sense that the situation is only going to get worse.
And at some point, they're going to have to face severe consequences or rejection or disappointment, and that they won't be able to handle it if that happens. We can also fear that we won't be able to handle it when that happens. Now, something I talk a lot about on this podcast is mindset traps.
And these are essentially mental shortcuts our brains take when something is unsafe or uncertain or unfamiliar. And these shortcuts happen instantaneously. They're like a mental jump scare, where your brain is literally trying to quickly make sense of the circumstances it's observing in your life.
When you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, our brains literally needed to learn how to react in an instant in order to keep us alive. And so our brains are still doing this, even though the dangers we're facing are often more emotional than they are physical. The problem is these mindset traps usually backfire.
So it's really powerful to start recognizing these traps, not because they're wrong or bad, or even an indication that there's something wrong with you, but simply because they're running on autopilot and creating more stress for you. But once you can see what your brain is doing to really understand it, you can start to interrupt that automatic pattern. What I teach in my coaching program is actually how to use the more evolved part of your brain to slow down and observe your mind, to tap into that part of your brain that says, okay, I'm triggered.
What's really going on here? Do I want to keep reacting this way? And this is where your power is, my friend. It's a skill set you can build, this ability to notice your thoughts, to question them, and decide how you want to respond. Look, here's the truth.
You can't control what your teen says or what they do. Short of locking them in their room and taking away every privilege they have, we can't control what they do. But you can learn how to respond in a way that feels more aligned with the mom and the woman you want to be.
So when I talk about these mindset traps, I'm really giving you an invitation to become aware of a pattern that might be happening in your mind so that you can tap into that higher brain to make decisions about how you want to show up in a different way, not from reaction, but from intention. So when you have that thought, I'm scared that I messed up with my kid. I'm scared that what's going on with them is ultimately my fault.
What mindset traps are at play here? Well, first is clearly personalization. And I talked about this trap a little bit last week. The trap where you make your teen's choices mean something about you.
That if they're struggling, then it must mean that I've failed. Or if they're not doing well, it's because I didn't do enough. And look, it makes sense.
As I talked about last week, so often because we care so much, of course we take it personally when our kids are struggling. Look, it makes so much sense. And we've invested our hearts and souls into raising these kids.
So of course we don't want them to struggle. It's interesting, when I talk to my clients about why they care, why is it a problem when their kids are struggling, they kind of look at me like, I don't understand what you're asking. Of course it's painful when our kids struggle.
And while yes, of course I relate to this as well, because of course I don't want my boys to struggle. But the interesting thing here is that there's also an assumption that they shouldn't be struggling. Now I want you to think about this for a minute.
In life, I imagine that there have been times where you have struggled and even failed, and felt disappointment, and maybe made the wrong choices. And if you look back on your life, there might have been times where you had to learn some hard lessons. But all of these lessons and choices have helped you build who you are today.
And maybe there are ways that you think that that's a good thing or a bad thing. And this is all part of the way that you relate to fear of failure as well, in terms of what failures you've had in the past. But we use this lens to perceive what's happening with our kids in terms of our risk tolerance for their failure.
And so I think it's interesting to consider with this personalization trap that yes, it makes perfect sense that we feel a deep empathy for our kids and what they're going through and their struggles. There is a separate piece of us that is also taking the blame as if their struggle shouldn't be happening. And I think this is the piece that we can invite ourselves to question and really understand more deeply.
But the other mindset trap I want to explore here as it relates to this thought, I'm scared I messed my kid up, is the illusion of control. Because this mindset trap is essentially at play when you believe, even just a little bit, even unconsciously, that you were somehow supposed to prevent the struggle. That if you had just said or done the right thing, if you'd set the perfect boundaries or given them the perfect amount of support, that this wouldn't be happening.
Essentially, if I had done all of this differently, they wouldn't be in this situation. I want you to just consider for a minute what a fallacy this is, what a lie this is that we're telling ourselves, that somehow we were supposed to have prevented whatever's going on with our kids. When I have this conversation with my clients and they see themselves doing this, it's almost like you have this moment where you're like, wow, I have a bit of a God complex here and I don't want to label this, but truly think about the weight of responsibility when we think that somehow our failures are the cause of what's happening with our kid.
As if we were supposed to have predicted the future and seen all of the influences in our kids' lives and somehow kept them safe from all of them, kept them in a bubble to make sure they were doing exactly what we wanted them to do. As if we knew exactly what path they should be on. You know, in so many ways, as I look at how my boys have grown up, I can absolutely point to so many things that I wish I did differently in the past.
And it's such a Monday morning quarterback type of thing, right? You can look back and you can see, oh, if I had just done that thing differently or maybe I could have supported them differently in this way. But when you're looking backwards, you have so much more information. First and foremost, information about how things all turned out.
And I think it's interesting that another mindset trap that we often fall into that I'm sure you're familiar with is this catastrophizing worst case scenario creation, right, where we project into the future all the things that we think could go wrong. And so then we try to do everything we can to avoid those terrible scenarios. But even in those cases, we're making up what we think the worst case scenario could look like.
And the truth is, the future usually doesn't even look anything close to our projection. You know, when you think about it, our lives can go in an infinite number of directions. And how can you ever guard against or try to plan for every single possible infinite scenario? The truth is, you can't.
Whatever struggle is happening for your kid right now, not only is it not your fault, but there is no way you could have reasonably predicted or prevented this struggle from happening for them. But what your brain is doing when it's falling into the illusion of control is not necessarily trying to play God, but it's a way your brain tries to make sense of a situation that feels out of control and unsafe. But what you can see is creating this illusion of control, this lie that you actually should have been able to prevent the struggle, it just ends up making you feel more anxious and responsible for the situation where you were already blaming yourself in the first place.
Now, my friend, I can't tell you how common and human all of these traps are. And when you fall into them, they feel so unbelievably heavy and true. Like when you think, I've just messed up here.
It's my fault. It can feel like the objective truth. But what's really happening is this is just your brain trying to make sense of a really challenging situation.
But when you don't see these traps, you get stuck in the spiral of self-doubt and guilt and shame and the need to have to fix the situation. And look, it makes so much sense. Whatever's going on with your teen right now, you don't want it.
And also, you're not wrong to be worried. You're not wrong to care and to want things to be different. But there's a cost to falling into these traps without being aware of them.
First, it makes you parent from fear instead of intention. Essentially, because you feel this need to fix your mistake, you end up responding to the illusion of control by trying to control more. It's like now you've got to get it right to make up for what you think you did wrong before.
And just think about the energy you bring when you come to your teen and you're feeling fear and frustration. When they're doing something you don't like or they're struggling in some way, this energy causes you to almost want to shake them out of it to get them to do something differently or to take action to fix the situation. But just consider if somebody else's kid were doing the exact same thing, what you would advise your friend to do, for example, if they were facing having the exact same situation you're in now.
You might feel empathy for your friend. You might totally understand their fear and frustration of what they're going through. But because you would have a bit of space and separation, you would probably be able to give them some really thoughtful guidance in terms of how they might approach the situation from intention.
And we know what that looks like with our kids, right? When we're not feeling angry and we're not frustrated and stuck in fear, we often are very mindful of how we would ideally like to show up. But the problem is when we're stuck in these mindset traps, we're almost always parenting from fear and frustration. The other cost of these traps is that it blocks real connection with your kid.
If you believe that you've already done damage to the relationship, but now you're desperate to fix the relationship fueled by guilt or anxiety or control, you're almost always pushing your team further away from you. Again, the exact opposite of what you want. This thought that I've messed up and that I've done something wrong in the past also keeps you stuck in the past.
It keeps you replaying in your head what you should have done instead of just being present in the relationship you have right now and the choices that you have available today. It can also fuel the belief that you're too late, that it's hopeless. And just think about what you do when you feel hopeless.
It's almost like you give up. You stop trying. You kind of feel like this is what it is and I'm never going to fix it, so why even bother? And just think about how that essentially guarantees the exact result that you don't want.
You know, it's interesting. I think as moms, we like to try to be so self-aware and honest with ourselves. And so when we're thinking thoughts like, I'm scared I messed my kid up, it's almost like we're trying to be honest and accountable to our mistakes, right? It's like, maybe I've done something and I need to take accountability for that and be honest that I'm the one who's created this result that I don't want.
But again, we can't change the past. We can't change the choices that we've made or even the mistakes that we've made. And we've all made them.
I know I have. But when you stay stuck in the past and stay stuck in this guilt, it doesn't lead you to create the connection and support of your kid that you really want. In fact, what it does is keeps you focused on what you can't control rather than what you can control, which is how you show up in this moment for your kid.
This is where your real influence lives. So here's the invitation. If you ever have these thoughts, like I've pushed them too hard or I didn't push them hard enough or I made the wrong choices in the past, I've modeled the wrong things, maybe set the wrong boundaries or didn't teach them how to be responsible.
In whatever way you're carrying the weight of responsibility for the situation that's going on with your kid right now, I want to invite you to just stop and get curious. What if these thoughts in your mind are just a signal and not the truth? What if this is just your mind's way of trying to process the challenge that you're facing right now and the very real vulnerability of loving a teen so much and watching them struggle and feeling completely out of control? My friend, it makes sense that our first instinctual reaction is to feel unsafe. So you might consider right now, what if none of this is about me at all? What if their struggle is entirely about them? How could it be that whatever's going on with them is about how they're learning how to relate to their world? And even if it's something that we really don't want, that we still have the opportunity to decide how we want to show up with intention.
Not to undo the past or to make up for our past mistakes, but simply to love our kid for who they are right now unconditionally and to be that guide and support for them as they figure out who they want to be right now. My friend, none of us have the perfect answers and we're all trying our best all the time. In fact, I don't think any of us wake up ever thinking, you know what? I'm going to do my worst today.
We're always trying our best, especially with our kids. But what I do know, and I know this in my own life, is that when I show up from unconditional love and with intention, being mindful that my mind sometimes slips into these mindset traps, I am always able to harness a version of myself that is so much more effective and connected with my kids. And that doesn't mean they don't make mistakes, and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't struggle.
And there's a part of me that needs to hold space for my pain and my sadness when I see my kids struggling. But also when I parent from fear and the need to control their outcomes, it never ends up being as effective as I know I can be. My friend, this conversation is all about giving yourself the power to respond with intention and love rather than guilt, shame, and anger.
And if you're wondering how to do this, this is exactly what I teach in my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0. So if you've ever felt like you've really messed up with your kid, I want you to know that you're not alone. This thought doesn't mean that you've failed. It actually means that you care so much and you're taking responsibility for something that means the world to you.
This parenting business is messy and it's emotional and it's full of moments that we wish we could do over. But you don't need to have been perfect or even to be perfect now to show up powerfully and in a new way. You have the ability right now to pause, to notice what your mind is offering you, and to decide how you want to respond, not from guilt or fear, but from love and self-trust.
Now, if this episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to share it with another mom who might need to hear it too. And if you're interested in learning more about how to shift your thoughts to show up with more intention in your life, I'd love to invite you to my next free masterclass. My friend, you haven't messed it all up.
You're actually still in it. And there is so much more space for both you and your teen to grow. I know I'm still growing.
Thank you for being with me on this journey, my friend. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
