THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I’M NOT PROUD OF MY TEEN” | EP. 206
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.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from. Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I have coached so many moms who get to a place with their teen where they realize they're having this painful, recurring thought that I'm not proud of my child. Admitting this, even to ourselves, is really hard. In fact, I think there are a lot of us who have had this thought about our kids at one point or another, but we push it away.
The truth is, we're ashamed to admit it. We're conditioned to believe that good moms should be proud of their kids. It's almost as if by admitting we're not proud, we're somehow saying that we don't love our kids as much as we should.
But at the same time, as our kids grow up, there are many times when their behavior or their choices or attitude truly don't make us proud. We see our kids starting to act in ways we don't want, or maybe even that we don't recognize, and we start to feel like we don't like this version of our kid that they're becoming. What I've come to realize, and I know this is true for myself as much as it is for the many moms I've coached, that we all parent with a vision of the type of kid we think and hope we're raising.
And maybe when our child was little, they lived up to that vision in some ways. But as they grow up, and the reality of who your kid is stops being anywhere close to that vision you have for them of who you hope and want them to be in their life, it brings up for us a range of emotions, from anxiety and frustration to grief and loss. When you have this recurring thought that I'm not proud of my kid, it's typically not about just one snarky comment or bad test grade.
It's usually about a whole string of questionable choices or behaviors over a long period of time. So your mind goes to, is this who they are now? And if so, what does that say about me as their mom? I remember for me when my youngest was in middle school, he went through this phase where he was gaming all of the time with his friends. And I'm not talking about an hour here or there.
It felt like he was spending hours and hours online, rushing through his homework, staying up late, nagging us to turn off the online restrictions so he could play for just a few more minutes. It was like all he cared about. And honestly, I hated it.
I hated how much time he spent locked in his room. I hated the language I heard him using with his friends. And I hated that he was sitting there and eating snacks all day and gaming.
And I worried he was being unhealthy. I hated that he was rushing through his homework just so he could have more time online. And I felt like he wasn't taking school as seriously as he should.
I mean, he was doing fine in school, but he could have been doing better. And I was frustrated. When he pushed back on the boundaries we tried to set, I got angry.
As I coached myself through it, I remember so clearly realizing how my anger wasn't actually about the gaming at all. It was about how my son wasn't meeting my expectations. I had this idea that he should be spending more time on homework, that he should care about things other than gaming, or that he should be motivated and spend his time productively.
And when I looked at the reality of his life compared to the expectations I had, I realized that there was a part of me that felt like I wasn't proud of this version of my son, the kid who sits in front of a screen all day. And that felt kind of awful to admit to myself. But the truth is, this wasn't the kid I thought I was raising.
I see the same thing come up in so many areas of our life as moms of big kids, like with school. So many moms tell me something like, I don't expect straight A's. I just want to see more effort.
I want to know they're reaching their potential. So we have this expectation that our kid should be working harder. But what does more effort look like exactly? How do you measure it? Because grades aren't always a reliable measure.
Some classes are harder than others. Teachers grade differently. And some kids can get a B or even an A with barely any work at all.
But if you think your kid's effort doesn't meet the threshold you think they're capable of, it's almost impossible not to fall into some version of, I'm not proud of how my kid is applying themselves right now. I've also coached moms through the social version of this. We worry our kids are too introverted or not making an effort socially.
You wonder, why don't they make plans on Saturday night? Or why don't they want to go to the football game? Why don't they try to make friends? As moms, we want to see our kids engaged and connected, part of a group. And when they're not, it's so easy to feel this sense that it's not what you wanted for them. You might not articulate it as a lack of pride in your kid, but you're disappointed.
You feel like they're not making enough effort. Other moms feel this around what they perceive to be their kid's sense of entitlement or just the way they're behaving. All of us work so hard to give our kids opportunities.
And it's hard to see your big kid seem to take those opportunities for granted or to act like it's such a burden when you ask them to help out around the house. You might feel disappointed by the way your kid eats or the fact that they use marijuana or they spend too much time in their room or on their phone. At some point, every single one of us has thought to ourselves, I'm not proud of my kid's behavior.
I'm not proud of his attitude. I'm not proud of how they're showing up right now. I'm willing to bet every single one of us moms has had some version of this thought, but we don't want to admit it because it feels terrible.
The truth is, we don't want to feel this way about our kids. Even as I talk about my son's gaming phase, I feel myself choke up a little because it's genuinely heartbreaking to admit that there were moments in my boys' lives when I wasn't proud of how they were showing up. And here's why it feels so awful.
We love our kids so much, and we believe in them so fiercely. We see their potential often more clearly than they do. So when they're not living into that potential, academically or socially or emotionally, we feel disappointed, not necessarily because something's wrong with them, but because we believe so strongly in who they could be.
But then what if this behavior or this version of your kid is permanent? You start projecting into the future. What if they never apply themselves? What if they never make friends? What if they stay home forever? What if they never launch? What if this is who they're becoming, and I'm powerless to change it? Here's the thing. All of these thoughts carry emotional weight.
And one of the first places our emotions go is to shame. You feel shame that you even had this thought in the first place. Shame that you don't like this version of your child.
Every time this comes up in coaching, the mom I'm talking to will tell me something about their kid and how they really don't like this part of them, something they're doing or some way they're being. And they share this with me in confidence, but then immediately say, oh my gosh, that sounds terrible. I shouldn't say that.
I sound like such a bad mom. It happens every single time. There's this instinctive recoiling, like we've touched a hot stove by admitting that we don't like something about our kid.
It's like we immediately think this thought that a good mom shouldn't think this way about their kid. Shame and guilt are such incredibly uncomfortable emotions. And I think they're the first that we tend to try to shove away because we don't want to feel them.
So we have this thought that we're not proud of our kid, but then we have this immediate other thought that we're not proud of ourselves for even thinking something like that. And then, by the way, we tell ourselves, we're not proud of ourselves, period. Because isn't it my fault that we're here, that my kid isn't living into their potential or that they're acting this way? If they're not motivated enough or responsible or not respectful or social enough, if they're not reaching whatever bar we have in our minds as the right bar, aren't we as moms the ones who are supposed to get them there? So we move from shame for thinking we're not proud of our kids to blaming ourselves.
Your mind goes through the laundry list of things you did wrong as a parent. Maybe you were too easy on them or you let them get away with too much. You didn't make them do chores early enough.
Or maybe you didn't make them study more. Or maybe you blame yourself for not being calm enough, that you blame yourself for being too emotional in conversations with your kid so you think you're doing it wrong by not being able to communicate with them more effectively. I remember watching my son game and I blamed myself for allowing him to have a computer in his room.
I blamed myself for not being more firm about the boundaries we were setting around screen time. I blamed myself for all the times I got some relief when the kids were really little because I gave them iPads to distract them. It was clearly all my fault he was addicted to gaming.
I've seen so many moms reflect on their kids' attitudes and behavior and use that as an assessment of their performance as a parent. If our kids are anxious, we think we passed that down to them. If they're messy, we think we didn't teach them responsibility.
If they're moody or disrespectful, we think we didn't drill into them respect. If they're not motivated, we think we didn't push them in the right way. Or maybe if they're struggling socially, we think we failed to build their confidence.
And my friend, here's the sneaky backstory of all of these thoughts. We also think, if my kid were doing better or acting better, then I could feel better about myself as a mom. I mean, yes, of course, we want our kids to self-actualize and reach their potential for their own sake.
But I also care about my nieces and nephews' potential as well. But I don't take their success personally in the way I take on responsibility for the success of my own boys. The truth is, it's your child, your responsibility.
And when your kids' choices don't match the picture you had in your mind of what they should be doing, your brain goes right to thinking, it must be my fault. Okay, but we don't want to stay here emotionally either. So we go from shame to self-judgment, and then we move to anxiety.
Because we're looking at this kid who we love, and we're seeing behavior or attitudes that we don't like. We blame ourselves, but we also imagine that this problem with our kid, this lack of reaching their potential in whatever way we envision they should reach it, we fear it's permanent. What if this is who they're becoming? What if this isn't just a phase? What if this is who they are now? What does that mean for their future? For their future success and relationships? I kid you not, I have heard so many moms say to me, what if they talk to their future boss this way? Or how are they ever going to keep a wife or a husband if they treat them this way? We imagine they'll never launch, that they'll never stop smoking marijuana, that they'll never apply themselves, that they'll never talk to us again or treat us with respect.
We worry they'll gain 50 pounds and spend their life gaming in a dark room. It's bad enough it's happening now, but then your brain projects this behavior into the future and thinks, this is only going to get worse. We love our kids so much, and we see their potential.
Even if it's just glimmers of who we thought we saw when they were little, that version of them that seems so much more open or optimistic, or at least talking to us. You want more for them. You want them to overcome their challenges and be resilient and keep trying.
You see the gap between who they are right now and who you know they could be, and it feels terrifying to think that they'll never close that gap. So you create in your mind this anxiety, this urgent feeling that you need to fix it, that you need to step in and course correct their entire future before it's too late. I mean, you already feel like you've messed up that they're here.
So the last thing you want to do is give up now and let them mess up their future. So we become desperate to push them in the right direction now so that we can avoid all of those worst case scenarios in our head for the future. Here's where all this talk about letting go feels unacceptable.
I literally just had a call with a mom who had listened to my podcast on radical acceptance, and she realized there was something there for her to consider. But she told me, I can't just let this behavior go. I can't just accept it.
As she talked, it was clear that her mind was giving her so many reasons why if she didn't do something about this with her son, it was like she was guaranteeing that all of the worst case scenarios in her head would come true. And I've seen this so many times. And honestly, I remember being there so many times with my boys as well.
This anxiety becomes desperate. We feel desperate to push our kids in the right direction. We want them to talk to us, to hear us.
We need to tell them the dangers, why it's important to listen. So we end up thinking about it all the time, using every interaction with our kids to lecture or correct them or guide them or remind them, anything to get them back on track and avoid these worst case scenarios. And here's the thing, we're not making these scenarios up.
I mean, sometimes we see our minds going down those worst case scenario spirals that we recognize are maybe not entirely likely. But maybe more often, we see our fears and we think this bad outcome is actually likely or at least possible. Our fears aren't entirely unfounded.
I mean, what if my kid really does become addicted to marijuana? What if they really do fail out of school or never build a social life and stay lonely? What if they stay depressed? What if they miss or mess up their opportunities? These aren't irrational fears. These things happen. And these fears are also a reaction to the love we have for our kids, our hopes for them, and our belief in who they could be.
And we fear so much losing that future or failing them to achieve that future. So of course we worry. It all makes so much sense.
But here's the part I want to invite you to hear. And this is the part we have to untangle if we're going to help ourselves and our kids. There's a difference between loving your child and believing that you're solely responsible for preventing every hard thing that could ever happen to them.
Your fears make perfect sense. It also makes so much sense that you're disappointed when your kid's behavior doesn't match your expectations. But the urgency you feel around changing these behaviors, that sense of panic that isn't actually coming from your kid or what they're doing, it's coming from what you're making their behavior mean about you and their future.
It comes from this intense belief that it's your job to prevent those future negative outcomes. And if this is your job, then if you don't fix it, you'll have failed as a mom. Really consider this for a moment.
Because yes, you fear who your child might become if they never change. But even more, you fear how you'll feel if they become that person. What if I'm not proud of myself as a mom then? Whether you realize it or not, the love and the effort you've put into this role, it can't help but have become a reflection of your identity.
Your kid's successes and their failures, they all stack up to determine how well we feel we've done in raising them. This is why letting go feels unacceptable. It feels like giving up on your kid, like you're abandoning them, abandoning your responsibility.
You want them to be successful, yes, but also, you want to feel successful. And of course you do. And my friend, I'm not actually in any way suggesting that you should let go of your hopes and dreams for your kid, or even that you should let go of the responsibility you feel to help and support them.
But what I want to invite you to consider is that you let go of the thought that their choices or their successes and failures mean anything about you. Look, when our kids go down a path that we don't want for them, we will inevitably feel an emotion about that. If my son had ended up gaming through high school and not going to college, or if he were still locked up in his room gaming five years later, I guarantee you I wouldn't be happy about it.
But the minute I make that behavior mean I've failed, that's when the anxiety and the panic sets in. And when your parenting is driven by fear, it leads to pressure and control and power struggles. And this can't help but impact your relationship with your kid.
And if you're in this place feeling anxious about something your kid is doing, you know exactly what that feels like. You remind them one more time and you really try to ask nicely, but then they push back and you get into that same old fight again. And you keep having this conversation because you can't stop talking about it.
And they just dig in more because they don't want to change what they're doing in this moment. So when you're in this powerless place where they're staying stuck and you're doing everything you can and feel powerless, what do you do then? You don't want to let it go because it's important and they don't want to change. Maybe because from their perspective nothing is wrong.
So what then? This is where boundaries are so valuable to understand. Because so many of us think we're setting boundaries when we tell our kids what we want them to do differently. But the problem is this is simply us making a request without follow-through.
And you might hear this and think, right, so there needs to be consequences. But before you even go there, I want to invite you to consider that boundaries only work when they're connected to radical acceptance. And I don't mean letting it go and accepting this behavior and doing nothing.
What I mean is acknowledging the reality of who your teen is being right now and then deciding how you will show up and respond. Because when you're fighting reality, when you're insisting your teen should be different right now, any boundary you try to set is going to come from urgency and fear. It becomes, you have to stop doing this or you need to change.
And then your teen, more often than not, just pushes back or shuts you down. It's not actually because they don't care, but because they're reacting to the anxious energy behind your requests or demands. But when you start with radical acceptance, when you can tell yourself, this is who my teen is being right now and it's not because I did something wrong and also I can't actually control their behavior, this allows you to move from anxiety to something more like clarity.
Because you stop trying to force your kid to change so you can feel better. Instead, you decide, given who they're choosing to be right now, how do I want to show up? What's the boundary I can actually follow through on? This is how boundaries become powerful, not because they control your teen, but because they come from a place of calm, confidence and self-respect. And listen, if this feels almost impossible to do, I want you to know I get it.
When it comes to our kids, our emotions are so deeply connected to the situation in front of us. Our fears feel urgent and our expectations feel justified. It's so hard to separate out their experience from your own emotional experience.
But this is why having a coach is so powerful, because a coach gives you what you can't give yourself in those emotionally charged moments. They give you a neutral perspective, a sounding board who isn't tangled up in your story about everything you did wrong or what it means for your kid's future. A coach helps you see the difference between what's actually happening and the catastrophic version your mind has created.
A coach helps you separate your identity from your teen's behavior so that you can take a breath and make powerful decisions about how you want to show up, not from fear, but from intention. And this is the work we do inside of Mom 2.0. So if you're tired of feeling like you either have to give up and let it go or just fight constantly, Mom 2.0 is where you learn the art of navigating that tricky space between holding on and letting go. And this is how you learn to stay calm, confident, and connected, even when your teen is showing up in ways that you don't like.
My friend, when you think I'm not proud of my teen, it can feel like a betrayal of your child, but it's actually a sign of how fiercely you love them and how desperately you want the best for them. The opportunity available to you when you face these hard moments with your kid is for you to meet them from a place of peace rather than panic, with compassion instead of shame and boundaries instead of control. When you do this, your entire experience of parenting changes, not because your big kid becomes perfect, but because you become the mom, you're proud to be, even when your big kid is going through the messy process of struggling to become who they're meant to be.
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.
