THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“MY KID WAS STRUGGLING, AND I MISSED IT” | EP. 228
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.
My kid was struggling, and I didn't even know it. There are very few thoughts about our kids that hit with as much weight as that one. And I had this thought recently after a conversation with my son.
Over dinner, he shared something with me that he'd been struggling with years ago. Three years ago, actually, back when he was in high school. And what was so jarring to me wasn't just hearing that he'd gone through something hard.
It was realizing that I had absolutely no idea it was happening while it was happening. You know, we spend our lives as moms trying so hard to do the right thing. We are constantly trying to support our kids in the right way, and watch out for danger, and set boundaries that will keep them safe.
And in so many ways, we're always trying to help our kids be happy and help them self-actualize. And this is a constant effort. In fact, I would say that there are very few times when this isn't a priority for us as moms.
Even now that my kids are away at college, I'm still thinking about them. Are they doing okay? Are they happy? How are they doing with their classes? Even when everything's okay, you just want to make sure. I talk so much on this podcast about how we can sometimes overthink, and catastrophize, and create unnecessary pain for ourselves.
And yet, at the same time, I recognize that there can be times when, in the middle of all of this vigilance, we miss something really big. And the scary part about that is that it can understandably make us question whether it's safe to let go of our anxiety. I mean, see? I miss something.
I let my guard down, and apparently that was a mistake. When my son told me this story, I immediately sensed this feeling of shame and failure. I let my son down.
But you know, there have been so many other times in my life where I've woken up to the reality that one of my boys was struggling, and they were still in the middle of it. And honestly, I want to say that that happens to us even more often, right? Because we're constantly looking for danger. So often, if there's something to find, we're going to find it.
And actually, I think one of the reasons I was so shocked by my son's story is that when my boys were in high school, I wasn't above checking. I kept my eyes open. There were times when I found things they wouldn't have wanted me to find.
And there were plenty of things that I did catch. So now, as I'm thinking back, this gut reaction I had, it wasn't even just shame that I missed this thing going on with my son. It's like it was shame that I trusted at all.
I was having the same conversation with a client the other day. Her daughter recently faced a big disappointment, and this mom is thinking back to all of the things she could have done differently to prevent it. And it was the same conversation.
I shouldn't have trusted. It almost seems like this kind of throws a wrench in everything I say on this podcast about trusting yourself, even trusting you're a big kid. I mean, what do you do when you realize you can't trust your kid? Either because they're making bad choices, or just don't seem to be figuring things out on their own.
There's a very specific kind of shame that comes with this thought. My kid was struggling and I missed it. And it doesn't really matter whether you missed it a few weeks ago, or a few months ago, or a few years ago.
You're essentially thinking, I should have known. I should have seen it. I mean, what kind of mom misses this? And I think what makes this thought so painful is that it strikes right at the heart of who we think we're supposed to be as moms.
It feels like evidence of an epic failure. Not just that our kids struggled, but that we didn't do our job. And I want you to notice something about how our brains work here.
When something hard happens in our kids' life, our minds immediately go back in time, looking for that moment where we could have intervened. So we replay conversations or decisions, desperately trying to answer the question, what could I have done differently? In that moment, as my son was telling me his story, I did that too. I actually started asking him questions like, so knowing what you know now, what could I have done differently? How could I have helped you more? And at first, I could feel my son starting to close up a bit.
I think part of him didn't want to make me feel bad. But thankfully, I've been practicing the tools I teach for a long time now, and I was onto myself. I saw my self-judgment and my shame, and I decided I didn't need my son to fix it.
I recognized I really wanted to genuinely understand, from my son's perspective, was there anything I could have done differently? There was even a little part of me that saw you, my friend, sitting next to me, wanting answers to this very same question. I mean, what were we have supposed to do differently when our kids mess up or struggle? And we missed it. How could we have prevented this? And this is how he answered, Mom, there really wasn't anything you could have done.
I was hiding it. I thought I could handle it. And if you'd come down on me harder, honestly, I probably would have just done it more.
And that's not the answer we want, is it? Because it would somehow almost feel easier if he'd said, Mom, if you'd just been stricter, if you'd checked in on me more or taken away more privileges, then I wouldn't have done it. Because at least then, there would be something concrete to blame, something to fix or control. But sitting there, hearing him tell me that from his perspective, there really wasn't anything I could have done differently, I realized how strong the pull still was to hold onto the shame anyway.
Because letting go of the shame means accepting something much harder, that our kids' struggles are theirs. And more and more often as they grow up, we can't prevent them. Okay, but here's the thing.
There is a really important difference between realizing your kid was struggling and realizing your kid is struggling. Because when it's already in the past, like it was with my son, there truly is nothing left to fix. There's no urgent decision to make or boundary to set.
There's honestly just your emotional experience, the thoughts you're having in that moment as you process what happened and look to cast blame or try to learn from the situation for the future. And look, that can feel painful enough. But when your kid is still in the middle of the struggle, when you realize they're struggling right now, it feels like there has to be something you can do.
It's not over yet. They're still struggling. So surely there's something you can say, something you can teach them, some way you can get them to stop doing the thing you don't want them to do, or start doing the thing you think they should be doing.
And this is where I think we tend to spend so much energy when we're raising big kids. We're watching their behavior or their moods or their choices, and we're thinking, this isn't okay. And so we feel this urgent need to intervene, to put up guardrails or keep things from getting worse.
And when you're in the middle of it, it feels impossible to just stand by. And believe me, I've been there too. The problem is, if it were as simple as walking up to your kids and saying, you're unhappy, I want you to feel better, or you're struggling in school, you just need to work harder, or you're vaping, I want you to stop.
If stepping in was that easy, then this job would be so much easier. But we all know from painful experience that that is not how this works. And this is the part that's so hard to accept because we can see that something needs to change.
We can see that the behavior isn't helping them. So we say something, and we ask, and we encourage, and we warn, and nothing changes. And then we're left in this incredibly uncomfortable place because we want things to be different than they are, and we can't figure out how to make that happen.
So what do we do? Well, the truth is, it feels impossible to just let it go, right? So we keep trying, and we keep explaining, keep trying to find the right boundary or the consequence that'll make things change. But more often than not, things still don't change. And then we're left beyond frustrated and scared.
And so we beat ourselves up for not knowing what to do. And we often beat our kids up too, at least with our words. And it all just feels terrible.
And look, I'm not saying there's no place for boundaries. There absolutely is. Especially when your kid is younger, or when there's something you truly cannot tolerate or live with.
If there's a boundary you need to set and a consequence you're willing to follow through on, this is valuable to do. But I think where we get ourselves into trouble is when we expect that boundary, or even that consequence, to be the thing that changes our kid. Because the truth is, even if you come up with the perfect consequence, there's still no guarantee it's going to change anything.
My son said it himself. Mom, you might have made it worse. And honestly, when I think back to other moments in his life, when he was gaming too much or not focused in school, I tried setting limits.
I tried taking things away. But back then, the way I was going about it just stressed me out and rarely created the kind of change I was hoping for. But what was so powerful about my conversation with my son was actually what he said next.
After he told me there was nothing I could have done differently, he said, the turning point for me happened when I saw the consequences as unacceptable. He noticed his grade slipping. He also looked around at the people he was hanging out with and he thought, this isn't who I want to be.
And that's when he decided to make a change, not because of anything I had done necessarily, but because it was a change in who he decided he wanted to be. The painful reality is, as much as I love my kids, I can't want them to change enough to actually change them. I can't force it.
I can't punish it into them. Because the reason any of us change is because we decide to do it for ourselves. And that's not just true when it comes to behavior.
It's also true when it comes to our emotional experience. Just like I can't force my kid to stop doing something he doesn't want to stop doing, I also can't force him to feel better when he's struggling. I can't make him happier.
And I can't think his way out of loneliness or disappointment or uncertainty for him. And I think this is one of the hardest truths to sit with as a mom. Because when your kid is unhappy, your instinct is to fix it, to talk them out of it, or to show them why things aren't actually that bad.
But happiness, just like change, doesn't work that way. It's something they have to discover for themselves. Something they have to build through their own experiences and even their own mistakes.
Parenting big kids is such a humbling experience because it asks us to sit with something that feels incredibly uncomfortable. And that's that our influence is real. But it's also limited.
We can guide our kids and we can love them. We can set boundaries and we can say the hard things. But we are not the agents of their transformation.
And when we expect ourselves to be, we carry a level of responsibility that is actually not ours to hold. So let me go back to this question of trust. Because when your kid has clearly made mistakes or let you down, maybe lied or when they've made choices you don't agree with, trust can feel naive or even irresponsible.
But I want to invite you to think about trust a little differently. Maybe trust in the stage of parenting isn't about trusting that your kid won't mess up or that they won't lie. And it's definitely not trusting that they're always going to make choices you think they should make.
I think trust in this stage of motherhood is really about trusting that when your big kid is ready, they're going to make choices that feel right to them. Now, that doesn't mean those choices will always line up with what you would choose. But I actually truly believe that most kids want the same things we want for them, which is really that they also want to be safe.
And they want to be happy and successful. The hard part is that as teens and young adults, they're still figuring out what those things mean, what safety looks like, what happiness feels like, and what success actually is outside of what we've told them it should be. And sometimes the only way they can figure all of that out is by living through choices that don't look great from the outside.
I think as moms, we believe that if we worry enough or step in the right way, we can somehow prevent our kids from struggling and making mistakes, as if our anxiety can protect them. But the truth is, we're not actually that powerful. We can't protect our kids from every consequence or prevent every mistake.
And we definitely can't guarantee their success, no matter how much we love them. I think it's a big driver of our anxiety as moms, especially when our kids are older, that we have a fear that we're going to miss something, that there will be some sign we don't catch, or some moment that we don't do the right thing, where we don't step in. And that will be the thing that leads to terrible consequences down the road.
At some level, we're not just afraid of our kids struggling. We're afraid that if they struggle, it will mean we failed to protect them. And that fear can keep us stuck in a perpetual state of anxiety, as if worrying hard enough now could somehow prevent the future we're scared of.
But the truth is, no amount of vigilance guarantees our kids safety, happiness, or success. And no amount of self-blame changes the past or controls what comes next. So what if part of our work now as moms, in this stage of parenting, is to forgive ourselves ahead of time? To recognize that we are always making the best decisions we can with the information we have in this moment.
And that sometimes those decisions won't produce the outcome we hoped for. But that doesn't mean we failed. It means we're parenting humans who are going to struggle and make mistakes.
Life is going to happen. And beating ourselves up about that doesn't actually help our kids. It just keeps us stuck in guilt and fear.
More and more every day, I'm realizing that my role has changed. I am no longer the shepherd who can keep my boys safe. I'm more of a coach or a consultant.
Someone whose guidance they can take or leave. But who I choose to be as a mom is a safe place for them to land. Someone who can hold space for their growth without making it mean something about me, without making it mean I failed.
And maybe that's actually the goal. Look, I know how painful it is to watch your kids struggle or go down a path that you don't want for them. As moms, we feel such deep empathy for our kids.
Their struggle truly does become our struggle. But we make it even harder on ourselves because of what we make their struggle mean about us. Here I was three years past the point where I could do anything about what was going on with my son in high school.
And my gut reaction wasn't relief that he was okay now. It was, I messed up. I missed this.
I let my son down. I allowed this to happen. Notice how every single one of those thoughts starts with I. My responsibility.
My fault. My failure. But when I caught myself, I recognized my son's experience was his.
In fact, it was so his that I didn't even know he was going through it. It was his journey. His choices.
His mistakes. Also his process of figuring out what he wanted and who he wanted to be. And when you really think about it, that is what we want for them.
We want them to struggle just enough to figure those things out for themselves. Because even if we wanted to, we couldn't be by their side every single time they fail or every time they make a choice. We can't practically do that for them.
And they actually don't want us to. As much as I know how natural it is to hold on to that responsibility because I do it too, I also actively give myself permission to set it down. Because even if it were true that I should have seen it earlier, there's no guarantee I could have changed the process for him.
And there is so much beauty and love and pride in me being able to separate my own guilt and responsibility, actually being able to let that go so that I can fully appreciate the powerful growth in my own son. Our kids are human. They are on a journey of discovering themselves.
And there are some things they are going to have to learn that our parenting simply does not have the power to teach them, not without their buy-in. And I choose to trust that. To trust my boys are in a process of becoming who they're meant to be.
Trust that when they're ready, they will make choices that move them toward the life that they want, even if that path doesn't always look the way I imagined it would. The truth is, when I stay stuck in shame and anxiety, I don't show up as the mom I want to be. And also, when I stay caught up in believing it's all on me, I rob both me and my child of opportunities to grow.
But in contrast, when I let go of the belief that I have to get it all right and forgive myself for the things that I didn't see, when I trust myself to make the best decision I can in this moment and have my back about that, that's when I show up differently, calmer, more present, more connected to my boys, believing in them instead of focusing on myself. That version of me, that's the mom my kids actually need. And that's what I think of as Mom 2.0. It's evolving from that version of ourselves who's responsible for everything and constantly alert and vigilant into the mom who trusts herself, who can guide without controlling, and without taking responsibility for every twist and turn of her big kid's life.
If you're listening to this and thinking, I want that version of myself, but I don't know how to get there, that's exactly the work we do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. It's not about letting go of your kids or not caring. It's learning to trust yourself, day after day, to show up as the mom you want to be for your kids, even when they make mistakes or struggle. And as I think back to that other night, hearing my son talk about something he struggled with that I didn't see, I choose not to see my failure.
Instead, I choose to see a young man who made some mistakes, recognized the consequences, and figured out who he wanted to be. It's true, I missed it. But I've also built a relationship with my son that's safe enough for him to come back to me and share the truth of his journey.
My kid was struggling, and I missed it. And maybe that doesn't mean I did it wrong. Maybe it means I did enough.
Until next time, my friend.
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.
