THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—"WHAT MY KID DOES IS HURTFUL” | EP. 238
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.
What my kid does is hurtful. It's so painful when you feel like your child is dismissing you or rejecting you, not appreciating you or blaming you, even being cruel to you. And look, this happens.
I've experienced it in my own life as a mom, and I've spoken with countless moms who have gone through the same thing, and it hurts. Sometimes we try to rationalize it in our minds. We might tell ourselves, they're just going through a stage, or they didn't mean it.
They were just reacting to their feelings in the moment. We might remind ourselves that they love us, even if they don't always show it in the ways that we wish they would. Maybe we tell ourselves they were busy or got distracted, and that's why they forgot to reach out on my birthday.
Sometimes we even turn it back on ourselves and we think, you know what, I probably deserve that. I understand why they're angry at me because of something I did. But we can also start internalizing that we're at fault, that we're the reason the relationship with our big kid is the way that it is.
When it comes to relationships with other people in our lives, whether it's friends, colleagues, or family members, it's often easier to set boundaries around behavior that we don't like. I mean, there are certain behaviors that we simply wouldn't tolerate from other people. Now, I'm not saying that it's easy to walk away from any relationship, but when it comes to our kids, the idea of closing off that relationship, even a little bit, feels almost impossible to imagine.
And let's be honest, sometimes we're not even dealing with rational adults outside of parenting. But when you are dealing with a rational adult and you set a boundary, they might not always agree with it or like it. But it doesn't usually escalate into one of these big, full, emotional power struggles.
But with our kids, especially with our teens and young adult kids, it can feel very different. I was speaking with a client the other day who told me about a moment with her son where he was yelling at her, and she tried to set a boundary. She told him she wasn't going to continue the conversation if he spoke to her in that way.
And he laughed at her. He made fun of her trying to set a boundary. And not only that, but he insisted she stay and keep talking to him.
And so she felt like she had to just sit there and take it, because he wouldn't respect her boundary. When our teens or adult children behave this way, whether it's yelling, being mean, being dismissive, or sometimes just ignoring us altogether, as if our feelings don't matter, it is incredibly hard. And I want to acknowledge that the feelings you have in response to that behavior are completely valid.
If you're going through something like this now, I want you to know that I see you, and I know how painful it can be, because I've been there too. The way we're asking to be treated is also not unreasonable. You just don't want to be yelled at or disrespected.
You don't want to be treated like you don't matter. In fact, you hope that you've raised your child to understand that this kind of behavior isn't appropriate. And so on top of the hurt of being treated this way by someone you love so much, you can often think, how did I raise a child who would act this way? Or how did I end up in a position where my child thinks I deserve to be treated like this? And once our minds start asking those questions, they can go down a lot of different rabbit holes.
Maybe I messed up raising them. Maybe I was too controlling. Or maybe there were mistakes I made, unintentional things that have hurt our relationship.
2020 hindsight gives us so many opportunities to find things to regret, so we can become convinced that there must be a direct connection between something we did and the way our child is treating us now. And honestly, because I think we're now so much more open in our conversations about mental health, we hear a lot about childhood trauma. We hear people talking about how their parents negatively impacted them.
We might even have experienced this ourselves. And look, if someone experiences something as traumatic, that experience is real for them. Their feelings about that are valid.
So when our own kids start pulling away or saying things that suggest they blame us for something in their past, it can trigger this deep fear in us. A fear that maybe we really did mess them up. That we caused harm without meaning to.
And the truth is, none of us went into motherhood trying to do that. I truly believe that the vast majority of us moms wake up every single day trying our absolute best for our kids. And that is certainly true about any mom listening to a podcast like this.
And look, I'll be honest, when I look back on my own parenting, it hasn't always gone the way that I hoped it would. I've lost my temper, I've gotten emotional, and I've certainly said things I regret. And I'm guessing there's not a single one of us who can't say the same.
So yes, I've made mistakes. And I'm willing to bet you'd say the same about yourself. In fact, when I talk to moms who feel regret about things in their past, almost every one of them has already apologized.
They've tried to take accountability and repair the relationship. And yet sometimes, nothing changes. These moms are hoping there'll be some moment where they can hug their kid and make up, put the past in the past and move forward.
We just want the relationship to go back to the way it used to feel, when things were easy, when you felt close, and you didn't have to feel like you were walking on eggshells wondering if your kid might say or do something that hurts even more. So sometimes we take accountability and nothing changes. Other times we honestly don't even really understand what could have caused our big kid to start acting this way.
But even in those moments, our brains still go searching for answers. And more often than not, the answers we land on are about us. That maybe they just don't like us.
That something about us is the problem. And if you've ever felt that way, you are so not alone. I think there's a reason why the episode I did on personalization, taking things personally, has been downloaded thousands of times.
Because motherhood is personal. We take this role very seriously. And the last thing we would ever want to do is harm our child or damage our relationship with them.
So when they treat us in ways that feel hurtful, of course we take it personally. And also, we tend to default to blaming ourselves. But even though we might acknowledge that we have made mistakes, there's also no question that we know how much we love our kids.
We know how much effort was put into raising them. And we have honestly and sincerely tried to make the best decisions we could with the information we had at the time. We've also tried to listen to them, to understand their feelings.
We're constantly trying to change ourselves when we realize something we're doing isn't working. If you think about it, motherhood is this constant process of evolving. We're constantly adjusting and learning, trying to meet our kids where they are.
And honestly, it can be exhausting. So when we put all of that effort into raising our kids, and then we feel like none of it seems to matter to them, there can be a part of us that feels angry. And maybe even ashamed to admit that we feel angry.
I remember feeling this way during one of the more difficult periods I had with one of my sons. I remember actually saying to him, after everything I have done for you, how could you treat me this way? And that thought, after everything I've done for you, is actually really important to acknowledge. Because if there's any part of you that's thinking it, it means that you have this unconscious belief that because of everything you've done for your kids, that they should treat you in a certain way, that they should respect you and appreciate you, that they should include you in their lives and speak kindly to you.
And when they don't do those things, it's not just disappointing, it feels hurtful. Now most of us aren't consciously thinking this way. We're not sitting around saying, well, I did all these things for you, so now you owe me.
Instead, it just feels obvious, that what we expect is simply the way children should treat their mothers. But when I started really looking at my own thinking during that difficult time with my son, I had to confront something that was honestly a little uncomfortable to see. And that was that I was holding this unspoken contract in my mind that said, I gave you everything, therefore you should treat me with love, gratitude, and respect.
And again, this wasn't conscious, but I recognized that it was there. And it was also shaping how I interpreted everything my son did. But the honest truth is, my son never signed that contract.
He didn't agree to treat me a certain way. In fact, when I stepped back and really looked at it, my son never agreed to any of this. I was the one who decided to bring him into this world.
I decided how he was going to be raised. I chose where we would live. I chose the schools he would go to.
I chose the values I would try to teach him. I made every decision about the structure of his life and the opportunities he would have. And all of the effort that went into raising him, all of the love and the worry and the time and the energy I poured into being his mom, all of that.
Those were decisions that I made. Our kids don't come into the world saying, OK, mom, if you raise me this way, then I promise I'll treat you with appreciation and kindness and gratitude forever. We'd like to think that that's the relationship we've entered into.
But the truth is, our kids never consciously agreed to that exchange. When they were little, they accepted the reality they were born into. We were the mom that they had.
It was the only world that they knew. And so, of course, they depended on us. Of course, they related to us in the way that we told them to, because we were everything to them.
But as they grow up and start trying to figure out who they are and how they want their life to be, sometimes that process includes looking back at how they were raised and judging it. And sometimes they judge it harshly. Sometimes it looks like them discounting our efforts.
And it definitely can look like them having absolutely no idea how much work it took to show up every single day as their mom. And honestly, how could they ever know? I don't think I had any real understanding of what motherhood required until I had my own kids. I remember saying to my mom at one point, I had no idea what you went through.
It is incredibly hard to fully grasp the complexity of motherhood if you've never lived it. So how can we expect our kids to automatically understand the weight of all of the decisions we've had to make for them? There is no instruction manual for raising a child, and there's no objective grading system where someone tells you whether you did it right or wrong. Every parenting decision is subjective, and these decisions are shaped by the circumstances we were in at the time, the knowledge we had, the children we were raising, and the resources available to us, the circumstances, all of it.
And now our kids are looking back at those same decisions through their own lens, through their own emotions and their developing understanding of the world. And so much of how they interpret their childhood has to do with what they're thinking and feeling, what they're struggling with. And we are just one piece of that story.
I'd like to think that we're a very important piece, but we're still only one piece. And yet as our kids grow up and start relating to us in ways that don't match what we expected or hoped for, we're often totally shocked. We're often put off guard because whether we realize it or not, we're still holding onto this contract that all of the love and effort and sacrifice deserves to be repaid, not financially, but emotionally, with appreciation and closeness, kindness.
And I say all of this with so much love for all of us as moms, because I have been there. I have felt unbelievably hurt thinking, I have loved my child in every way possible. How can he treat me like this? It felt impossible to understand how someone I loved so much could seem to discard me so easily.
And yet looking back now, having come through that period in our relationship, I can see something that was hard to fully grasp at the time. What felt like rejection to me was actually my son trying to build his own life, trying to figure out who he was, trying to separate from me. And sometimes that separation can feel incredibly hurtful.
My friend, in my own journey, I saw in myself something that was uncomfortable to admit. Underneath all of that hurt, there was also a kind of entitlement. And I don't mean to say that I was being selfish or demanding.
I mean, I was being entitled in a very rational and human way. Because when we invest in something that matters so much to us, when we pour our time and our energy and our love into someone else, it's natural to believe that there should be some kind of response on the other side of that effort. So when our kids treat us in ways that feel dismissive or rejecting or unkind, of course it hurts.
Of course, we want them to treat us differently. But in that difficult time with my son, I realized I had to face this question. Is this belief that my child should treat me in a certain way actually helping my relationship with him? Or is it hurting it? Because when we believe that our kids should be acting differently than they are, we start trying to correct them.
We tell them how we wish they would behave. Sometimes we even try to subtly earn their affection by doing even more for them. And when all of that doesn't work, we end up feeling even more hurt and resentful.
The more we give with the expectation that it will bring them closer, the more painful it becomes when it doesn't. The problem is what we often do is we make our kids wrong for the way they feel and the way they're going about trying to figure out who they are. Now, I want to be really clear about something here.
If your child is yelling at you or insulting you or saying things that are truly abusive, it is completely appropriate to set boundaries. You absolutely do not have to stand there and allow someone to speak to you in any way. But what I've also seen is that sometimes when our kids express anger toward us or pull away from us, we respond by pushing back harder or pulling them closer to us.
We essentially try to punish them or retaliate. We try to force them to see things our way. Maybe we get passive aggressive.
And the truth is, when we do all of that, it usually escalates the situation or pushes them further away. Because when someone feels like they're not being heard, when they feel like their experience is being dismissed, they tend to push back even harder or pull away even more. And notice how that can be happening for both of us, for us and our kids.
My friend, when your big kid does things that feel hurtful, when they forget your birthday, when they don't acknowledge something you did for them, when they stop calling home or shut you out, when they say they don't trust you or when they criticize something about the way you raised them, of course those moments hurt. But what I want to invite you to consider is that if you can acknowledge that the hurt you're feeling is real, and if you can also recognize that underneath all of that hurt is love, then maybe there's another possibility available to you. I wonder if you could consider leaning into the love that you have for your child so much so that you're willing to forgive this moment in time when they can't be everything to you that you wish they could be.
Because the truth is, our kids are doing the messy work of growing up. They're trying to figure out who they are, and they're navigating a world that looks very different from the one we grew up in. Their lives are more complicated in ways that are hard for us to fully understand.
And when you really think about it, the thoughts and emotions they're wrestling with every single day probably go much deeper than what we ever see on the surface. The clues they give us about what they're feeling, sometimes through their anger or the way they pull away, through the words they say that can feel hurtful, those clues may only be the tip of the iceberg of what they're going through. So what would it look like if instead of fighting back, instead of trying to force them to be different, and definitely instead of punishing ourselves for everything we think we did wrong, what if we could find compassion for them and for us? I remember one night thinking about my son, and I was crying, but I realized I understood why he was pulling away.
I even understood that it wasn't all about me. And in that moment, I remember saying to myself, I can choose to love him no matter what, even if our relationship isn't at all what I want it to be right now. And at the same time, I decided that I was going to release him from the expectation that he owed me anything.
What I really wanted was for him to know that I loved him. And I chose to believe that underneath all of the hurt and misunderstanding and disconnection, that he still loved me too. And I remember thinking to myself, even if it takes years, even if someday he comes back to me and he is 40 years old, and he says to me, Mom, I'm sorry, or even just, I want a relationship with you again, there was going to be no question that I would open my arms and welcome him back home.
And strangely, as painful as that possibility felt, it also gave me a little bit of peace, because I realized if I was willing to love him and wait for him that long, then there was still hope for our relationship. There is something incredibly beautiful about truly embracing unconditional love, making the decision to let go of the conditions we sometimes place on how someone needs to behave in order for us to feel love and connection. Because the truth is, you can choose to feel love for your child no matter what they're doing.
And with our kids, this kind of unconditional love is one of the most powerful things we can give them. Now, again, that doesn't mean we never set boundaries, but even when we do, we don't have to close off our hearts. We can still keep the light on in the relationship, and we can always choose love.
And sometimes that unconditional, steady love, the kind that isn't keeping score or constantly being disappointed by unmet expectations, that love becomes the very thing that allows the relationship to heal in ways we could never have forced. My friend, if you're navigating the emotional ups and downs of parenting a big kid, this is the work we do inside of my Mom 2.0 coaching program. It's not about fixing your child or giving you the perfect script to make everything magically better.
This program is designed to empower you to understand your own perspective and emotions so that you can show up in your relationships from a place of strength, peace, and self-trust. Because when you change the way you relate to what's happening in your life, everything begins to feel different, even when nothing around you changes right away. Sometimes what our kids do is hurtful, but what I want to offer you is that the pain you feel in those moments isn't only about what your child did.
Often it's more about the expectations you're holding, the belief that your child should be different than they are right now. And when you loosen your grip on those expectations, something powerful becomes possible. You stop fighting the reality of who they are and instead lean into the unconditional love I know you have for them.
And my friend, that kind of love is exactly what's going to bring them back to you. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free master class. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
