“I'LL KNOW I'M A GOOD MOM WHEN... (FILL IN THE BLANK)—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 266
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 want to start by sharing an experience I had recently that had absolutely nothing to do with motherhood. But stay with me, because I think there's something really valuable about being able to see a pattern play out in our minds in a completely different context. Somewhere that doesn't have all the emotional weight attached to it.
Because when we can observe something in a low stakes context, and we bring it back to the place where we're really struggling, where the stakes are really high, as they often are in parenting, something often clicks in a different way. So the other day, I had an extraordinary long and demanding workday. I'm talking about the kind of day where I was up at the crack of dawn, triaging all my responsibilities, and I had some significant events I had to show up for.
Meanwhile, I was problem solving things I hadn't anticipated. Like my internet went out. So I was showing up in the best way that I could all day long.
So by the end of the day, I was exhausted. Like I had completed a marathon. It was like my body knew I had given that day everything I had.
And standing there at the end of the day, I felt incredible. I felt proud. I actually had this thought.
And if you know your Charlotte's Web, you'll get this. I literally had this thought. That was some pig.
Like I did that. That day was a lot, and I did it. And I showed up in the way I wanted to show up.
Now, here's the important part. By one specific external measure, I had actually failed that day. I was working really hard to create a specific result, and I hadn't hit the goal that I wanted to.
Not even close. And in that moment, of course, I noticed that reality. But standing there in the relief of the day being over, breathing it all in, I didn't feel an ounce of disappointment.
I just felt so incredibly proud of myself. And to be honest, that surprised me. Because that's not always how it's gone.
In fact, there have been so many other times in my life where I've put in that same level of effort. And when I didn't get the result I wanted, I felt crushed. And it's almost like that feeling erased any pride I had in the way I'd shown up.
Because if I hadn't achieved the result I wanted, did it even matter? It was like the result became the verdict on the quality of my effort. So I was actually surprised in that moment that I felt so good, notwithstanding the results. And so I wanted to figure out what was different.
And this is often something I do with my clients in coaching. We take one area where we're thriving, and we get curious. Why are things working over here, but not in this other area of my life? As I reflected on my experience, what I kept coming back to was that I didn't need the result to give me permission to believe that I crushed it.
So often, we do the opposite. We wait for the outcome to tell us if we did well, if we were good enough. Except this time, I made that decision ahead of time.
And that felt so powerful. It felt like freedom. But I also realized it's a kind of freedom we don't always have access to.
Now let's bring this back to our life as moms of big kids. And I want to invite you to sit with this question. Do you ever have that same experience in your role as a mom, where you have done everything you know how to do? You've shown up.
You've held boundaries. You've had hard conversations. You've even stayed calm when you wanted to lose it.
And yet somehow, it still doesn't seem to work with your big kid. It still doesn't feel like enough. Until your kid does that thing that you were hoping that they do.
I think a lot of us are walking around with this belief that I don't even think that we're actively thinking, but it's operating under the surface of everything we do as moms. And that belief is that I'll know I'm a good mom when my kid fill in the blank. When my kid starts taking school seriously.
When they get themselves up without the battle every single morning. Maybe when they treat me with respect. Or maybe it's when they open up to me and actually let me in.
Or we could think I'm a good mom when they're saving money. When they're employed and showing up to work on time. When they're making responsible decisions.
When they're on track. And here's the thing. I want all of those things for my kids too.
These goals are reasonable. Of course we want this for our kids. In fact, I would say that all of us as moms, at least the ones that would listen to a podcast like this, share a deep desire for their kids to be safe, happy, and successful.
And thriving in their lives. But there's a difference between wanting those things for your kid and needing those things in order to feel like you've done a good job. And I think so many of us have crossed that line without ever making a conscious decision to.
Now what I've just described is connected to the mindset trap of validation seeking. But it's a specific type of validation seeking. So in this case, the validator, if you want to call it that, is your child.
And it feels complicated because when you're talking about your child and what you want for them, it doesn't immediately look like validation seeking from the outside. It doesn't even feel like it from the inside. It feels like love and responsibility.
In fact, it feels like exactly what a good mother is supposed to do. Think about for a second where else we see validation seeking in our lives. Most of us, by the time we're in our 40s or 50s, have done real work on this.
We've become self-aware enough to catch ourselves when we're doing it. We notice when we're people-pleasing or when we back down in certain contexts because we don't want to get pushback from someone else. We typically also know when we're performing a little bit, saying what we think someone wants to hear.
And we might even still do it sometimes. But we see it and we know it's typically not serving us. In fact, we probably actively try to teach our children not to seek validation outside of themselves.
I mean, how many times have you watched your teen change who they are depending on who's in the room? They either shrink back or they put on some different persona that isn't quite real to get approval from their peers. As moms, we work so hard to coach them out of that. We say, you don't need other people to tell you who you are.
You already know. Be yourself. We can see it so clearly in them.
And we can see the cost of it in that context. And we even see it and try to work on it for ourselves. And yet in this one specific context, in our role as moms, it's really hard to see.
And I think the reason is that we've never questioned it. We take on this belief that our kid's well-being is the measure of our success as a mother. And because that belief feels so obviously true, so beyond question, we never look at it.
We just live inside the unquestioned belief of it. Here's what's interesting. When we seek validation from a friend or from a partner or a boss, there's some part of us that knows it.
There's a little flicker of awareness that says, I'm looking for something from this person. I need them to tell me I'm okay. We might not love that about ourselves, but we can see it.
But when we seek validation from our kids, we can't see it at all because we call it love. This is how we show we care. We're invested.
We call it being a good mom. Think about this for a second. When your kid is struggling, when they're not on track or they're pushing back or they're not okay, most of us don't just think, I need to figure out how to help them.
We think, what does this say about me? We go straight to identity, straight to, am I a good mom? Did I fail them? Where did I go wrong? Or if I can't fix this, then for sure I've failed. And look, of course, I want my kid to be okay. Of course, I feel responsible for helping them get there.
And of course, if they're struggling, I want to figure out what I can do differently. But my friend, when your big kid's behavior becomes the thing that tells you who you are, when their choices and their struggles are what you're using to answer the question, am I doing a good job? You're putting your entire sense of self and wellbeing in your child's hands. And we don't even see that we're doing it.
I've been having a lot of conversations with clients recently where this comes up in a really specific way. We start talking about what's driving the anxiety around their kid. And somewhere in that conversation, we end up back in their childhood.
They share something about the way they were brought up, the kind of mother they had, or the kind they didn't have, and the experiences they carry from being raised the way that they were. And this makes complete sense. That lens that each of us has, the way we interpret our lives and our roles and relationships, that lens has been shaped by our upbringing and the values we were raised with.
Also the kind of parenting dynamic we experienced. And sometimes what we take from our upbringing is that we want to pass on the same values with our own children. I mean, these values have become who we are, and we want to pass them on because we genuinely believe in them.
But other times we had an experience of being parented in a way that didn't feel right to us. Maybe it was too harsh, or too distant, or abusive, maybe too lenient. In these cases, we might make a conscious commitment that we're going to show up differently with our own kids.
And all of this makes complete sense. Of course, our upbringing shapes who we are and even how we parent. But combine this with the message we get in society about what being a good mom looks like.
These messages could come from our religious traditions, or they could come from parenting experts, and now the endless streams of messages on Facebook and Instagram telling you the right way to parent. All of this shapes the stories you carry about what a good mother is supposed to be. In fact, I even think our increased awareness of self-help and our own experiences with therapy, as valuable as it is, it's also reinforced this narrative that what happens to your kid is a direct reflection of what you did as a parent.
Just think about how often in a therapeutic context one of the very first things they explore is what was your childhood like? How did the way you were raised impact who you became? And then how might the way you were raised be showing up in how you're parenting your own kids? And look, there's real value in exploring this. But there's also a story that can come from it that reinforces this belief that there is a direct and traceable line between what you do as a mother and who your child becomes, that cause and effect are clearly defined, and that you as the mom are the primary driver of the success or failure of your child. And if that's true, then it's almost impossible not to believe that you are responsible for all of it.
And so if something goes wrong, it's no wonder that we place the blame on ourselves. And look, I want to be really careful here because I'm not saying that what we do as parents doesn't matter. It absolutely does.
But there is a significant difference between mattering and being the determining factor. And I think a lot of us, without realizing it, have absorbed the belief that we are the determining factor, that if we can just get the inputs right, then we'll get the outputs right. Or said another way, if we could just figure out what a good mom should do, then our kids will be okay.
And so, of course, when they're not okay, when they struggle or they fail or they make choices we wouldn't make for them, when they don't launch the way that we hoped, we go right back to ourselves. What did I do wrong? What did I miss? What should I have done differently? My friend, what I want to invite you to see is this is not being driven by love. What it is, is a belief system that we've absorbed over a lifetime, reinforced by society and culture and religion, that also seems so obvious because we've all called it love.
It's what we say love should look like and responsibility as a mom. But it's also a belief system that has made your worth as a mother contingent on something that you cannot control. Truly, take that in my friend.
I'm not saying that it's not a worthy goal to want your child to be safe, happy, and successful. I want that for my boys too. And I would give my life to make that happen.
And still, that wouldn't be enough. No matter what we do as moms, we cannot control what another person feels or how they act or even what they think about themselves in their lives. So let's talk about the cost of believing that we have that power.
Because I think it's significant. This belief system costs you the ability to feel good about how you're showing up right now as a mom, even when the outcome with your big kid is still very much messy and uncertain. I think of these big kids at this stage like messy lumps of clay, still very much in the middle of figuring out who they are, struggling, trying out new versions of themselves, figuring out how to be independent from us and what that even means.
They've never done it before, so how are they even supposed to know? And so when they're in the middle of that process, whatever it looks like for them, still struggling or pulling away, just not there yet, you have no access to the evidence that would give you permission to feel okay. So you're just waiting in a constant state of vigilance, bracing for the next thing, holding your breath until something works. And meanwhile, not giving yourself permission to think, I've got this.
I am a good mom. This belief that our value and impact as a mom is contingent on our kids moving in the right direction also costs you the ability to actually see your kid clearly. When your child's behavior is the measure of your success, you stop being able to look at them as a separate person navigating their own life with their own experiences and their own timeline, their own stuff that honestly has nothing to do with you.
You see them only through the lens of what their choices say about you. I've had so many moms tell me how hurt they feel when their kid makes choices that don't include them or who struggle because their kid is struggling but they won't talk. They worry about what other people must think about them as moms, what their kid's actions say about them as parents.
And look, this makes so much sense. And believe me, I have felt all of this too. It's not that these reactions aren't completely normal and understandable, but notice how they all stem from this belief system that I can only feel good about myself as a mom when... fill in the blank.
But meanwhile, your kid is struggling with whatever they're struggling with. And just notice how often we default to making it about us in ways that don't make their struggle any easier. This belief system also costs you your ability to hold your ground when you need to.
Because if your kid's reaction to your boundary becomes the measure of whether you made the right call, if their anger or their silence or their pulling away is evidence that you failed, that you don't know how to set boundaries, then you will drop that boundary and give in every time, even when you don't want to. Because again, you're basing your success on whether or not they do what you hope they will, which is truly out of your control. On the other hand, you could decide to hold the boundary and then spend the next three days wondering if you made everything worse because your kid is upset about it.
The challenge is you can't parent confidently when your own sense of worth is dependent on whether or not your kid agrees with your parenting style. And look, I do think self-awareness is valuable here. Boundaries are tricky.
And when you set them from a place of anger and frustration, it's no wonder that our kids fight back. But when you truly set a boundary from love, from an inner knowing that this boundary is important, then sometimes that requires being willing to let your kid not love it. But it's really hard to do that when you can only feel good about your parenting if your big kid agrees with you.
My friend, this belief system keeps you constantly in this tension of not knowing. One of my clients described this beautifully the other day. She said, I keep wanting to pass the baton, but then my kid keeps dropping it or not wanting to take it.
And I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong. And so you feel like you're in this perpetual holding pattern, waiting for permission or evidence from your kid to feel like you did okay. Here's the problem.
The relief you're looking for cannot reliably come from your child. There will absolutely be moments that give you evidence. Moments when they are thriving or making good choices, including you or telling you they appreciate you.
And those moments feel wonderful. But there will also inevitably be moments when they struggle or disappoint you or pull away or make choices that you don't agree with. So if your peace depends on what your big kid is doing at any given moment, then your peace will always be vulnerable.
You'll be stuck on an emotional roller coaster that's being driven by something completely out of your control. Which is why this work matters so much. Not because your children won't eventually give you evidence that you were a good mom.
They probably will. But this work matters because that evidence will never be consistent enough to sustain the belief for you. So the gift that you can give yourself is to realize that you are actually the source of that belief.
I think sometimes we default to thinking that the only way to let go of the responsibility of caring for our kids is somehow to stop caring about their well-being and outcomes. And I know as a mom, I will never let that go. But I have found that we all have the opportunity to separate what our kids do from who we are as moms.
You can be an incredibly loving, present, thoughtful mother and your kid will still struggle or pull away or make poor choices. And honestly, you can be struggling yourself and still have a kid who's doing great independent of that. The relationship between these two things is genuinely not as direct as we've been led to believe.
What you do own, what is actually yours, is how you show up. The quality of attention you bring to the relationship with your child. It's the conversations you're willing to have and the ones you're willing to hold back because you know the timing isn't right.
It's the moments where you choose the relationship over being right. And even the moments where you hold the boundary because you know it matters, even when it's hard, even when they don't like it. These choices are yours and you get to measure yourself by how you decide to show up.
But the way that lands, how your kid chooses to respond, whether or not they listen, none of that is actually in your control. So what if you could stop using it against yourself? Here's what I can tell you from my own experience and from the experience of working with so many moms in my coaching program. When you actually start to do this work, when you start to genuinely separate your worth from your kid's behavior, something significant changes.
You stop reacting from insecurity, pressure, and anxiety, and you start responding from a place of calm confidence. You develop an inner trust that is unshakable and you actually become the safe space that your kid sees isn't depending on them to be okay for you to be okay. And think about how much less pressure that puts on them to know that their mom is calm and steady, even when they're not.
This is available to you right now, my friend, even when things with your big kid are messy and uncertain. Creating this confidence and self-trusting yourself as a mom is exactly the kind of work we do inside of Mom 2.0. It's a 10-week coaching program where I teach you the cognitive tools to actually do what I've just described, not just understand it intellectually, but actually to do the work to build the inner strength and stability that doesn't depend on what your big kid does or doesn't do. You can be part of this program either in a group setting or through one-on-one coaching, and you can find more information in the show notes.
The other day, when I finished that marathon of work and felt genuinely, completely proud of how I showed up, even though what I was trying to achieve didn't actually happen, it was a choice. And I've fallen into the trap of unconsciously making the opposite choice in the past in so many other contexts, judging myself and feeling such deep disappointment even though I'd tried my best. If the outcome wasn't what I wanted to be, I'd withhold permission to believe I was enough.
I've done it in so many different areas in my life. In my work, with my weight, in past relationships, and most certainly in my role as a mom. In fact, the next day after I felt that overwhelming pride and joy in my effort, I also, interestingly, experienced crushing disappointment only 24 hours later.
And I had to work through that and bring myself back to belief that I was, in fact, doing my best and I was going to keep showing up and giving it my all. And my friend, this, coming back to yourself as a mom again and again and again and again, trying your best. It's what you do every single day.
The only thing that's missing is that you're not always choosing to give yourself permission to believe that that's enough. Right now, not someday, but right now. What if that's simply a choice that you get to make? 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.
