“I FEEL LIKE I'M FAILING AS A MOM”—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 270
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 tell you a story about a mom who could be any number of moms I work with. Imagine she's standing at the stove making dinner on a typical Tuesday night. She's just going about her business, doing what she needs to do to take care of her family.
Then her kid walks in the door from wherever he was, out with friends, practice, or work. He walks in almost as if no one's in the kitchen. He doesn't look at his mom or greet her in any way.
But she tries to engage anyway. She asks, how was work? How was practice? Whatever the most relevant question might be. And he says nothing.
At most, one word. Then he leaves the room. She hears his feet on the stairs and then the sound of the door closing.
Not slammed, just closed. The kind of close that says, I'm done. I don't have anything to say to you.
I've heard this story so many times before with different details, different kids. In fact, I've experienced it in my own life with my own boys as well. And I've heard it described so vividly, the feeling we experience in those moments.
It's like something in us just drops through the floor. We have this thought, maybe not even fully articulated in our minds, but it goes something like, I feel like I'm failing as a mom. In fact, the way it often comes out is more in a question.
Why won't she engage with me? What am I doing wrong? What did I do to raise a kid like this, who doesn't even have the decency to say hello to her mother? And the answer our minds often give to these questions is that it must be my fault. I must have done something wrong. And it feels so true.
In fact, the strangest part isn't even the sadness of it. This reality that we don't want. It's how certain it feels that we've failed.
And that's just the truth of it. My friend, if you've ever stood in your own kitchen and felt that exact same thing, maybe because of some cruel thing your kid says, or the things they don't say, the looks they give you, or the slam doors, and that thought, I'm failing, I want you to know that you are not alone. And more than that, I want to slow down and really understand this thought.
Because I don't think we talk enough about how much this particular thought hurts, and how sneaky it is, and where it's actually coming from. Now, as you're listening, you could be in a season with your big kid where something really is wrong. Or they might say things that are genuinely cruel to you.
They could do things that scare you. Something that tells you that this isn't just a mood or some stage. That it's a real problem that needs real attention.
And if that's you, I see you, and I know how hard it is. And of course, in those situations, we also take the blame as moms. We go straight to, I'm failing, this is my fault.
I know, I've done it so many times myself as well. But what I want to invite you to notice about the story I just told you, about that typical Tuesday night in the kitchen while the mom was cooking dinner and her son came home. Nothing catastrophic happened that night.
Her son didn't say anything cruel or do anything scary in that moment. It was just a teen coming home, saying nothing, going up to his room. If you describe that exact scene to a stranger, they'd shrug and probably say, sounds like a typical teen.
And yet, even in those moments, the thought our minds often offers us is that I'm failing. It shows up even in those day-to-day, nothing-really-happened moments. The one-word answers, the kid not wanting to eat dinner with you, them staying locked up in their room all summer or always on their phone.
So I want to offer that if our minds offer this thought that I'm failing both in the big moments and in those small, relatively inconsequential moments, then maybe the thought isn't really about that moment at all. That it's not actually about the silence or the risky behavior or the mean words our kids give us. Here's what I've come to understand after years of coaching moms through very similar situations.
Those one-word answers and the eye rolls, they're just the trigger. What actually runs through our minds in those moments is a question we've been asking ourselves from the moment we became a mom. And that's, am I doing this right? Am I the mother my child needs me to be? So when these moments happen, that signal something might be off.
It doesn't just register as a mood or something that honestly has nothing to do with us. It registers as an answer to that question. Essentially, no, I'm not doing this right.
I want to walk through two different situations today that tend to trigger this thought. And on the surface, they look different, but they end up in the same place. The first is when your kid pushes back or shuts you out, the way the son did in the story I shared at the beginning.
It's those moments when your kid looks at you like you don't get it. You're so annoying. Your 15-year-old tells you you're ruining her life by taking her iPhone.
Or your 23-year-old shuts you out or ignores you every time you try to bring something up, even though it has to do with important things about their future. It's those moments when you feel shut out by the one person you would do absolutely anything for. It feels like the worst type of rejection.
And it's hard not to fear that you've somehow done something to deserve it. The second situation is different. Let me tell you about another mom.
Again, this isn't a story about a particular client, but it's built on conversations with so many moms in similar situations. This mom has a daughter in college. And every time they talked on the phone, her daughter started to sound a little more distant and quiet.
She just seemed off. She'd stop doing things that she used to love. She was staying in her room more than going out.
Her grades had slipped. But it wasn't clear that she was spending any more time studying. Long periods of time would pass before her daughter would respond to texts.
And that actually wasn't typical for her. This mom knew something was wrong. She could feel it.
But there wasn't anything she could do about it. Sometimes this mom is living hours away from their child while they're in school or working in another city. But I've heard the same thing from moms with kids still living at home.
Their kid is saying, Mom, I'm fine. Stop worrying. But you're pretty sure they're not fine.
You know something's off, and you have absolutely no way to fix it or make it better for them. This is a different type of pain than getting the silent treatment from your kid. That kind of pain is rejection.
When you're watching your big kid struggle, the feeling is closer to grief. You feel like you're watching from the edge of a dock while someone you love more than anything struggles to swim. You can't jump in.
You try to throw them some kind of device to help them, and they won't take it. So you feel helpless. But here's where both of these stories end up.
Both of them. The kid pushing back or pulling away. And the kid who says, Mom, I'm fine.
They both end up in the exact same place. This feeling that I can't reach them. I can't fix this.
There's nothing I can do. And often what's going on in our mind underneath that helplessness is another thought. That I'm failing.
I want to slow this down because what I see so often with moms I work with is that we rush past this thought. We feel it for a second and immediately start trying to problem-solve our way out of it. And here's the thing that's so interesting to me.
In the very same breath that we realize, I can't actually fix this. We start trying to fix it anyway. But what that looks like is that we replay the conversation we had with our kid over and over in our head.
Searching for the part that will help us make sense of what to do. We start drafting the text we're going to send. Then deleting it and rewriting it.
Trying to find the exact combination of words that will finally make them open up. We Google things at 11 o'clock at night or if now we're asking chat GPT. We call a friend but often end up feeling even more lost.
Because even though they love us and want to support us, them agreeing that the situation is hard doesn't necessarily make us feel better. Sometimes they even give us advice that lands the wrong way and we end up feeling even worse. We tell ourselves, tomorrow I'm going to be more patient or sit down and set expectations as if there's some right strategy that's going to make this better.
And none of that is bad. It's actually a very natural response to helplessness. But it's still our mind's attempt to try to fix.
And here's the thing. The fixing just distracts us from really getting to the heart of what's wrong. For us, when our kids are pushing back or going through something hard, if the solution we're looking for is always out there, then we're reliant on our kids finally changing, finally opening up or connecting with us so that we can feel better.
And the reason we're here is because that's not happening. So then you end up feeling totally stuck. And feeling stuck is never just one thing.
It's usually a word we use to describe not being able to escape pain. And in these situations, I think there are two separate layers of pain we can be experiencing. The first layer of pain is helplessness.
It's that feeling that nothing I'm doing is working. You've tried talking to them. You've tried giving them space.
You've tried to be patient or setting a clear boundary or approaching the conversation differently. And none of it is landing the way you want it to. You're trying and getting nowhere.
And that feeling of helplessness is deeply uncomfortable, especially when it comes to your kid and their safety and well-being, the connection you want to have with them. These are not small things. And feeling helpless in the face of them is incredibly painful.
But here's something that's really interesting to notice. The helplessness you're feeling in that moment is almost always temporary. And here's what I mean by that.
You try something and it doesn't work. You can't help in that moment. But it's situational.
But when what you try to do to connect with and support your kid doesn't work over and over, you don't just feel helpless. You start to feel hopeless. It feels like whatever the situation is right now, that it's permanent, that this is just who we are right now.
It's never going to change. He's never going to open up to me again. She's always going to be struggling.
But there's never going to be a time when this gets easier. Notice how helplessness is about a moment not working. But hopelessness says, this moment isn't working, and it never will.
And even more, that means something permanent about who we are, or who your kid is, or what all of that means for your relationship. I've had so many conversations with moms where they share these exact sentiments with me as if they're facts, not something they simply worry will be true, but as something they're certain of. The thought, I'm failing, is what happens when the helplessness moves to hopelessness.
It's when, in our minds, the pain stops being about this particular moment being hard, and turns it into, this moment is hard, and it's always going to be hard. And that must mean there's something wrong with me as a mother. Notice how the moment is already hard, and then you pile on that last part, that it's my fault, that I'm the one who can't get it right.
Notice how much more pain that creates. And look, I want to acknowledge how hard it is to let ourselves off the hook. We've all made mistakes as moms.
I know I have. I haven't always shown up as the best version of myself, sometimes far from it. On top of that, our kids can at times tell us it's our fault.
They can be very free to point out all of the things that we've done wrong for them in their life. How annoying we are. They tell us to back off.
Or if our kids are struggling with something, we wonder if it's because we didn't prepare them enough, or we modeled anxiety for them, and that's why they're anxious. Or if we could just have protected them from that hard thing, the divorce, the bad relationship. We take so much accountability.
And I think there's something beautiful in that too. We as moms are so willing to look at ourselves and try to fix whatever it is within ourselves that might have caused our kids' distance or their pain. But just notice how much we take for granted that our kids' pain, or their distance, or their struggle, is ours to have caused or prevented.
In fact, most of us believe without question that it's part of the job description of motherhood. A good mother is the one who can fix, protect them from pain, make it okay. And here's the thing, for a long stretch of their lives, that was actually true.
When your child was a baby, there was a lot you could fix. A baby cries, you went through the list of things to try, and eventually you got them to stop crying. Your kid had a nightmare, and you could go in their room and tell them it was okay.
And most importantly, they believed you. They had a scraped knee, you put on a band-aid, you kissed it better, and it was over. For so long, your presence, your actions, were enough to solve the problem right in front of you.
And that's not a story you told yourself. That was actually your lived experience for a really long time. Mine too.
But then our kids grow up, and the problems get bigger and less easily fixed. How do you fix a friendship that falls apart in eighth grade? How do you fix anxiety or a broken heart? Or a kid is determined to make a choice you can see clearly is going to hurt them, but they do it anyway. You can't make your kid motivated.
You can't magically fix their mental health. You can't make them take your advice. These challenges are much different than a nightmare or a scraped knee, most significantly because these challenges live inside our kids' minds.
I mean, are the circumstances themselves sometimes challenging? Sure, of course. But even more, it's the way our kids relate to the circumstances of their lives. And we don't have a magic wand to fix that in a way that we felt like we used to.
The problem is, we haven't stopped to question that old job description. When whatever you try to do doesn't fix the situation, you don't stop to recognize, oh, this particular thing is outside of my control. Instead, you think, I'm failing.
I'm not succeeding at doing the one thing I should be able to do to help, support, and connect with my child. My friend, when you are standing in that helpless moment, when you try to connect with your kid and they pull away again, or you try to make your kid feel better, or to make the right choice, and once again, it doesn't work, they ignore you, or they just don't feel better, you naturally feel helpless. But the lie your brain is telling you in that moment is that you have control, that you have the ability to control your kids' choices, or their feelings, or the way that they think about themselves in their lives.
Here's the hard truth. You never actually had that kind of control. Not really.
Not even when they were small, though it was so much easier to feel like you did back then. But notice how our minds often don't stop at helplessness in the face of our lack of control. Instead, they go to, if I can't control this, then nothing I do matters.
If I can't fix this, then I have no power here at all. And my friend, that is also not true. Not being able to make your son open his door and talk to you, or make your daughter tell you what's really wrong, that is real.
It is true that you do not have control there, but it does not mean you have zero influence in that relationship. Let me give you a few tangible examples of what leaning into that influence can look like. I'll start with a mom whose son came home and didn't say a word before going up to his room.
Her first instinct in that moment was to march up those stairs, knock on the door, and either apologize for something she wasn't even sure she'd done wrong, or demand he come down and talk to her. Anything. Because standing there doing nothing in that kitchen felt physically unbearable.
But she didn't do that in that moment because she already knew what would happen, because it had happened so many times before. It would turn into a fight. He'd tell her to back off and say something mean.
He also wouldn't open up. He'd just retreat further. And she'd walk away with one more piece of evidence that she was failing.
So this mom's opportunity was to see that she didn't have control over how her son connected with her, but she did have control over herself. And what that meant to her was that she decided not to chase a version of connection her son wasn't ready to give. She could decide that she didn't have to make her love and connection conditional on how he responded back.
So she chose to let him be who he needed to be, telling him she loved him while reminding herself not to expect anything in return. She could keep connecting with him, and also sit in her own discomfort in missing the connection she'd hoped for, but not needing him to change so she could feel okay. Now, none of that changed anything overnight.
But the more she practiced this, the more her son slowly opened up and was willing to offer moments of connection. By not demanding connection in the way she wanted it, she opened the door to her son connecting with her in his own way. The mom with a daughter who was struggling couldn't make her daughter open up and tell her what was wrong, but she could keep showing her daughter she was there for her whenever she was ready to talk.
She could look into the counseling resources in case her daughter was open to exploring them. She could also resist the urge to call four more times to try to get her kid to open up. It would have felt like doing something, but it really would have just been her reaching to try to make herself feel better.
And eventually, her daughter opened up to her. Not because she forced her, but because she kept the door open and allowed her daughter to do it in her own time. I share both of these stories because I want to invite you to see something.
In neither case did fixing anything actually happen in the first moment. In both of these situations, there was not an immediate fix available or in these moms' control. But what these moms did do instead was find steadiness within themselves, not needing their kids to change so they could be okay.
Now, you might hear these stories and think, oh, so the trick is just to back off, care less, don't let it get to you so much. But that's not actually what happened here. These moms didn't stop caring.
If anything, they were more tuned in, not less. What changed wasn't the depth of their love or even their concern. It was where they were putting their energy while they waited.
Instead of pouring everything into forcing a reaction from their kid, they put some of that energy back into their own steadiness. They made a conscious decision to keep caring and be in the ache of seeing someone they love struggle or pull away. But they also learned that they didn't have to let their own peace depend entirely on something they couldn't control.
In contrast to the role you've played as a mom for decades, your job now is to learn how to stay present to something you cannot fix. Nobody trained us for this version of motherhood and nobody talks about it. And my friend, it also makes so much sense that some part of you registers this messy process as failing.
Because it doesn't look anything like the way you have always measured yourself as a mother. And my friend, you are still allowed to want your son to open that door and talk to you. And of course, you want your daughter to feel like herself again and tell you what's wrong so you can help.
Wanting these things isn't the problem. The problem is only when we attach our own worth as a mother to that outcome showing up on our timeline. In exactly the way we picture it.
Those are two different things. Wanting something for your child and needing it in order to feel like you are enough. If you're sitting in the middle of this right now thinking, I understand what you're saying, but I don't know what to actually do the next time my kid doesn't talk to me or they push back or when they're struggling.
This is exactly the work we do inside Mom 2.0. Whether it's through one-on-one coaching or in my small group program, we practice this work together in real time. You'll learn how to stay present with your kid without needing to fix what's happening inside of them and separate what you actually want for your child from what you need in order to feel like a good mom. If you'd like that kind of support, I would love to talk with you.
There's a link with more information in the show notes. My friend, if you've ever felt that mix of helplessness and hopelessness and had that thought, I feel like I'm failing as a mom. I want you to consider that this is not the truth.
What is true is that you are standing in the middle of something complicated and hard and you're having to learn what it looks like to love someone without fixing everything for them. But meanwhile, you are still showing up to that work every single day. You are not giving up.
And my friend, that is not failure. That closed door does not mean it's over. And the I'm fine doesn't mean they'll never open up.
So maybe the job now isn't about fixing it, but about being steady in your love for your big kid as they go through the messy process of figuring themselves out. 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.
