Mom guilt is the worst. You may be constantly checking on the baby monitor (or even running into her room) to make sure she is breathing even though you know she is going to be shrieking in exactly 28.5 minutes for her next feeding.
You know that he is going to resent you and you will blame yourself for not feeling that instant connection when he was born. This is one of the most challenging forms of mom guilt!
Instead of proudly wearing that super mom cape, you feel strangled by those unrealistic expectations to make sure all your kiddos are fed/bathed/looking halfway presentable and not wearing that onesie that she was wearing in last week’s Instagram post.
But, you still need to move the laundry to the dryer before it grows mold, check Google to verify that she is hitting all of her developmental milestones, and be the housewife who has a balanced dinner on the table at 6:30, but make it kid friendly so they don’t know you are serving cauliflower.
Don’t even get me started on how to balance all that with working or even the thought of returning to work!
Let’s be honest, your life isn’t even close to what Instagram says it should be. How can you live up to those Pinterest moms who have never have a hair out of place and can whip up a pastry chef inspired dessert for 24 third graders between orthodontists’ appointments and yoga class?
Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Facebook at night when you know you should be sleeping? You just cannot turn off your mind off from the compare-and-despair of the mom guilt?
ACT 1: SCENE 1 IT ALL STARTED WITH DAYCARE
You receive a call from the daycare that your son bit one of his friends. This is the first sign that you have failed as a mom! Your new found psychic abilities allow you to predict with horror the next 20 years of his life!
He will be kicked out of every daycare!
No parent is going to let their children have playdates with him!
You will be shunned from your religious organization!
He will struggle endlessly in school due to his undiagnosed ADHD!
And how soon can a kid enter group therapy for borderline personality disorder??
You will obviously ruin his entire life because now he is not going to graduate middle school… he is going to start vaping… that is going to be his gateway drug… you will be called to bail him out of jail for dealing meth when he is 16!!!!
All your attempts at showing him love are going to blow up in your face and he is going to locked up in solitary confinement and now you need to move within an hour of maximum-security prison in order to visit him once a week. ACK!!!
You can see how the mom guilt rant can go…
HELP FOR THE MOM GUILT SYNDROME
You feel like you are scrambling. You can’t handle all the responsibilities that you have put on yourself. You are falling down a slippery slope and you can’t find your footing. It’s scary and it sucks. You don’t know what to do to feel like you even have a small part of your life in order. What needs to change in order for you to feel like yourself again?
You don’t need to take on ALL THE THINGS! No one has asked you to put on the supermom cape, but you “KNOW” what it takes to be a good mom and you just can’t measure up. Please just stop! Your kids aren’t going to remember whether or not you had a hot meal on the table every night and that you managed to get them to happily eat cauliflower. You are not going to be blocked & “unfollowed” because your daughter wears the same outfit more than once in a Facebook post. Your son is not going to end up in prison just because he bit one of his friends in daycare.
Do you see how ridiculous I sounded when I jumped to the conclusion of maximum-security prison from a minor bite? This is what anxiety does. Our minds take a small bit of information and turn it into the absolute worst-case scenario. In a sick and twisted way, our mind is trying to protect us. It is trying keep us from being hurt and if we are prepared for the worst, then we have a better chance of minimizing the damage.
I am going to challenge you to look for the evidence that the worst-case scenario is going to happen.
- Has he bitten before and found himself kicked out of middle school?
- Do you know of anyone who ended-up in prison because she started out as a biter in daycare?
- Do you have the magic crystal ball that allows you to see the future? If you do, please let me borrow it!
What are other alternatives that may happen? My guess is that he is going to go back to daycare (possibly with a bit extra supervision) and eventually he is going to stop biting his friends. This is the much more likely scenario.
Please be gentle with yourself. You are not a bad mom. You are not a failure. You are not a monster if you get angry and lose your temper. You are not ruining your child. You don’t have to keep up with other moms- those social media posts are 90% bullshit! You are not your mistakes. You can love your children and be sad for your old life. Mom guilt is a lie. You are enough! You are not alone! You got this mama and we have your back!
Sending you lots of support!
Amy
Amy Jackson is a Licensed Professional Counselor and is the owner of Sweetgrass Counseling in South Carolina. Amy works with new moms and moms to be to realize that being a mom doesn’t have to suck.
She loves working with women and teaching them how to recognize and quite their inner critic so that they can become the bad ass mothers that are connected to their children and partners.
Amy is one of the first counselors in South Carolina complete the Advanced components of Care with Postpartum Support International where she received specialized training to diagnosis and treat the 80% of moms who experience the overwhelming feelings of being a new mom. Amy provides a safe space to talk about mom guilt, how to manage expectations of being mom, and provides practical therapeutic interventions that you can use when you are wide awake at 3am scrolling through social media imagining how you are going to screw up your kiddos.
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