Parenting regret: How to stop replaying past mistakes and connect with your kid right now
I’m sitting in my minivan outside the community art center, crumpled grocery list sticking to a half-empty bottle of iced coffee in my cupholder, when the text pops up from my 17-year-old Sam: Forgot my cross country cleats. Meet tomorrow. I type back I’ll drop them at school before first period, hit send, and that familiar tight twist clenches my chest. Before I can stop it, I’m replaying the memory of his first varsity banquet three years ago: I’d missed it for a last-minute client deadline, got defensive when he showed up to my home office hurt, snapped that he should have reminded me twice instead of assuming I’d clear my schedule. He’d walked away without saying anything, and I’ve replayed that interaction at least once a month ever since.
The minivan smells like cheddar Goldfish spilled between the seats last week, and a group of first graders on scooters zooms past the passenger window. This is how it goes these days. When Sam was little, we were broke, I was stuck in a soul-sucking full-time job that demanded 60 hour weeks, and I was too exhausted most nights to do anything but collapse on the couch after he went to bed. I snapped over spilled cereal before school, let him watch four hours of TV on weekends so I could answer emails, missed more parent-teacher conferences than I attended, and once forgot to pack his lunch for a whole week of field trips because I was so caught up in a work project. Now things are different: I quit that job, work part-time from home, we have extra money for art classes and soccer travel, I have energy to bake chocolate chip cookies after school most weeks. But every small lull in my day, every awkward silence with Sam, every mistake I make now pulls me right back to all the mistakes I made back then. I got the first kid wrong to get the second right, I think some nights, when I can’t sleep. I broke him before I learned how to do this.
Last week, we had pepperoni pizza for dinner, and Sam came down from his room after finishing a college application essay to grab a second slice. I passed him the plate, and when he mentioned he’d had a tough talk with his advisor about early decision, I slipped into my old habit: I started apologizing for not helping him narrow down his school list a month earlier, for being too distracted by Lila’s end-of-term projects to ask about his applications. He paused mid-bite, wiped grease off his thumb on his sweatpants, and looked at me. “Mom, why do you keep doing that?” he said. I blinked. “Doing what?” “Bringing up all this old stuff you feel bad about. I don’t even remember half of it. Most of the time, I don’t care.”
That hit me harder than I expected. I’d spent so long carrying all these regrets that I never stopped to ask if they were still my kid’s problem, or if they were just mine. I was so busy trying to make up for the past that I wasn’t showing up for the kid he is now.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve worked out a few small things that help, nothing fancy. When I feel that regret twist start, I do a 10-second check-in: I name the regret quietly to myself (“I regret missing that banquet”) and then I name one thing that’s true right in front of me (“Sam just texted me about cleats, he’s okay, I can drop them off tomorrow”). It doesn’t make the regret disappear, but it pulls me back out of three years ago and into right now.
Another thing: if I do need to apologize, I keep it short. I used to give these long, rambling speeches about how stressed I was back then, how I wish I could do it all over, and I realized I was making my kid comfort me about my own guilt. Now, I only bring up a past mistake if he brings it up first, and if I do need to say I’m sorry, it’s just “I’m sorry I handled that wrong back then” and that’s it. No extra monologues, no putting him in the position to make me feel better.
I also stopped comparing my two kids’ childhoods. I used to look at Lila, who has me at every art show and soccer game, who gets homemade lunch packed every day, and feel even worse about what Sam didn’t get. But then I started asking Sam about his favorite childhood memories, and half of them are things that only happened because we were busy and broke: walking down to the bakery below our old apartment every morning for free donut holes, learning to ride the bus by himself when he was 8 because I couldn’t leave work to drive him, staying up late watching old action movies with me when I got home late and couldn’t sleep. He got something I can’t give Lila, a kind of independence that’s making this whole college transition so much easier for him. It’s not a consolation prize. It’s just his childhood, different from Lila’s, not worse.
Two weekends ago, I dropped Sam’s cleats off at the high school track before his meet. He was leaning against the fence laughing with his friends, and he jogged over to grab the bag from me. Before I could stop myself, I almost opened my mouth to mention that long-ago missed banquet, to say I was sorry again. But I closed my mouth, just smiled, and he gave me a quick side hug before running back to his friends. I got in the car and drove home, and the regret didn’t pop up once the whole ride.
I still mess up. Last night, I was folding laundry and pulled out Sam’s old middle school soccer jersey, and that twist came right back. I stood there by the dryer for a minute thinking about all the games I missed when he was that age. But then Lila banged on the door asking me to help her braid her hair for school spirit week tomorrow, and I folded the jersey and put it back on the shelf. I got the brush out, we argued over whether pink or silver glitter spray looked better, and for the next 15 minutes, I wasn’t anywhere near the past. I was right there.
That’s all it is, I think. You don’t have to erase the regret to make the most of what you have now. Some days, you just put the jersey down, and go braid the hair.
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