Am I Not a Good Mom? Why Guilt Hits After Toddler Outbursts (And What Actually Helps)
Last Tuesday, I pulled into the grocery store parking lot at 4:17 p.m., just 10 minutes before my husband got home from work. I needed milk for dinner, a new tube of toothpaste, and 10 minutes of quiet that I wasn’t going to get, because my 3-year-old Lila insisted on coming inside with me instead of waiting in the car with the windows down. By the checkout line, she spotted the rainbow goldfish crackers displayed right at toddler eye level, and asked for one. I said no, we already had crackers at home. That’s when it happened: she dropped to the linoleum, screamed so loud the cashier looked up, and kicked a whole stack of peppermint gum off the display.
I bent to pick her up, and she slapped my arm. A woman in the line behind me huffed and shifted her groceries. A teenager leaning against the candy rack snickered. I left my full cart right there, grabbed Lila under one arm, and walked out to the car, my face hot the whole way. I strapped her into her car seat, closed the door, and sat in the driver’s seat staring at the steering wheel. The question popped into my head before I could stop it: Am I not a good mom?
I’ve been a parent for three years, and that question pops up at least once a week. It pops up after I yell about drawing on the living room wall with lipstick. It pops up when I give her chicken nuggets for dinner for the third night in a row because I’m too tired to cook. It popped up last month when I forgot to bring the snack to her playgroup, and I sat in the car while she ate a crumbly granola bar from the bottom of my bag, cringing the whole time. I used to scroll parenting Instagram before I wised up, and I’d see moms posting about no-yell days and homemade organic popsicles and daily nature walks, and that question would get louder. I’m doing this all wrong, I’d think. I’m not a good mom.
After the grocery store incident, I texted my sister, who’s been a preschool teacher for 12 years, and asked her to come over with wine after dinner. She showed up, sat on my back porch, and let me vent for 20 minutes before she said anything. Then she told me something I haven’t forgotten. She said she hears that exact question from at least one parent a month, usually after a kid has a big meltdown at school. Most of the time, the parent is convinced the outburst is their fault—that they didn’t teach self-control, that they spoiled the kid, that they messed up. But she said big outbursts in 3- and 4-year-olds aren’t a sign of bad parenting. They’re a sign of being 3. The part of the brain that calms down big feelings doesn’t finish growing until you’re in your 20s, she reminded me. A toddler can’t just talk through the disappointment of not getting crackers any more than they can do algebra.
She gave me two small things to try the next time that question popped into my head, instead of spiraling into guilt. First, when the dust settles after a hard moment, pause for 10 full minutes before you judge yourself. If you’re upset, drink a cup of coffee, sit on the porch, scroll something silly that’s not parenting content. Don’t start replaying the moment 100 times when you’re still amped up from adrenaline. Second, when you do talk to your kid after, name their feeling first before you talk about what they did wrong. Instead of opening with “Why did you scream at the store?” start with “I know you really wanted those goldfish, and that made you really sad and mad when I said no.” It sounds small, but it changes everything. Before, I’d jump straight to correcting the behavior, and Lila would just keep screaming because no one had told her her feelings made sense. Now, most of the time, she calms down twice as fast.
I tried this last week, when Lila had a meltdown before daycare because her socks felt “too lumpy.” I used to roll my eyes and tell her the socks were fine and we were going to be late. This time, I stopped, said “Lumpy socks feel so uncomfortable, don’t they? That’s the worst,” and pulled out a different pair. Done. No fight, no yelling, no guilt afterward.
It’s not fixed, of course. I still yell sometimes. Last night I snapped when Lila poured her apple juice all over my work laptop that I need to pay our bills. I raised my voice way more than I needed to, and she hid behind the couch crying. After I blotted the keyboard with a paper towel, I went over, sat down next to her, and said “I’m sorry I yelled. I was really upset about the laptop, but that’s my job to calm down before I talk to you. That was my mistake.” She handed me her stuffed rabbit, and we cleaned the rest of the juice up together.
I also still forget to do the 10-minute pause sometimes. I’ll sit on the couch replaying the grocery store moment for an hour, wondering what I could have done differently, what that stranger thinks of me. But I deleted all the parenting accounts from my Instagram feed six months ago, that’s one small change that cut the guilt down by half. I don’t compare my messy everyday to someone else’s curated highlight reel anymore.
I still get that question sometimes. Am I not a good mom? It pops up when we’re late, when we have cereal for dinner, when a stranger stares at us after a meltdown. But now I don’t spiral for hours. I wait 10 minutes, I remember that one bad 5 minutes doesn’t erase all the good 5 minutes: the nights I stay up holding her when she has a fever, the 10 times I read her favorite dinosaur book in a row, the time I built that lopsided block tower and she cheered like it was the best thing she’d ever seen. Strangers and social media don’t see all that. They just see the messy parts. And that’s okay. I don’t need to be good every minute to be a good mom most of the time.
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