Badly Needed Advice for Moms: You Don’t Have to Fix Every Bad Mood Your Kid Has
Last Tuesday, I stood at the kitchen sink unloading the dishwasher, a half-spilled mug of cold coffee on the counter next to me, and a 10-minute deadline for a work email hanging over my head. The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the spice rack, and my 7-year-old Lila stomped in, one sparkly pink croc slipping off her heel before she even made it to the shoe bin. Her cheeks were splotchy red, her lower lip pushed out so far it almost touched her nose.
Mia didn’t save me a spot at the art table, she said, voice cracking. She knew I wanted to sit next to her.
Three months ago, I would have dropped the wet plate I was holding right into the rack, wiped my hands on my jeans, and jumped in. I’d have pulled her into a hug, told her it was okay, offered to bake her favorite chocolate chip cookies after dinner to cheer her up, suggested she ask another friend to sit with her tomorrow, maybe even pull out the new pack of gel pens I’d hidden for a rainy day to distract her. And nine times out of ten, she’d have screamed that it wasn’t okay, stomped up the stairs to her room, and slammed the door so hard the walls shook, leaving me standing in the kitchen wondering what I’d done wrong.
That day, I couldn’t do that. My shoulders ached from hunching over my laptop all morning, I was already late on that email, and I couldn’t summon the energy to problem-solve. I just leaned my hip against the counter, held the wet plate I’d been holding, and said, That sounds really terrible. That sucks so much.
She stood there for a second, twisting the strap of her backpack. Then she said, And then she laughed when I tripped over the jump rope at recess. I scraped my knee really bad.
I nodded, set the plate in the dish rack, and said, That’s so rude of her. Scraping your knee in front of everyone is the worst.
She walked over and leaned her head against my leg, and stood there while I finished unloading the silverware. Two minutes later, she looked up and asked for a peanut butter granola bar, then carried it to the dining table to color. No stomping, no meltdown, no me trying and failing to fix everything.
I got this advice completely by accident at Lila’s fall parent-teacher conference. I’d spent 10 minutes complaining to her teacher that Lila got upset over “every little thing” and I never knew how to calm her down. I kept trying to make it better, I said, and it only made it worse. Her teacher, who’d taught first graders for 22 years and had that calm, no-nonsense energy only veteran elementary teachers get, leaned back in her chair and said, The problem isn’t Lila. It’s that you’re trying to fix it before she’s done feeling it.
Most of the time, she said, kids don’t come to you to get their problem solved. They come to you to get the big icky feeling out. If you jump straight to fixing it or distracting them, you’re telling them that their bad feeling is too big for you to handle, and too big for them to handle too.
That was the badly needed advice I’d never seen in any parenting book or social media reel. All the advice I’d gotten before was about keeping kids happy, solving their problems, making sure they never felt left out or disappointed. No one told me that letting them sit in the bad feeling was the best thing I could do.
I started testing it out after that conference, and I’ve picked up a few small, concrete things that work for us that any mom can try tomorrow. First, I just name the feeling out loud, right away, no extra stuff. I don’t say “I know how you feel” because half the time I don’t. I just say “That sounds so frustrating” or “That’s really disappointing” or even just “That sucks.” That’s it. I don’t add anything else unless they ask. Second, I don’t rush to distract them with treats or toys to make the bad mood go away. I used to pull out new stickers or promise a trip to the park just to stop the crying, and now I just let the crying happen. Third, if they want to go be alone after they talk, I don’t follow them or knock every two minutes to ask if they’re okay. I just say “I’m right down here if you want me” and leave it.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, Lila’s half-built Lego castle fell off the table and broke into a hundred pieces, and I said “That’s so frustrating, you worked two days on that” and she still screamed and threw a foam block across the living room. I just left the broken pieces where they were, told her I’d help pick them up when she was ready, and went back to folding laundry. Fifteen minutes later she came out and got me, and we sorted the pieces together. That’s still a win, even if there was screaming first.
I still slip up sometimes. When I’m stressed about work or running late, I still catch myself offering a lollipop to make the crying stop. I still jump in to fix a fight with her brother before either of them have even said what’s wrong. But more often than not, this works way better than the old way I did things.
Last night I sat on the front step after Lila went to bed, drinking that cold coffee I’d forgotten about earlier, and thought about how this is the advice I’d give any mom who’s pulling her hair out trying to make everything okay for her kid. You don’t have to fix every bad thing that happens to them. You don’t have to make every bad mood go away before it gets dark. Some days, the only thing you need to do is stand there, hold your wet plate, and say that it sucks. That’s enough, more often than not. It’s still messy, and some days we both end up in bed upset before the day is over. But it’s working for us, right now, and that’s enough.
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