Why Do I Keep Asking “Am I Not a Good Mom?” And 3 Small Shifts That Help
Last Tuesday, I stood at my cracked kitchen sink scrubbing caked-on mac and cheese off a plastic bowl, cold oat coffee sweating next to my elbow, and the question crept in quiet: Am I not a good mom? Ten minutes earlier, I’d pulled up to the elementary bus loop five minutes too late. Lila, my 7-year-old, had texted me from her friend’s phone, voice shaking, that she’d left her diorama of the solar system on the dining table. I’d reminded her to pack it three times that morning. When I got the text, I’d snapped into the phone: “I told you three times. Why can’t you remember anything?” By the time I talked myself into driving over, the bus had already pulled away.
My phone was pinging with notifications from the class mom group, one of which linked to a reel that said “If you snap at your kid, you’re teaching them their needs don’t matter.” I stared at the dried glue smudge Lila had left on the counter that morning, and that question got louder.
Two weeks before that, I’d sat in Lila’s parent-teacher conference, and her teacher Mrs. Henderson had leaned across the desk and said Lila’s working memory is running a little behind where most kids her age are. It’s not a big deal, she said, it just means she can’t hold onto more than one or two instructions at a time, even when she wants to. She draws great, talks to every kid on the playground, resolves fights on the playground before anyone has to call a teacher, she just can’t remember to pack her homework. I left that conference feeling like I’d failed. I’d been getting mad at her for being careless, when it was just her brain growing at its own pace. I promised myself I’d be better, more patient, never snap again. So when I snapped about the diorama, that doubt hit so much harder than it usually does.
When Lila got home that afternoon, she slammed her bedroom door. I waited 20 minutes, grabbed a frozen chocolate chip cookie from the back of the freezer (the good kind I save for bad days), knocked, and sat down on the floor next to her bed. She rolled over, face sticky from crying, and said “I know I’m stupid. I always forget everything.” I told her she wasn’t stupid, that I was wrong to yell, that I’m just still learning how to help her, okay?
I’ve talked to a handful of other mom friends since then, and almost all of them have asked themselves that same question, usually right after a fight or a hard day. It’s not that we did something unforgivable. It’s that we’re holding ourselves to a standard that doesn’t exist. We mix up our kid’s developmental differences with our own failure. If they struggle with something, we think it’s because we’re not good enough, not because their brain is still growing into that skill.
After the diorama incident, Mrs. Henderson and I came up with three small things to try, none of which cost money or take more than five minutes a day. First, we hung a cheap dry erase board on the wall right next to our front door, exactly where Lila puts her shoes on every morning. Every night before bed, we write down any non-regular items she needs to bring the next day—diorama, soccer cleats, library book— and we added “homework folder” as a permanent line that stays up all the time. Before she walks out the door, she has to point to each item and say it out loud to check she has it. I don’t remind her. She checks the board. Second, we started a tiny sticker chart taped to the fridge. If she checks the board and remembers everything for five full school days, she gets a $2 pack of glitter gel pens, which is all she’s obsessed with right now. Third, I came up with one short line I say out loud when I feel my temper start to rise: “I need one minute to breathe before we fix this.” It stops me from snapping before I can think about what’s actually going on.
Last week, we went two whole weeks without me having to turn the car around for a forgotten item. Lila came home from school waving a sticker she got for returning her library book on time, and she made me put an extra star on her chart next to the regular ones. But two days ago, she left her new water bottle at school, and I was running late for a work meeting, and I almost blew up again. I stopped, said that line about the one minute, breathed, and then we added “water bottle” to the permanent list on the dry erase board. No big fight, no big guilt trip, just a small adjustment.
I still ask that question some days. Last night, I yelled when I found out she colored all over the dining table with permanent marker after I told her not to draw on the table. I sat on the porch after she went to bed, drinking another cold coffee, and there it was: Am I not a good mom?
But now I know what that question really is most of the time. It’s not a final judgment. It’s just me caring enough to want to do better. Some days go well, some days we forget things and we yell and we color on tables. We adjust the dry erase board, we add a new permanent line item, we apologize if we need to. It’s not perfect. I don’t think it’s supposed to be. Some nights, I go to bed knowing I did the best I could that day, and that’s enough for right now.
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