How to Handle “Bad Mom” Feelings
Have you ever been in a situation where you are sharing your parenting experiences with your parent, a relative, a mom-friend, or online and the feedback or comments have an alert going off in your brain blaring “Bad Mom”? If this sounds familiar, read on.
Most commonly for me, this alert tends to be triggered by my mom. I could be sharing new things I’m trying to implement with my son, telling her about the latest parenting debacles I’ve run into, or having her on FaceTime while we go about our daily routines.
Without fail, she is compelled to chime in with her two cents on what I should be doing instead, what my son needs at that moment, and mostly, just how I could be doing mom-things better. Now, she doesn’t do this with the intention of making me feel bad, she just feels it’s her job as a grandmother to try and help guide me in what she believes is the right direction.
For example, my son will be sitting in his highchair while I’m preparing his meal and my mom will be on FaceTime telling me that he needs something to play with, he looks thirsty, telling my son “Doesn’t your mom have some toys for you to play with while you wait?”
It can be exasperating at times. Especially, when the toys I gave him to play with were now on the ground, but she conveniently called after said toys had disappeared from the tray, along with the empty sippy cup from the water he just pounded.
She makes her comment and on cue, the red warning lights start flashing in my brain as the announcement blares through the speakers of my cranium… ”Bad Mom”. For the most part, I don’t take it to heart.
In fact, it’s become the running joke in my home. As soon as any condensing words are uttered from my mother’s mouth, I’ll look at my sister and say “Did you hear that? ‘Bad Mom’ Wait, there it is again ‘Bad Mom’”.
It’s my way of sending the message back to my mom that I hear speaking, but it’s coming through similar to how the adult voices appear in an episode of Charlie Brown in the form of “Bad Mom”. I have heard what she said, but it automatically translates itself into those two words.
It’s a running joke that has no end because I know that she cannot hold her opinions inside. She needs to let them out or like an over-inflated balloon, she will burst.
I’m sure if you are reading this, that you have experienced something similar. It may be your mom, a friend of yours, or someone commenting on your latest post that thinks they know best.
Now, I’m not saying that the information or advice they are providing you with is wrong or that you should just ignore them. They may have valid points or useful tips that will in fact help you to be a better mom, but it doesn’t mean that the alert in your brain won’t be triggered.
In With The Good, Out With The Bad
Think of this as a little breathing technique if you will. When that alert inevitably starts sounding, just take a breath, consider what they are saying, inhale and absorb the good information, and exhale the unusable advice and bad feelings.
There is no need to internalize or overthink things. If there are ways you can improve from the information provided, great, but don’t let it weigh you down.
Use it as a learning opportunity and figure out how you can make it work for you, not against you.
This will not stop the alerts from happening, if that’s what you were thinking. I believe as moms it is hardwired into our programming.
There is no perfect way to parent. Every parent and every child is different and you can’t help but have insecurities during this trial-and-error experiment we are conducting called parenting.
There’s no hard and fast-written guidebook on how to be the best parent in all the land. There are tools out there to help you if you are looking for ways to be a better parent, but the bottom line is you are the parent.
You know what is best for your child and what works best for your family. You’ll continue to learn and grow together, but you get to choose what information you’ll accept and implement based on what you feel will benefit your family.
Trust those mommy instincts.
Take The Negativity With A Grain of Salt And Then Throw That Shit Over Your Shoulder
As a single mom by choice, there are people out there that have strong opinions about my choice. It’s something that made it hard for me to decide to put myself and my experiences out there into the world.
Especially in this day and age where everyone has an opinion about literally everything. I was worried about how it would affect me to receive any negative comments or feedback about my choice.
And then it happened. I received a comment on one of the social posts I published about there not being a ‘perfect’ time to start a family on your own.
Someone who obviously has strong opinions on the subject commented something that I feel was meant to be an attack on my and other women’s choice to start a family on our own. And you guessed it, that triggered that alert in my brain and the chanting began.. ‘Bad Mom, Bad Mom, Bad Mom’.
But then I stopped, took a breath, and just exhaled that negativity out of my body. Now, I’m not going to lie, it didn’t feel great reading that and I did not respond back.
I feel that people who comment things like that are just looking for attention and I was not going to be the one to give it to them. But after I read it and made the decision to leave it lie, I let it go.
I wadded up that negativity with that grain of salt, threw it over my shoulder, and moved on. There was no sense in me dwelling in it.
I’m a firm believer in ‘it’s your life, you should do what you want with it’. Unless it’s directly affecting you and how you live your life, you don’t need to worry about what others are doing, saying, living, etc. Just worry about yourself and how you’re living. Be kind and try your best to be a good person.
But I feel like I’m straying a little off-topic. My point is that people are always going to have their opinions or need to give that piece of advice, and you most likely will always have some version of that insecurity alarm chiming in your head.
It’s basically buit in as a reflex, but you also have the power to choose how to react and recover when that happens. In with the good, out with the bad, and then kick that negative shit to the curb.
If you are out there trying to be the best mom you can be for your kid, then they are the luckiest kid in the world.
Cheers, Warriors!
I hope you enjoyed reading this post and found it entertaining, educational, inspiring—hopefully, all three. Please be sure to leave any comments or questions you have in the Comments section below.
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