A Good Parent Having a Hard Time
I have always known I wanted to be a parent. More specifically, I always knew I wanted babies. As a child, teenager, and young adult, I was drawn to them—holding them, feeding them, dressing them up. I was fifteen when my cousin Collin was born, and I still remember visiting Iowa that summer just to meet him. I don’t think I put him down the entire week.
I spent a lot of time thinking about parenthood, but only on a superficial level. I was convinced I would be a good parent, though I had no real basis for that belief beyond my easy rapport with babies. I had very little experience with children outside of the one week a year I spent at my dad’s house with my younger brothers—who were ten and thirteen years younger than me—and those occasional summers with Collin. My confidence as a future parent rested largely on my unwavering belief that my own parents had done it all wrong, and I was determined to do better. How hard could it be?
Why Parenting is Harder than I Expected
Did you know that humans are only babies—more precisely, infants—for about one year? That was my parenting sweet spot. Even amid the exhaustion of sleepless nights, I felt like I was thriving. Sure, there were difficult moments, but they were the exception, not the rule.
Then my babies became toddlers, and everything got trickier. My game plan was simple: be strict (whatever that meant) while also being present. Over the past 25 years—through therapy, parent coaching certification, and a master’s degree in counseling—I’ve learned that I wasn’t entirely off base. My presence was (and continues to be) essential. Dr Daniel Siegel, one of my inspirations in the realm of therapy and parenting, wrote a whole book about it. But my approach to discipline? That was an uneducated guess, applied in all the wrong ways.
For years, I wrestled with one persistent question: Am I a good parent or a bad parent? When my kids struggled in elementary school, I tried to discipline them out of their so-called bad behaviors, but it didn’t work. As they grew older and their challenges became more complex, my self-doubt deepened. If I was a good mom, shouldn’t my kids be struggling less and succeeding more? Didn’t their difficulties prove I was failing them?
Reflect and Repair
My therapist helped me through some of my darkest moments of self-doubt and self-criticism. Slowly, I learned to extend myself the same kindness I offered others. I had already begun stepping away from authoritarian parenting and was working toward something different—something calmer, more consistent, and rooted in love. I knew, intellectually, that every choice I had made as a parent had been the best choice I could make at the time. And I knew it was never too late to make new, and hopefully better, ones.
This is what Dr. Daniel Siegel calls the work of reflection—acknowledging where we’ve been, understanding how it shaped us, and choosing where we go next. But reflection alone isn’t enough. The next step was repair. Repairing my relationship with my children wasn’t about offering one-time apologies or just saying the right things. It required sincerity, accountability, and, most importantly, consistent action over time. My boys had to see that I meant what I said—that they were safe with me, that I wasn’t going to withdraw or punish them when things got hard.
A Good Parent Having a Hard Time
For years, I had equated my children’s struggles with my own parenting failures. But were they bad kids because they faced challenges? Of course not. So why did I believe that my struggles made me a bad mom?
Reading Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy gave me the words I had been searching for. My children (now grown men) are good people having a hard time. And I am a good parent having a hard time, too. This simple shift changed everything.
I now see that I was never alone in this struggle. Fear-based parenting happens when we label our kids—or ourselves—as bad. It turns opportunities for connection into power struggles. It fractures relationships instead of strengthening them. But when we let go of those labels, we free ourselves and our children. We create space for understanding, for closeness, and for growth.
The truth is, parenting isn’t about being good or bad. It’s about showing up, learning, and loving through the hard moments. And when we embrace that, we not only become better parents—we become better, more compassionate humans, too.
