Are You Winning at Parenting? How to Know

How do you know if you're winning or losing at parenting? As a mom, you want to get it RIGHT: to know you're doing a good job, that all the hardship and self-sacrifice you're enduring is paying off. The stakes feel so high—maybe higher than any other area of your life—because this is your kids we're talking about! Getting it “wrong” can have big implications for their future life.

In this episode, I offer my definition of what it really means to be winning at parenting, sharing three of my own recent wins and two very painful “losses” as examples.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why you can’t judge your success as a mother by external factors like your kids’ behavior, performance, or happiness…let alone anyone else’s opinion
• What “winning” at parenting actually looks (and feels) like
• How unbelievably HARD it is to parent in a winning way when it’s the complete opposite of how your parents parented you  
• Why it’s so important to keep a record of your parenting wins
• What your parenting “losses” have the opportunity to teach you

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

Ready to take radical responsibility for your own happiness so your kids see you living your best life and know that’s possible for them, too? The Happy Mom ProtocolTM will fundamentally change your perspective on prioritizing your happiness above all else and equips you with six simple “Happiness Habits” that are scientifically PROVEN to help you be significantly happier in just seven days!

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HOMEWORK:

Your homework for today is reflect on the last time you “won” at parenting. Why? Start keeping a record of your winning at parenting moments to document that you are a good mom. I’d be honored if you shared your answers with me via email or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity.

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode to learn about attachment styles and how childhood experiences shape your—and your kids’—degree and kind of connection to others.

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Transcript

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How do you know if you're winning or losing at parenting? As a mom, you want to get it right, to know you're doing a good job, that all the hardship and self-sacrifice you're enduring is paying off. The stakes feel so high, maybe higher than any other area of your life, because this is your kids we're talking about. Getting it quote unquote wrong can have big implications for their future life. In this episode, I'm going to give you my definition of what it really means to be winning at parenting and how to know you are. I'll be so curious to know whether you agree, and I'll share three of my recent wins as a mother and two very painful losses that are ongoing challenges I am still trying to solve. Welcome to More Time for Mom. where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. Parenting is so hard. You love your kids so much. You do so much for them. And yet, moment by moment, it often feels like you're failing. I want to offer that what it means to be winning or losing at parenting is very different than how you may have conceived it up to this point. How you can know now, in the moment, when the reality is that parenting is such a long-term game And more than anything, just offer solidarity that life is 50-50. You are going to win some. You are definitely going to lose some. The important thing is knowing that neither the wins nor the losses change what an incredible mother you are. If you define winning at parenting by external factors beyond your control, like your kid's behavior, their performance in school or sports, their happiness, other people's impressions of them or of you, any of that, I would argue, is simply a vanity metric. You might have moments where those things all fall into place and you feel great, but it's much more common that you won't because your kids are their complete own little selves. You can force compliance, but that doesn't mean you're giving your kids what they really need, especially for their long-term well-being. I find it's much more helpful to conceive of winning at parenting based on what you can control, your reactions. I know I went into motherhood wanting to be the perfect mom. If you haven't heard the saying that everyone is a perfect parent until they have their own kids, it is so true. And that was me. I really thought I knew before having kids what it was going to be like. I was so determined that I was going to do things a certain way. And I had convinced myself that there was one right way to do everything. especially basing those decisions on what didn't seem to be working for other people, right? Kind of a very self-righteous attitude that my kids weren't going to be like those screaming toddlers I saw on the airplane or the grocery store or whatever else. And then, spoiler alert, of course my kids have done that. That's what kids do. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you as the parent. 12 years into my parenting journey and with over six and a half years of life coaching experience, here is how I now define winning at parenting. It is you being able to stay emotionally regulated despite whatever chaotic situation you are confronted with. And it's likely a situation where your kids are extremely emotionally dysregulated. Another way of winning at parenting is when your kids demonstrate the skill of being able to emotionally regulate themselves in the midst of a challenging situation, without needing you to do that. And for me, that's the big goal, right? I feel so blessed and so determined to give my kids that skill that I certainly didn't have growing up, that I didn't see modeled to me. By that definition, quote unquote, losing at parenting could be taken to be the opposite. Anytime that you are dysregulated because of your kids or in front of your kids, and especially if your emotional dysregulation causes them to become dysregulated and causes long-term lasting harm, complex trauma, a lot of, you know, the things that we now as adults are going to therapy or coaching for because we realize how our parents' parenting had a tremendous impact on our personalities. But I would argue that there's really no such thing as losing at parenting as long as you are determined to meet your kids' basic needs. You are providing them love, security, shelter. You are present for them, not 100% of the time, but when you are with them, they feel good around you. All of that to say that we don't really know if we are winning or losing at parenting in the short term because parenting is something that we will be doing the rest of our lives, right? The rest of our children's lives. It is a long-term game. It is also the most thankless thing ever. You are never going to be able to fully know with 100% certainty how you did or be able to take 100% credit for any so-called positive results that your children display. It would be easy to then get discouraged because how do we know how we're doing if we can't see the results, right? But I hope you will find it actually very freeing because neither should you then blame yourself for any quote-unquote bad results your children display. Again, winning is entirely subjective. And we want you as the mother to feel in control, not of your kids or their behavior or the outcome, but of yourself every moment that you are parenting. And this is so hard. Your brain is naturally overstimulated, threatened, triggered by your kids more than probably anything else you have ever experienced in your life from the beginning. The odds are really stacked against us, aren't they? It's like you can't know what you don't know until you join the club and become a mother and are thrown into the lion's den with all of these very stressful, very difficult situations and have to figure it out as you go. After I share my recent winning and losing experiences with you, I will come back to what I call the winning at parenting formula and give you some more recommendations on how you can try and have more wins in your own experience. But again, I really just want to underscore that I'm sharing some of my situations, and that's not meant to in any way make anyone feel bad or say this means I am doing a great job. It's just my interpretation of these situations and me feeling good about how either myself or my kids handled a recent situation. Let's start with the wins because, of course, we want to focus most on the positive things. The three wins I'm going to share with you are all things that have happened within the last few months, and you will see that they are very small moments in time, but they epitomize so much of the big, deep work I have been striving to do as I've been on my own motherhood and personal development journey. The first win was back in April. I had finished up a really long day of work and then hurried to drive home, didn't have a chance to eat dinner, stopped by the house to pick up my sixth grader to get him off to a soccer game while my husband was going to stay home and watch the other kids. I just assumed that I knew where the soccer game was, even though all of his games had been at different locations. Somehow, I thought I recalled that it was going to be at this one particular place, and I was just on autopilot. I drove straight there, we were doing fine on time, we pulled into the parking lot with 20 minutes to go before game time, only to realize that I had totally taken us to the wrong location. The coach had already emailed the parents earlier that week, underscoring that this was a very big game for the team and it was nearing the Easter holiday, so other people were already going to be out of town. The team was going to be short of a few players, meaning it was very important for all the other players to be there so that the team didn't have to forfeit the game. And my brain immediately just went to the worst place, feeling so horrible and so stressed. And, OK, hurry, get back in the car. We've got to drive to this other location. Only to find out that it was 30 minutes away. There was no way we could make it on time. And my brain was just spiraling with all of these really hard, hurtful, unhelpful thoughts. Only about myself, right? But this inner critic saying, you're such a terrible mom. Why didn't you check your schedule? This is what happens when you are working and not fully focused on your kids. You're letting the team down. You always mess everything up. And I was having this big internal battle with myself. Meanwhile, my sixth grader, my 11-year-old son, was so calm. He just very nonchalantly said, Mom, it's OK. No problem. We'll get there when we get there. I'll help the team as soon as we arrive. Don't worry. Don't freak out. I forget his exact words. But he really was so amazingly calm and patient and kind to me in this situation that I just realized how much I didn't want to project my people-pleasing tendency and my fear of having let anyone down onto him. And I just appreciate it. We talked the whole way to the soccer game about how great it was that he could respond to a problem with such a calm mind and not make it mean anything about him, right? Not take on fault or blame and really just be able to focus on a solution and move on with his day. It was an incredible example. of him having this skill of emotional regulation and problem solving that I am always trying to drill into my kids. My constant refrain to my boys is John Lennon's famous quote, no problems, only solutions. If I had a dollar for every time my son reminds me of that refrain, the one I'm always telling him, It just really lights me up because it shows that he is acquiring this mindset, this deep belief that that is how you handle life, right? No problems, only solutions. And this was a moment where we had a problem. I was immediately making the problem bigger than it was. I was making it mean something about me. And ultimately, it was fine. We got to the game. We were late, but the team still did fine. I can't remember if they won or lost, but I had an incredible, incredible conversation full of love and connection with my son, who was helping me through this difficult moment. As you can see, this is such a small example, but the fact that it wasn't an issue for my son really helped me get through it and think, okay, you know, he's doing all right. The second example of winning at parenting that I want to share happened a few weeks ago. I took my little three-year-old up to our neighborhood park and he had started this thing where he likes to stand on the gate that encircles the park and then be swung on the gate. But I was feeling really tired that night, and I wanted him to just get on the gate, swing inside, the gate would lock, he could play, and I could just kind of sit and relax. But he climbed onto the gate from the outside and wasn't understanding. Every time I told him, no, you've got to come around and get on this side. And I would try and and direct him, and he just refused to get onto the other side of the gate. So finally, I said, you need to come on this side of the gate, or I will get you down and just carry you inside the park. Of course, he either didn't understand or just chose not to comply. And so I picked him up off of the gate, put him inside the park, the gate closed, and he ran off screaming. He was so upset. And he was then in a corner of the park, just kind of squatting down with his arms crossed and crying, and it was not a hurt cry. He was totally fine. If you have kids, you know it's just the cry that they didn't get what they want. Early in my parenting journey, I couldn't stand that cry and I immediately would have felt that I had done something wrong and be doing everything else in my control to fix it and make him feel better, right? To take away his perceived pain. But in this moment, I just went over and sat down on one of the swings and I just waited. There were other moms and kids at the park and I saw that they were looking at me and they were kind of wondering, What did that mom do? Why is her kid crying? What is she going to do now? I just waited. And didn't make their glances or potential judgment mean anything about me, let alone change my course of action. And within a minute or two. Seriously couldn't have been very long. My little three-year-old stopped crying and walked over to me and with crossed arms said, you make me so sad and mad when you do that. He was so sweet and calm in how he said it that my heart just burst because He was using words to communicate his feelings. He clearly had words to map onto the precise emotions he was feeling and multiple emotions at that, right? That he could verbalize. He felt sad and mad. Was amazing to me. And then we had this little conversation about how you have every right to feel sad and mad. You didn't get what you want, but mommy was trying to tell you what you needed to do and you didn't. So I brought you inside the park to keep you safe. It was just a quick conversation. Then I went ahead and we started playing and did all of the fun things we normally do at the park. had a great time and the old moment was forgotten. So I just felt so proud of how he had the skill, even as a young three year old, to put words to what he was feeling and to tell me how I had made him feel so that we could have this bigger conversation about how I'm not responsible for his feelings. He is allowed to feel that way, but also he had played a part in the situation, right? He was ultimately responsible for what had happened. Anyway, it was just a wonderful moment, another moment of sweet connection that made me feel like my kids are really learning what they need to thrive in life. This third win is arguably the biggest of them all, and you'll understand why as we go through. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was dishing out dinner for my kids. My little toddler was coming up and trying to hold his plate, and I dished him out some corn and told him to hold his plate with two hands as he was walking over to the table so that it wouldn't spill. But of course, the plate tipped over and the corn spilled all over the floor. In that moment, I just so calmly and instantly said, whoops, here, let's get you some more. He brought his plate back over, and I scooped him out more corn, and he went and sat up at the table, and we ate dinner. I cleaned up the mess. It was no big deal. Later that night, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I realized how opposite I had handled the situation than how something like that would have been handled by my dad when I was growing up. I love my dad to death and, and, you know, gosh, it's hard to talk about these things because I don't ever mean to say bad things about anyone. I have so much love and compassion for my parents and the hard things they were going through or had been through that contributed to how they parented myself and my siblings. But if I had been the one or when I was the one to spill something as a child, my dad would have reacted by probably yelling, and being extremely loud and frustrated, or even if he would have just kind of grunted and gritted his teeth and frowned, I would have so just clearly known and taken on that feeling of, I messed up. I am so horrible. I would have just cringed with guilt and shame and believed that I'm someone who just never gets anything right. This is just another example of how I am a problem. I make things worse for my family. That probably isn't what my dad would have intended at all. But there were a lot of moments like that in my childhood that contributed to me believing I had to be perfect. And anytime I wasn't, I felt so deeply ashamed. So again, like the big win here is that after all of that programming, all these years of my life and years of my childhood, having the angry response modeled to me, and then me, the child, taking on this horrible belief that I was a bad child because I had accidentally spilled something. That was not at all part of my consciousness in this interaction with my own child in this moment. It felt so unbelievably healing and freeing to know that now, because of all these years of inner work I have done, right, all the coaching I have gotten, all the tools I've required to learn to regulate my own nervous system, my child's behavior, even a little accident, Whether on purpose or not, the situation didn't trigger me. It did not in any way, not even for a moment, cause me to lose my cool and yell at my child or even just squint my eyes and frown or make any facial expressions that could have conveyed to my son that I was disappointed in him. I am just so proud of that. Because the last thing I ever want is to pass on my own wounds to my kids. I am undoubtedly wounding them in other ways. All of us parents will wound our children in some way. We can't NOT wound them. But heaven forbid if I pass on what was modeled to me. I've worked so hard to catch what those triggers are for me and re-pattern my nervous system and acquire the tools to re-regulate myself when I feel stressed to the point that something that would maybe trigger me, like a mess being made or a kid, you know, whether on purpose or not, you know, making a mess, that could have caused me to react a way that I didn't. And I'm just so proud of that. Now, again, lest you think that I am a perfect parent or that I win at parenting all of the time, here are two big ongoing areas where I really feel like I am losing and I am not doing it right. But I will offer these to you and then, again, just underscore that they're areas for improvement. It's never one and done. Every day we wake up with the new opportunity to change our thoughts, our feelings, our behavior, change our strategy for how we parent our children. So I'm working on these two areas. The first huge loss that I have in my parenting journey right now is how addicted to screens my kids have become. I just laugh, thinking back to before I had kids and even the first few years with my first two kids. I was adamant that my kids weren't going to watch TV. I wanted them to play outside and only even have wooden Montessori toys. I didn't want them to have anything that was plastic. And I just had all of these rules in my head for how I was going to raise my kids. And then ended up having three kids in four years and those rules kind of went out the window because I, out of necessity, needed my kids to hold still in certain moments or keep them occupied so that I could do other things like make dinner or take a shower or whatever else. Then there were a lot of other things that happened over the years where my husband and I ended up relying on screens to occupy our kids because we were dealing with a lot of big, hard family things ourself. It all just has added up. It's the accumulation of lots of little decisions. to give our kids their tablet or let them watch a TV show to the point that now I'm so embarrassed to say that my kids do run down the stairs in the morning and want the iPad or turn on the TV to play Minecraft. And what's strange is that half of the month, I don't necessarily care. A lot of mornings, I'm like, oh, it makes my life easier. It's all good. We'll turn it off and do face-to-face quality activities later on. Plus, of course, I know they do get plenty of outdoor time, plenty of brain engagement, or they're using their minds plenty of the time, too. Lots of social time. So it doesn't feel like a huge problem a good deal of the time. And yet there are other weeks where I just flip out and I get so mad at my kids for wanting their screens and for pitching a fit when screen time is up, and then mad at myself. That's the real thing, right? It's underneath it all. I am so mad at my reasons for letting them be on screens. And it's almost always because I am maxed out. I'm feeling overwhelmed. So I just cave and let them be on their screens to make it easier on me. I noticed that about myself and I'm so not proud of it. I'm really working to change and And just noticing, especially with our three-year-old, how much more screen time he has gotten than the other three kids. But the other dilemma is that he's four years younger than the other three boys, and so he cannot do a lot of the things that they're doing, and then he can't always have our full attention. It's just a catch-22, something where I really feel like I have messed up and I want to make changes. And it's hard. So if you're there, if you can relate, solidarity. And hopefully I will come back in a future episode and report massive improvement on this front. But right now, currently losing big time. The other big loss that is a major area of sadness and frustration for me is how my kids behave at church, especially my toddler. We've struggled with all of our kids when they were young to sit still at church and be quiet and mind their manners and focus on what's happening. I used to really think that something was wrong with them or with me, that we couldn't make our kids be still in those moments. Four kids in, I now realize how normal it is for my three-year-old to struggle through an hour-long service. Or, you know, that I have options, and sometimes it's my own brain that doesn't want to take him out of the church to the cry room or, you know, let him be in the back and walk around because I believe that he should be able to sit and hold still. But that's unrealistic, right? So I just, again, my brain kind of goes back and forth between feeling so much discomfort, so much embarrassment, so much just disappointment when we are that family at church whose kid, one kid in particular, is acting out and not doing what you hope a kid would do during church. But then on the other side, this is normal. I've seen improvements as my kids get older. I wish I was handling it better. What I realize in thinking through this situation is that it triggers an incredibly deep wound for me, which is that when my fourth son was just over a year old, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and was passing away, and I immediately flew out to Colorado to be by her side. Ended up being gone first for three weeks and then home for a week or two and then gone for another two weeks. It is very apparent to me that we lost our mother-son connection in that moment when I was gone. He, of course, was too young to have words for these emotions at that time, but his little nervous system sensed abandonment. Mom is not there for me. He couldn't appreciate why I was gone and it was an incredibly painful choice for me to be gone. It was so hard on my husband. It was just an incredibly hard situation. And yet the impact is very tangible. It has had a real lasting impact on The disconnection I have with my son, despite years of trying to repair it, even talking through whether he can understand it or not. You better believe that I have talked to him about why I was gone and how sorry I am and all these things. But again, all of that to underscore that when I was gone and emotionally or physically unavailable to him, He then latched onto my husband and is so a daddy's boy and he knows how to manipulate that at church where when we are supposed to be sitting still and quiet in the pew, I will try to hold him so that he'll sit still. And then he will immediately cry out for daddy and run over to my husband as if he's getting away from Monster Mommy, right? Like, she's the bad guy. And then my husband, very sweetly, holds him, loves him. And when he seems like he's OK, my husband will put him back down. And then he'll start acting out again. And I catch myself. feeling just so self-conscious as if everybody in church sees how poorly behaved my son is and must assume that I'm a terrible mom because of his behavior. The real loss here is twofold. One, it is an ongoing instance where I don't have good regulation around my past, my experience, my emotions about those experiences. And then in the moment, the second big thing it brings up is how naturally I am still focused on what anyone else thinks and letting my son's behavior impact how I am doing as a mom and kind of measuring my success as a mother on the basis of my child's behavior, which is a big mistake. You can see both of these examples reflect my issues. My kids are just being normal kids. Of course it's easy to get addicted to screens. Even us adults have that problem. Of course it's hard to sit still for over an hour as a little boy. But not only have I chosen, often unintentionally but sometimes intentionally, to prioritize immediate gratification, whatever makes things easier for me in the moment, over what's best for my kids in the long term, and is thus more hard and uncomfortable for me in the moment, But I've also been horribly inconsistent in how I approach both of these issues. Rather than deciding how my best self would handle it and always doing that, I have been way too lax in some moments and then overly critical in others. You can see in the second instance of my son refusing to be quiet and sit still at church that that's especially where my perfectionist, people-pleasing also comes out because I get way too concerned about what other people think and let that motivate my reaction to my son. I especially notice that by this fourth time in, right, having four kids, I'm just tired. I handle a lot of things differently with my fourth son than I ever did with my first couple because I either don't have the energy or now I have a different perspective. So I'm always trying to keep learning and growing and improving. That brings me to the formula that I want to offer you for what it means to win at parenting and how you can win at parenting more. How you can try to accumulate more wins than losses and work on improving the areas where you too might feel at a loss. The first part of the winning at parenting formula is being able to allow your kids to feel however they feel and do whatever they do because of those feelings. We want our kids to know that it is understandable and allowable to feel how they feel. Emotions are entirely subjective. We cannot control anyone else's emotions, each person, even a young child. is responsible for their own emotions. So I'm constantly reminding my children, you are allowed to feel how you feel, but you may not handle your feelings in this way. You can be mad, you are allowed to be mad, but you cannot hit your brother. Or you are allowed to be sad, but you cannot write on the wall or do something that damages the house. The second part of this formula is then you not getting triggered by your kid's emotions or at least not letting the situation dictate your response. I want to offer that the goal isn't to not be triggered because our nervous systems are just naturally triggered by so many things, especially when we are overstimulated and we are confronted with a young child who is out of control or a teenager who's out of control, right? Like any other person who is dysregulated feels like a very real existential threat to your nervous system, so of course you are going to be triggered. The real goal, the real measure of success is not acting on being triggered, right? Not taking any type of behavior yourself from that place of being triggered. but first having the skill of knowing how to calm yourself down, re-regulate your nervous system, and respond to the situation very matter-of-factly, with empathy, but also with authority and leadership. We are not just cowering over. We're not letting our kids get away with misbehavior. We are still parenting and disciplining, but from a place of peace and love, and safety and connection with our kids, not a place of anger and dysregulation ourselves. These are things that were very likely not modeled to you. You, like me, probably were never allowed to express negative emotions around your caregivers. fear of condemnation or abandonment or physical punishment or some other measure of harm, whether that was physical or emotional, you and I learned from a young age that socially undesirable emotions were unsafe that they made the adults around us lose their minds and therefore bad things happened to us. We didn't feel good or safe when our adults were unhappy. And so you may have developed this tendency to do everything in your power to keep adults happy so that your little nervous system could feel safe. Now again, these are major, eye-opening parts of our parenting journey, and I don't know how we ever fully become aware of or process the way we were parented unless or until we are parents ourselves. So as confronting and hard as it is, to reflect on our past. It is so important. It is so valuable. And this work we are doing on ourselves, I just, I want to encourage you to do it because of how it is helping to change the course of history and to give your kids the childhood that you did not receive. You are the parent for them that you did not have. And that feels so, so good. It is so rewarding to think that you are breaking those generational wounds, those cycles of trauma, even if you had a good childhood. Parenting strategies were so different back then. We'll never really know whether the current ones are better per se, but they They really feel better because the strategies I see available now and the ones I am implementing myself with my own children underscore leading from a place of love and connection, not forcing compliance because of fear of physical punishment or emotional abandonment. I sincerely, sincerely hope that this was helpful for you, that you got value out of hearing some of my wins and losses. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, so take a screenshot of this episode, share it on social media, tag me at Solutions for Simplicity on Instagram, and then your homework for this episode is to reflect on the last time you felt like you were winning at parenting. Have you had some wins lately? Or has it felt like a while? Why? Start keeping a record of your winning at parenting moments. The brain is notorious for its recency bias, which is why you easily forget things if you don't write it down. And leave yourself a record of evidence to document that you are a good mom. I don't recommend you track your perceived losses. If anything, those are just invitations for reflection and growth. Just as you don't want to take complete credit for the wins, neither should you assume full responsibility for the losses. Worrying about being a good mom means you are a good mom because you care. Join me back next episode to learn about attachment styles and how childhood experiences shape our and our kids' degree and kind of connection to others. This is crucial stuff I only wish I'd known long before becoming a parent because it now motivates everything I do as a parent and has put so much of my own childhood in perspective. So I want that for you too. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.