The Moms Who Mess Up

When gentle parenting flops and you feel like a failure

I spent most of last night sleeping on Spongebob, his knobby arms and legs poking into my neck and leaving smush marks on my face.

Theo, our three-year-old, was plagued with bouts of coughing all night, and after I went in to check on him around eleven, he wouldn’t let me out of his bed again. I resigned myself to snuggling under the edge of the covers, holding my breath when he hacked in my face and wishing that Spongebob had more stuffing.

It was fine; I was paying penance for the way I had behaved before bed.

Theo had wanted me to put him to bed, but it was his daddy’s night. The magnitude of that disappointment was more than his little emotions could handle, and he lost it. And I mean LOST. IT. I tried to handle it like a gentle parent should; the Instagram people would have approved. But when the gentle parenting strategies didn’t work, I scrapped ‘em. I had my own meltdown. [Given that I’m ten times older than Theo, I recognize that I should have handled it ten times better than him, too—and that makes the guilt even worse.]

After he finally fell asleep, I slumped on the living room floor and told Ethan I felt like a very poor parent indeed. Then I cried a little, imagining grown-up Theo still traumatized by my inability to hold my temper. I wondered to myself: If I never lose my temper again after this night, will it still be too late? Will I still have done some invisible damage to his little heart and mind and our relationship that I won’t be able to repair?

So when he needed me later in the night, I tried not to humph and grumble like I usually do. I left my own warm bed for his room. I propped his head with another pillow and made honey tea and kissed his hair, his cheeks, his hands. I whispered, I love you, I love you, I love you.

If I never lose my temper again after this night, will it still be too late?

Parenting is impossibly hard. It shows me how unbearably human I am, and has a way of bringing all of my unrefined parts right to the surface, where I have to reckon with them. It is constantly asking me to be kinder than I am, stronger than I am, and better than I am. It is the job in life that is never finished and never graded, which leaves me always wondering—how am I doing?

I saw something really beautiful that Lori Ann Wood wrote in an article for the Truly Co. that I keep turning over and over in my mind, when the doubt and shame about my parenting mistakes keeps creeping in. She said, “But the God who makes us out of nothing whispers through the doubt, When I choose you for something, I already know you are enough.”

Parenting is the job in life that is never finished and never graded, which leaves me always wondering—how am I doing?

Can it be true, that glorious thought that God has chosen me to parent my children and has deemed that what I can offer them is enough? That my fragmented ability to be good is not, in fact, disqualifying me from being their mom? When I grab hold of this idea, I feel enormous relief. I feel like God sees my humanity, says, Yes, I know, and then swoops in and does the thing where he turns a little into more than enough. Like the five loaves and two fishes feeding the five thousand. God takes weak and meager offerings and works miracles.

This morning, I apologized to Theo. He kissed me on the cheek and said, “I love you, Mommy.” And I thanked God for the chance to try again today, and to watch how he will take what I have and somehow, somehow, makes it enough.